The Holy Spirit and the Seven Deadly Sins. Folio from Walters manuscript W.171 (15th century)
The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices within Christian teachings. Behaviours or habits are classified under this category if they directly give birth to other immoralities. According to the standard list, they are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, which are also contrary to the seven virtues. These sins
are often thought to be abuses or excessive versions of one's natural
faculties or passions (for example, gluttony abuses one's desire to
eat).
This classification originated with the desert fathers, especially Evagrius Ponticus, who identified seven or eight evil thoughts or spirits that one needed to overcome. Evagrius' pupil John Cassian, with his book The Institutes, brought the classification to Europe, where it became fundamental to Catholic confessional practices as evident in penitential manuals, sermons like "The Parson's Tale" from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and artworks like Dante's Purgatory
(where the penitents of Mount Purgatory are depicted as being grouped
and penanced according to the worst capital sin they committed). The
Catholic Church used the concept of the deadly sins in order to help
people curb their inclination towards evil before dire consequences and
misdeeds could occur; the leader-teachers especially focused on pride
(which is thought to be the sin that severs the soul from Grace,
and the one that is representative and the very essence of all evil)
and greed, both of which are seen as inherently sinful and as underlying
all other sins to be prevented. To inspire people to focus on the seven
deadly sins, the vices are discussed in treatises and depicted in
paintings and sculpture decorations on Catholic churches as well as
older textbooks.
History
Greco-Roman antecedents
While
the seven deadly sins as we know them did not originate with the Greeks
or Romans, there were ancient precedents for them. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics lists several positive, healthy human qualities, excellences, or virtues.
Aristotle argues that for each positive quality there are two negative
vices that are found on each extreme of the virtue. Courage, for
example, is the human excellence or virtue in facing fear and risk.
Excessive courage makes one rash, while a deficiency of courage makes
one cowardly. This principle of virtue found in the middle or "mean"
between excess and deficiency is Aristotle's notion of the golden mean.
Aristotle lists virtues like courage, temperance or self-control,
generosity, "greatness of soul," proper response to anger, friendliness,
and wit or charm.
Roman writers like Horace
extolled the value of virtue while listing and warning against vices.
His first epistles says that "to flee vice is the beginning of virtue,
and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom."
Origin of the currently recognized seven deadly sins
The modern concept of the seven deadly sins is linked to the works of the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus, who listed eight evil thoughts in Greek as follows:
- Γαστριμαργία (gastrimargia) gluttony
- Πορνεία (porneia) prostitution, fornication
- Φιλαργυρία (philargyria) avarice (greed)
- Ὑπερηφανία (hyperēphania) pride – sometimes rendered as self-overestimation, arrogance, grandiosity
- Λύπη (lypē) sadness – in the Philokalia, this term is rendered as envy, sadness at another's good fortune
- Ὀργή (orgē) wrath
- Κενοδοξία (kenodoxia) boasting
- Ἀκηδία (akēdia) acedia – in the Philokalia, this term is rendered as dejection
They were translated into the Latin of Western Christianity (largely due to the writings of John Cassian), thus becoming part of the Western tradition's spiritual pietas (or Catholic devotions), as follows:
- Gula (gluttony)
- Luxuria/Fornicatio (lust, fornication)
- Avaritia (avarice/greed)
- Superbia (pride, hubris)
- Tristitia (sorrow/despair/despondency)
- Ira (wrath)
- Vanagloria (vainglory)
- Acedia (sloth)
These "evil thoughts" can be categorized into three types:
- lustful appetite (gluttony, fornication, and avarice)
- irascibility (wrath)
- mind corruption (vainglory, sorrow, pride, and discouragement)
In AD 590 Pope Gregory I revised this list to form the more common list. Gregory combined tristitia with acedia, and vanagloria with superbia, and added envy, in Latin, invidia. Gregory's list became the standard list of sins. Thomas Aquinas uses and defends Gregory's list in his Summa Theologica although he calls them the "capital sins" because they are the head and form of all the others. The Anglican Communion, Lutheran Church, and Methodist Church, among other Christian denominations, continue to retain this list. Moreover, modern day evangelists, such as Billy Graham have explicated the seven deadly sins.
Historical and modern definitions, views, and associations
Most of the capital sins, with the sole exception of sloth, are defined by Dante Alighieri
as perverse or corrupt versions of love for something or another: lust,
gluttony, and greed are all excessive or disordered love of good
things; sloth is a deficiency of love; wrath, envy, and pride are
perverted love directed toward other's harm. In the seven capital sins are seven ways of eternal death. The capital sins from lust to envy are generally associated with pride, which has been labeled as the father of all sins.
Lust
Paolo and Francesca, whom Dante's Inferno describes as damned for fornication. (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1819)
Lust, or lechery (Latin, "luxuria" (carnal)), is intense longing. It is usually thought of as intense or unbridled sexual desire, which leads to fornication, adultery, rape, bestiality,
and other immoral sexual acts. However, lust could also mean simply
desire in general; thus, lust for money, power, and other things are
sinful. In accordance with the words of Henry Edward Manning, the impurity of lust transforms one into "a slave of the devil".
Lust, if not managed properly, can subvert propriety.
German philosopher Schopenhauer wrote as follows:
Lust is the ultimate goal of almost all human endeavour, exerts an adverse influence on the most important affairs, interrupts the most serious business, sometimes for a while confuses even the greatest minds, does not hesitate with its trumpery to disrupt the negotiations of statesmen and the research of scholars, has the knack of slipping its love-letters and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts.
Dante defined lust as the disordered love for individuals, thus
possessing at least the redeeming feature of mutuality, unlike the
graver sins, which constitute an increasingly agonised focusing upon
the solitary self (a process begun with the more serious sin of
gluttony). It is generally thought to be the least serious capital sin
as it is an abuse of a faculty that humans share with animals, and sins
of the flesh are less grievous than spiritual sins (love excessive, not
love turning ever further awry toward hatred of man and God).
In Dante's Purgatorio, the penitents walk deliberately
through the purifying flames of the uppermost of the terraces of Mount
Purgatory so as to purge themselves of lustful thoughts and feelings and
finally win the right to reach the Earthly Paradise at the summit. In
Dante's Inferno,
unforgiven souls guilty of the sin of lust are whirled around for all
eternity in a perpetual tempest, symbolic of the passions by which,
through lack of self-control, they were buffeted helplessly about in
their earthly lives.
Gluttony
Still life: Excess (Albert Anker, 1896)
Gluttony (Latin, gula) is the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste. The word derives from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow.
In Christianity, it is considered a sin if the excessive desire for food causes it to be withheld from the needy.
Because of these scripts, gluttony can be interpreted as selfishness; essentially placing concern with one's own impulses or interests above the well-being or interests of others.
During times of famine, war,
and similar periods when food is scarce, it is possible for one to
indirectly kill other people through starvation just by eating too much
or even too soon.
Medieval church leaders (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) took a more expansive view of gluttony,
arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals,
and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods. Aquinas went so far as to prepare a list of five ways to commit gluttony, comprising:
- Laute – eating too expensively
- Studiose – eating too daintily
- Nimis – eating too much
- Praepropere – eating too soon
- Ardenter – eating too eagerly
Of these, ardenter is often considered the most serious, since
it is extreme attachment to the pleasure of mere eating, which can make
the committer eat impulsively; absolutely and without qualification
live merely to eat and drink; lose attachment to health-related, social,
intellectual, and spiritual pleasures; and lose proper judgement: an example is Esau
selling his birthright for ordinary food of bread and pottage of
lentils. His punishment was that of the "profane person ... who, for a
morsel of meat sold his birthright". We learn that "he found no place
for repentance, though he sought it carefully, with tears".
Greed
The Worship of Mammon (1909) by Evelyn De Morgan.
Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice, cupidity, or covetousness,
is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of desire. However, greed (as seen by
the Church) is applied to an artificial, rapacious desire and pursuit
of material possessions. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "Greed is a sin against
God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal
for the sake of temporal things." In Dante's Purgatory, the penitents
are bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated
excessively on earthly thoughts. Hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one attempts to purchase or sell sacraments, including Holy Orders and, therefore, positions of authority in the Church hierarchy.
In the words of Henry Edward, avarice "plunges a man deep into the mire of this world, so that he makes it to be his god".
As defined outside Christian writings, greed is an inordinate
desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with
respect to material wealth. Like pride, it can lead to not just some, but all evil.
Sloth
Sloth (Latin, tristitia or acedia
("without care")) refers to a peculiar jumble of notions, dating from
antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical
states. It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.
In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas defined sloth as "sorrow about spiritual good".
The scope of sloth is wide. Spiritually, acedia
first referred to an affliction attending religious persons, especially
monks, wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations
to God. Mentally, acedia
has a number of distinctive components of which the most important is
affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state
that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or
sluggish mentation. Physically, acedia is fundamentally associated with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work; it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.
Sloth includes ceasing to utilize the seven gifts of grace given by the Holy Spirit (Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear of the Lord);
such disregard may lead to the slowing of one's spiritual progress
towards eternal life, to the neglect of manifold duties of charity towards the neighbor, and to animosity towards those who love God.
Sloth has also been defined as a failure to do things that one
should do. By this definition, evil exists when "good" people fail to
act.
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) wrote in Present Discontents
(II. 78) "No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm,
can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory,
unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and
united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must
associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a
contemptible struggle."
Unlike the other capital sins, which are sins of committing
immorality, sloth is a sin of omitting responsibilities. It may arise
from any of the other capital vices; for example, a son may omit his
duty to his father through anger. While the state and habit of sloth is a
mortal sin, the habit of the soul tending towards the last mortal state
of sloth is not mortal in and of itself except under certain
circumstances.
Emotionally and cognitively, the evil of acedia finds expression in a lack of any feeling for the world, for the people in it, or for the self. Acedia
takes form as an alienation of the sentient self first from the world
and then from itself. Although the most profound versions of this
condition are found in a withdrawal from all forms of participation in
or care for others or oneself, a lesser but more noisome element was
also noted by theologians. From tristitia, asserted Gregory the
Great, "there arise malice, rancour, cowardice, [and] despair". Chaucer,
too, dealt with this attribute of acedia, counting the characteristics of the sin to include despair, somnolence, idleness, tardiness, negligence, indolence, and wrawnesse,
the last variously translated as "anger" or better as "peevishness".
For Chaucer, human's sin consists of languishing and holding back,
refusing to undertake works of goodness because, he/she tells him/her
self, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of good are too
grievous and too difficult to suffer. Acedia in Chaucer's view is thus the enemy of every source and motive for work.
Sloth not only subverts the livelihood of the body, taking no
care for its day-to-day provisions, but also slows down the mind,
halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders the
man in his righteous undertakings and thus becomes a terrible source of
human's undoing.
In his Purgatorio Dante portrayed the penance for acedia as running continuously at top speed.
Dante describes acedia as the "failure to love God with all one's
heart, all one's mind and all one's soul"; to him it was the "middle
sin", the only one characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love.
Some scholars have said that the ultimate form of acedia was despair which leads to suicide.
Wrath
Wrath, by Jacques de l'Ange
Wrath (Latin, ira) can be defined as uncontrolled feelings of anger, rage, and even hatred. Wrath often reveals itself in the wish to seek vengeance. In its purest form, wrath presents with injury, violence, and hate that may provoke feuds
that can go on for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the person
who did another a grievous wrong is dead. Feelings of wrath can manifest
in different ways, including impatience, hateful misanthropy, revenge, and self-destructive behavior, such as drug abuse or suicide.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the neutral
act of anger becomes the sin of wrath when it is directed against an
innocent person, when it is unduly strong or long-lasting, or when it
desires excessive punishment. "If anger reaches the point of a
deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely
against charity; it is a mortal sin." (CCC 2302) Hatred is the sin of
desiring that someone else may suffer misfortune or evil, and is a
mortal sin when one desires grave harm. (CCC 2302-03)
People feel angry when they sense that they or someone they care
about has been offended, when they are certain about the nature and
cause of the angering event, when they are certain someone else is
responsible, and when they feel they can still influence the situation
or cope with it.
In her introduction to Purgatory, Dorothy L. Sayers describes wrath as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite".
In accordance with Henry Edward, angry people are "slaves to themselves".
Envy
.jpg)
Cain killing Abel (c. 1600) by Bartolomeo Manfredi
Envy (Latin, invidia),
like greed and lust, is characterized by an insatiable desire. It can
be described as a sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or
possessions of someone else. It arises from vainglory, and severs a man from his neighbor.
Malicious envy is similar to jealousy in that they both feel
discontent towards someone's traits, status, abilities, or rewards. A
difference is that the envious also desire the entity and covet it. Envy
can be directly related to the Ten Commandments, specifically, "Neither shall you covet ... anything that belongs to your neighbour"—a statement that may also be related to greed.
Dante defined envy as "a desire to deprive other men of theirs". In
Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes
sewn shut with wire because they gained sinful pleasure from seeing
others brought low. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the struggle
aroused by envy has three stages: during the first stage, the envious
person attempts to lower another's reputation; in the middle stage, the
envious person receives either "joy at another's misfortune" (if he
succeeds in defaming the other person) or "grief at another's
prosperity" (if he fails); the third stage is hatred because "sorrow
causes hatred".
Envy is said to be the motivation behind Cain murdering his brother, Abel, as Cain envied Abel because God favored Abel's sacrifice over Cain's.
Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness, bringing sorrow to committers of envy whilst giving them the urge to inflict pain upon others.
In accordance with the most widely accepted views, only pride weighs
down the soul more than envy among the capital sins. Just like pride,
envy has been associated directly with the devil, for Wisdom 2:24
states: "the envy of the devil brought death to the world".
Pride
_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg)
Building the Tower of Babel was, for Dante, an example of pride. Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Pride (Latin, superbia)
is considered, on almost every list, the original and most serious of
the seven deadly sins: the perversion of the faculties that make humans
more like God—dignity and holiness. It is also thought to be the source
of the other capital sins. Also known as hubris (from ancient Greek ὕβρις), or futility,
it is identified as dangerously corrupt selfishness, the putting of
one's own desires, urges, wants, and whims before the welfare of other
people.
In even more destructive cases, it is irrationally believing that
one is essentially and necessarily better, superior, or more important
than others, failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, and
excessive admiration of the personal image or self (especially
forgetting one's own lack of divinity, and refusing to acknowledge one's
own limits, faults, or wrongs as a human being).
What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, line 203.
As pride has been labelled the father of all sins, it has been deemed the devil's most prominent trait. C.S. Lewis writes, in Mere Christianity,
that pride is the "anti-God" state, the position in which the ego and
the self are directly opposed to God: "Unchastity, anger, greed,
drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was
through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every
other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." Pride is understood to sever the spirit from God, as well as His life-and-grace-giving Presence.
One can be prideful for different reasons. Author Ichabod Spencer
states that "[s]piritual pride is the worst kind of pride, if not worst
snare of the devil. The heart is particularly deceitful on this one
thing." Jonathan Edwards
said "[r]emember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart,
the greatest disturber of the soul's peace and sweet communion with
Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the
foundation of Satan's whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted
out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and
often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes
under the disguise of humility."
In Ancient Athens, hubris was considered one of the greatest
crimes and was used to refer to insolent contempt that can cause one to
use violence to shame the victim. This sense of hubris could also
characterize rape. Aristotle
defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that
happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely
for the committer's own gratification.
The word's connotation changed somewhat over time, with some additional
emphasis towards a gross over-estimation of one's abilities.
The term has been used to analyse and make sense of the actions
of contemporary heads of government by Ian Kershaw (1998), Peter Beinart
(2010) and in a much more physiological manner by David Owen (2012). In
this context the term has been used to describe how certain leaders,
when put to positions of immense power, seem to become irrationally
self-confident in their own abilities, increasingly reluctant to listen
to the advice of others and progressively more impulsive in their
actions.
Dante's definition of pride was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour".
Pride is associated with more intra-individual negative outcomes
and is commonly related to expressions of aggression and hostility
(Tangney, 1999).
As one might expect, pride is not always associated with high self-esteem
but with highly fluctuating or variable self-esteem. Excessive feelings
of pride have a tendency to create conflict and sometimes terminating
close relationships, which has led it to be understood as one of the few
emotions with no clear positive or adaptive functions (Rhodwalt, et
al.).
Pride is generally associated with an absence of humility. It may also be associated with a lack of knowledge. John Gay states that "By ignorance is pride increased; They most assume who know the least."
In accordance with the Sirach's
author's wording, the heart of a proud man is "like a partridge in its
cage acting as a decoy; like a spy he watches for your weaknesses. He
changes good things into evil, he lays his traps. Just as a spark sets
coals on fire, the wicked man prepares his snares in order to draw
blood. Beware of the wicked man for he is planning evil. He might
dishonor you forever." In another chapter, he says that "the acquisitive
man is not content with what he has, wicked injustice shrivels the
heart."
Benjamin Franklin said "In reality there is, perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.
Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as one
pleases, it is still alive and will every now and then peep out and show
itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history. For even if I
could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be
proud of my humility." Joseph Addison
states that "There is no passion that steals into the heart more
imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride."
The proverb "pride goeth (goes) before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (from the biblical Book of Proverbs,
16:18) (or pride goeth before the fall) is thought to sum up the modern
use of pride. Pride is also referred to as "pride that blinds," as it
often causes a committer of pride to act in foolish ways that belie
common sense.
In other words, the modern definition may be thought of as, "that pride
that goes just before the fall." In his two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler, historian Ian Kershaw uses both 'hubris' and 'nemesis' as titles. The first volume, Hubris, describes Hitler's early life and rise to political power. The second, Nemesis, gives details of Hitler's role in the Second World War, and concludes with his fall and suicide in 1945.
Much of the 10th and part of 11th chapter of the Book of Sirach discusses and advises about pride, hubris, and who is rationally worthy of honor. It goes:
Do not store up resentment against your neighbor, no matter what his offence; do nothing in a fit of anger. Pride is odious to both God and man; injustice is abhorrent to both of them. Sovereignty is forced from one nation to another because of injustice, violence, and wealth. How can there be such pride in someone who is nothing but dust and ashes? Even while he is living, man's bowels are full of rottenness. Look: the illness lasts while the doctor makes light of it; and one who is king today will die tomorrow. Once a man is dead, grubs, insects, and worms are his lot.The beginning of man's pride is to separate himself from the Lord and to rebel against his Creator. The beginning of pride is sin. Whoever perseveres in sinning opens the floodgates to everything that is evil. For this the Lord has inflicted dire punishment on sinners; he has reduced them to nothing. The Lord has overturned the thrones of princes and set up the meek in their place. The Lord has torn up the proud by their roots and has planted the humble in their place. The Lord has overturned the land of pagans and totally destroyed them. He has devastated several of them, destroyed them and removed all remembrance of them from the face of the earth. Pride was not created for man, nor violent anger for those born of woman. Which race is worthy of honor? The human race. Which race is worthy of honor? Those who are good. Which race is despicable? The human race. Which race is despicable? Those who break the commandments. The leader is worthy of respect in the midst of his brethren, but he has respect for those who are good. Whether, they be rich, honored or poor, their pride should be in being good. It is not right to despise the poor man who keeps the law; it is not fitting to honor the sinful man. The leader, the judge, and the powerful man are worthy of honor, but no one is greater than the man who is good. A prudent slave will have free men as servants, and the sensible man will not complain. Do not feel proud when you accomplished your work; do not put on airs when times are difficult for you. Of greater worth is the man who works and lives in abundance than the one who shows off and yet has nothing to live on. My son, have a modest appreciation of yourself, estimate yourself at your true value. Who will defend the man who takes his own life? Who will respect the man who despises himself? The poor man will be honored for his wisdom and the rich man, for his riches. Honored when poor-how much more honored when rich! Dishonored when rich-how much more dishonored when poor! The poor man who is intelligent carries his head high and sits among the great. Do not praise a man because he is handsome and do not hold a man in contempt because of his appearance. The bee is one of the smallest winged insects but she excels in the exquisite sweetness of her honey. Do not be irrationally proud just because of the clothes you wear; do not be proud when people honor you. Do you know what the Lord is planning in a mysterious way? Many tyrants have been overthrown and someone unknown has received the crown. Many powerful men have been disgraced and famous men handed over to the power of others. Do not reprehend anyone unless you have been first fully informed, consider the case first and thereafter make your reproach. Do not reply before you have listened; do not meddle in the disputes of sinners. My child, do not undertake too many activities. If you keep adding to them, you will not be without reproach; if you run after them, you will not succeed nor will you ever be free, although you try to escape.
— Sirach,10:6–31 and 11:1–10
Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents are burdened with stone slabs on their necks to keep their heads bowed.
Historical sins
Acedia
.jpg)
Acedia (Latin, acedia "without care") (from Greek ἀκηδία) is the neglect to take care of something that one should do. It is translated to apathetic listlessness; depression without joy. It is related to melancholy: acedia describes the behaviour and melancholy
suggests the emotion producing it. In early Christian thought, the lack
of joy was regarded as a willful refusal to enjoy the goodness of God;
by contrast, apathy was considered a refusal to help others in time of
need.
Acēdia is negative form of the Greek term κηδεία, which has a
more restricted usage. 'Kēdeia' refers specifically to spousal love and
respect for the dead.
The positive term 'kēdeia' thus indicates love for one's family, even
through death. It also indicates love for those outside one's immediate
family, specifically forming a new family with one's "beloved". Seen in
this way, acēdia indicates a rejection of familial love. Nonetheless, the meaning of acēdia is far more broad, signifying indifference to everything one experiences.
Pope Gregory combined this with tristitia into sloth for his list. When Thomas Aquinas described acedia
in his interpretation of the list, he described it as an "uneasiness of
the mind", being a progenitor for lesser sins such as restlessness and
instability. Dante refined this definition further, describing acedia as
the "failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul"; to him it was the "middle sin", the only one characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love. Some scholars have said that the ultimate form of acedia was despair which leads to suicide.
Acedia is currently defined in the Catechism of the Catholic
Church as spiritual sloth, which would be believing spiritual tasks to
be too difficult. In the fourth century, Christian monks believed acedia
was not primarily caused by laziness, but by a state of depression that
caused spiritual detachment.
.jpg)
Detail of Pride from The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things by Hieronymous Bosch, c. 1500
Vainglory
Vainglory (Latin, vanagloria) is unjustified boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of pride, so he folded vainglory into pride for his listing of sins. According to Thomas Aquinas, it is the progenitor of envy.
The Latin term gloria roughly means boasting, although its English cognate – glory – has come to have an exclusively positive meaning; historically, the term vain roughly meant futile (a meaning retained in the modern expression "in vain"), but by the 14th century had come to have the strong narcissistic undertones, that it still retains today. As a result of these semantic changes, vainglory has become a rarely used word in itself, and is now commonly interpreted as referring to vanity (in its modern narcissistic sense).
Christian seven virtues
With Christianity, historic Christian denominations such as the Catholic Church and Protestant Churches, including the Lutheran Church, recognize seven virtues, which correspond inversely to each of the seven deadly sins.
| Vice | Latin | Italian | Virtue | Latin | Italian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lust | Luxuria | "Lussuria" | Chastity | Castitas | "Castità" |
| Gluttony | Gula | "Gola" | Temperance | Moderatio | "Temperanza" |
| Greed | Avaritia | "Avarizia" | Charity (or, sometimes, Generosity) | Caritas (Liberalitas) | "Generosità" |
| Sloth | Acedia | "Accidia" | Diligence | Industria | "Diligenza" |
| Wrath | Ira | "Ira" | Patience | Patientia | "Pazienza" |
| Envy | Invidia | "Invidia" | Gratitude | Gratia | "Gratitudine" |
| Pride | Superbia | "Superbia" | Humility | Humilitas | "Umiltà" |
Confession patterns
Confession
is the act of admitting the commission of a sin to a priest, who in
turn will forgive the person in the name (in the person) of Christ, give
a penance to (partially) make up for the offense, and advise the person
on what he or she should do afterwards.
According to a 2009 study by Fr. Roberto Busa, a Jesuit scholar, the most common deadly sin confessed by men is lust, and by women, pride.
It was unclear whether these differences were due to the actual number
of transgressions committed by each sex, or whether differing views on
what "counts" or should be confessed caused the observed pattern.
In art
Dante's Purgatorio
The second book of Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy
is structured around the seven deadly sins. The most serious sins,
found at the lowest level, are the abuses of the most divine faculty.
For Dante and other thinkers, a human's rational faculty makes humans
more like God. Abusing that faculty with pride or envy weighs down the
soul the most (though abuse is gluttonous). Abusing one's passions with
wrath or a lack of passion as with sloth also weighs down the soul but
not as much as the abuse of one's rational faculty. Finally, abusing
one's desires to have one's physical needs met via greed, gluttony, or
lust abuses a faculty that humans share with animals. This is still an
abuse that weighs down the soul, but it does not weigh it down like
other abuses. Thus, the top levels of the Mountain of Purgatory have the
top listed sins, while the lowest levels have the more serious sins of
wrath, envy, and pride.
- luxuria / Lust
- gula / Gluttony
- avaritia / Greed
- acedia / Sloth
- ira / Wrath
- invidia / Envy
- superbia / Pride
Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Parson's Tale"
The last tale of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the "Parson's Tale",
is not a tale but a sermon that the parson gives against the seven
deadly sins. This sermon brings together many common ideas and images
about the seven deadly sins. This tale and Dante's work both show how
the seven deadly sins were used for confessional purposes or as a way to
identify, repent of, and find forgiveness for one's sins.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Prints of the Seven Deadly Sins
The Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder
created a series of prints showing each of the seven deadly sins. Each
print features a central, labeled image that represents the sin. Around
the figure are images that show the distortions, degenerations, and
destructions caused by the sin. Many of these images come from contemporary Dutch aphorisms.
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene
Spenser's The Faerie Queene,
which was meant to educate young people to embrace virtue and avoid
vice, includes a colourful depiction of the House of Pride. Lucifera,
the lady of the house, is accompanied by advisers who represent the
other seven deadly sins.
William Langland's Piers Plowman
The seven sins are personified and they give a confession to the personification of Repentance in William Langland's Piers Plowman. Only pride is represented by a woman, the others all represented by male characters.
The Seven Deadly Sins
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins
satirized capitalism and its painful abuses as its central character,
the victim of a split personality, travels to seven different cities in
search of money for her family. In each city she encounters one of the
seven deadly sins, but those sins ironically reverse one's expectations.
When the character goes to Los Angeles, for example, she is outraged by
injustice, but is told that wrath against capitalism is a sin that she
must avoid.
Paul Cadmus' The Seven Deadly Sins
Between 1945 and 1949, the American painter Paul Cadmus created a series of vivid, powerful, and gruesome paintings of each of the seven deadly sins.
Revalorization
Ferdinand Mount maintains that liquid currentness, especially through tabloids, has surprisingly given valor to vices, causing society to regress into that of primitive pagans: "covetousness has been rebranded as retail therapy, sloth is downtime, lust is exploring your sexuality, anger is opening up your feelings, vanity is looking good because you're worth it and gluttony is the religion of foodies".
