Expiatory definition

Rejecting the retributive view of punishment, he describes the sufferings of Christ as those of the perfect "Penitent," and finds their expiatory value to lie in the Person of the Sufferer, the God-Man.

He was the mythic founder of a religious school or sect, with a code of rules of life, a mystic eclectic theology, a system of purificatory and expiatory rites, and peculiar mysteries.

In less developed creeds the difference tends to remain in the background; but where sacrifices are found, solemn annual rites, communal, purificatory or expiatory, are celebrated, and these are held to be in like manner obligatory.

He was superseded there by Delescluze, but he continued to direct the violent acts of the Commune, the overthrow of the Vendome column, the destruction of Thiers's residence and of the expiatory chapel built to the memory of Louis XVI.