Re: Scapegoats and the Veneration of the Saints -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 07:20:08 01/28/08 Mon
Author: Kiernan
Subject: Re: Scapegoats and the Veneration of the Saints
In reply to: Betsy Peters 's message, "Scapegoats and the Veneration of the Saints" on 06:02:01 01/28/08 Mon

I'm far from being an expert on saints, but wasn't the idea behind a martyr's life "imitatio Christi"? So, it would seem that their deaths would work within a scapegoat mechanism, except, like Christ, these victims willingly are punished for the sins of the commmunity while being innocent. I suppose I haven't quite parsed this out at length......it just seems to me that the mechanism at work here should, by all rights, be the same one as works with the death of Christ, and our subsequent worship of him. His status as an innocent victim, who consciously and willingly accepted the sins of the community on his head, broke the cycles of imitative violence, and the martyrs were imitating him in the hope of renewing that hope, however faintly, for their culture.

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