Seven Deadly Sins: Vices or Cardinal Sins, Is A Grouping and

Seven deadly sins - Wikipedia
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Seven deadly sins

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital

vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and
classication of vices of Christian origin.[1]
Behaviors or habits are classied under this
category if they directly give birth to other
immoralities.[2] According to the standard list, they
are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and
sloth,[2] 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).
Hieronymus Bosch's The

Seven Deadly Sins and the
Four Last Things
This classication originated with the desert

fathers, especially Evagrius Ponticus, who
identied seven or eight evil thoughts or spirits
that one needed to overcome.[3] Evagrius' pupil
John Cassian, with his book The Institutes, brought
the classication to Europe,[4] 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 Church
used the doctrine of the deadly sins in order to
help people stop their inclination towards evil
before dire consequences and misdeeds occur; the
leader-teachers especially focused on pride (which
is thought to be the one that severs the soul from
The Holy Spirit and the
Grace,[5] and one that is representative and the
Seven Deadly Sins. Folio
very essence of all evil) and greed, both of which
from Walters manuscript
are seen as inherently sinful and as underlying all
W.171 (15th century)
other sins (although greed, when viewed just by
itself and discounting all the sins it might lead to,
is generally thought be less serious than sloth). To inspire people to focus on the
seven deadly sins, the vices are discussed in treatises, and depicted in paintings
and sculpture decorations on churches.[1] Peter Brueghel the Elder's prints of the
Seven Deadly Sins and extremely numerous other works, both non-religious and
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religious, show the continuity of this practice in the culture and everyday life of
the modern era.
Contents
1 History
1.1 Biblical antecedents
1.2 Greco-Roman antecedents
1.3 Origin of the currently recognized Seven Deadly Sins
2 Historical and modern denitions, views and associations
2.1 Lust
2.2 Gluttony
2.3 Greed
2.4 Sloth
2.5 Wrath
2.6 Envy
2.7 Pride
3 Historical sins
3.1 Acedia
3.2 Vainglory
4 Catholic seven virtues
5 Confession Patterns
6 In art
6.1 Dante's Purgatorio
6.2 Georey Chaucer's "The Parson's Tale"
6.3 Peter Brueghel the Elder's Prints of the Seven Deadly Sins
6.4 Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene
6.5 Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins
6.6 Paul Cadmus' The Seven Deadly Sins
7 Cultural references
8 Revalorization
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
History
Biblical antecedents
The seven deadly sins in their current form are not found in the Bible, however
there are biblical antecedents. One such antecedent is found in the Book of
Proverbs 6:1619. Among the verses traditionally associated with King Solomon,
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it states that the Lord specically regards "six things doth the LORD hate: yea,
seven are an abomination unto him", namely:[6]
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
A proud (vain) look

A lying tongue.
Hands that shed innocent blood
A heart that deviseth wicked acts
Feet that be swift in running to mischief
A false witness that speaketh lies
He that soweth discord among brethren[7]
Another list,[8] given this time by the Epistle to the Galatians (Galatians 5:1921),
includes more of the traditional seven sins, although the list is substantially
longer: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred,
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders,
drunkenness, revellings, "and such like".[9] Since the apostle Paul goes on to say
that the persons who practice these sins "shall not inherit the Kingdom of God",
they are usually listed as (possible) mortal sins rather than capital vices.[10]
Still another list of things that God hates comes from Revelation 21:8. [11] This list
has eight items, however and are inclusive of the seven sins listed previously
which states: "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and
murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall
have their part in the lake which burneth with re and brimstone: which is the
second death."
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
deciency of courage makes one cowardly. This principle of virtue found in the
middle or "mean" between excess and deciency 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 rst epistles says that "to ee vice is the beginning of virtue,
and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom."[12]
Origin of the currently recognized Seven Deadly Sins
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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:[13][14]
1 (gastrimargia) gluttony
2 (porneia) prostitution, fornication
3 (philargyria) avarice
4 (hyperphania) pride
sometimes rendered as self-overestimation[15]
5 (lyp) sadness in the Philokalia, this
term is rendered as envy, sadness at another's
good fortune
6 (org) wrath
7 (kenodoxia) boasting
8 (akdia) 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),[16][17] thus becoming part of the Western
tradition's spiritual pietas (or Catholic devotions),
as follows:[18]
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Gula (gluttony)
Luxuria/Fornicatio (lust, fornication)
Avaritia (avarice/greed)
Superbia (pride, hubris)
Tristitia (sorrow/despair/despondency)
Ira (wrath)
Vanagloria (vainglory)
Acedia (sloth)
An allegorical image
depicting the human heart
subject to the seven deadly
sins, each represented by an
animal (clockwise: toad =
avarice; snake = envy; lion
= wrath; snail = sloth; pig =
gluttony; goat = lust;
peacock = pride).
These "evil thoughts" can be categorized into three types: [18]

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 and acedia, vanagloria and superbia, and added envy.[19][20]
Gregory's list became the standard list of sins. Thomas Aquinas uses and defends
Gregory's list in his Summa Theologica.[21]
Historical and modern denitions, views and

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associations
Most of the capital sins, with the sole exception of sloth, are dened 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
deciency of love; wrath, envy, and pride are perverted love directed toward
other's harm.[22] In the seven capital sins are seven ways of eternal death. [5] The
capital sins from lust to envy are generally associated with pride, which has been
labeled as the father of all sins, etc.
Lust
Lust, or lechery (Latin, "luxuria" (carnal)), is
intense longing. It is usually thought of as
intense or unbridled sexual desire,[23] 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, the impurity of lust makes one "a
slave of the devil".[5]
Lust, if not managed properly, can subvert
propriety.[24]
German philosopher Schopenhauer wrote:[24]
"Lust is the ultimate goal of almost
all human endeavour, exerts an
adverse inuence on the most
important aairs, 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".
Paolo and Francesca, whom

Dante's Inferno describes as
damned for fornication. (JeanAuguste-Dominique Ingres,
1819)
Dante dened lust as the disordered love for individuals.[25] It is generally

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thought to be the least serious capital sin[22][26] as it is an abuse of a faculty that

humans share with animals, and sins of the esh are less grievous than spiritual
sins.[27]
In Dante's Purgatorio, the penitent walks within ames to purge himself of lustful
thoughts and feelings. In Dante's Inferno, unforgiven souls of the sin of lust are
blown about in restless hurricane-like winds symbolic of their own lack of
self-control to their lustful passions in earthly life.
Gluttony
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.[28]
Because of these scripts, gluttony can be
interpreted as selshness; essentially placing
concern with one's own impulses or interests
above the well-being or interests of others.
Gluttony
Excess (Albert Anker, 1896)
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,[28] arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals,
and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods. [29] Aquinas
went so far as to prepare a list of ve 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
Out 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 qualication 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 the "profane person . . .
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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." [Gen 25:30]
Greed
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 articial, 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 were bound and
laid face down on the ground for having
concentrated too much 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.
Greed
1909 painting The Worship
of Mammon by Evelyn De
Morgan.
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."[5]
As dened outside Christian writings, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or
possess more than one needs, especially with respect to material wealth.[30] Like
pride, it can lead to not just some, but all evil.[2]
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.[31] It may be dened as absence of interest or habitual
disinclination to exertion.[32]
In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas dened sloth as "sorrow about
spiritual good".[2]
The scope of sloth is wide.[31] Spiritually, acedia rst referred to an aiction
attending religious persons, especially monks, wherein they became indierent to
their duties and obligations to God. Mentally, acedia, has a number of distinctive
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components of which the most important is

aectlessness, 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
indierence to work; it nds expression in laziness,
idleness, and indolence.[31]
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.[5]
Sloth
Parable of the Wheat and
the Tares by Abraham
Bloemaert, Walters Art
Museum
Sloth has also been dened as a failure to do things that one should do. By this
denition, evil exists when "good" people fail to act.
Edmund Burke (17291797) wrote in Present Discontents (II. 78) "No man, who is
not inamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can atter 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 sacrice 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. [5]
Emotionally and cognitively, the evil of acedia nds 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 rst 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
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establishment of good are too grievous and too diicult to suer. Acedia in
Chaucer's view is thus the enemy of every source and motive for work. [33]
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.[33]
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 insuiciency of love. Some scholars have said that the ultimate
form of acedia was despair which leads to suicide.
Wrath
Wrath (Latin, ira) can be dened as uncontrolled feelings
of anger, rage, and even hatred, often revealing itself in the
wish to seek vengeance.[34] Wrath, in its purest form,
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 dierent ways, including
impatience, hateful misanthropy, revenge, and
self-destructive behavior, such as drug abuse or suicide.
"People who y into a rage always make a bad
landing."
Wrath, by Jacques
de l'Ange
Will Rogers
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the neutral act of anger
becomes the sin of wrath when it's directed against an innocent person, when it's
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 suer 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
oended, 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 inuence the situation or cope with it.[35]
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Dante described vengeance as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite".[34]

In accordance with Henry Edward, angry people are "slaves to themselves". [5]
Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selshness or self-interest,
although one can of course be wrathful for selsh reasons, such as jealousy
(closely related to the sin of envy).
Envy
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,[36] and severs a man
from his neighbor.[5]
Malicious envy is similar to jealousy in that they both feel
discontent towards someone's traits, status, abilities, or
rewards. A dierence is that the envious also desire the
entity and covet it. Envy can be directly related to the Ten
Commandments, specically, "Neither shall you covet...
anything that belongs to your neighbour." (a statement that
Envy
may also be related to greed). Dante dened envy as "a
Cain killing Abel,
desire to deprive other men of theirs". In Dante's Purgatory,
painting by
the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn
Bartolomeo
shut with wire because they have gained sinful pleasure
Manfredi, c. 1600
from seeing others brought low. According to St. Thomas
Aquinas, the struggle aroused by envy has three
stages:during the rst 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 term is hatred, because "sorrow causes
hatred" .[37]
Envy is said to be the motivation behind Cain murdering his brother, Abel, as Cain
envied Abel because God favored Abel's sacrice over Cain's.
Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of
unhappiness,[38] bringing sorrow to committers of envy whilst giving them the
urge to inict 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,".[36]
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Pride
The negative version of 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 Goddignity and holiness. It is also
thought to be the source of the other capital
sins. Also known as hubris (from ancient Greek
),or futility, it is identied as dangerously
corrupt selshness, the putting of one's own
desires, urges, wants, and whims before the
welfare of people.
Building the Tower of Babel

was, for Dante, an example of
pride. Painting by Pieter
Brueghel the Elder
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 eabites 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." [39] Pride is
understood to sever the soul from God, as well as His life-and-grace-giving
Presence.[5]
One can be prideful for dierent 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."[40] 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 rst sin
that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan's whole building, and is
the most diicultly 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
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under the disguise of humility."[41]

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 [1]
(http://www.britannica.com/topic/hubris)). Aristotle dened 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 gratication. [42][43][44] 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-condent in their own abilities,
increasingly reluctant to listen to the advice of others and progressively more
impulsive in their actions.[45]
Dante's denition 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
uctuating or variable self-esteem. Excessive feelings of pride have a tendency to
create conict 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."[40]
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 re, 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, stie 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
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conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my

humility."[46] Joseph Addison states that "There is no passion that steals into the
heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride." [47]
While pride is generally thought to be committed by individuals, it can be
committed by groups. Discrimination and prejudice are often the result of group
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.[45] In other words, the modern denition 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 rst
volume, Hubris,[48] describes Hitler's early life and rise to political power. The
second, Nemesis,[49] 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
oence; do nothing in a t 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 oodgates to everything that is evil. For
this the Lord has inicted 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
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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 tting 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
diicult for you. Of greater worth is the man who works and lives in
abundance than the one who shows o 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 rst fully informed, consider
the case rst 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,10:631 and 11:110
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.
Perhaps the best-known example is the story of Lucifer, whose pride lled him
with so much evil that he forced a third of the other angels to worship him,
causing his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. In
Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents are burdened with stone slabs on their
necks to keep their heads bowed.
Historical sins
Acedia
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Acedia (Latin, acedia "without care"[31]) (from

Greek ) 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.
Acedia mosaic, Basilica of

Notre-Dame de Fourvire
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
rened this denition 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 insuiciency of love. Some scholars have said
that the ultimate form of acedia was despair which leads to suicide.
Acedia is currently dened in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as spiritual
sloth, which would be believing that spiritual tasks to be too diicult.
Vainglory
Vainglory (Latin, vanagloria) is unjustied
boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of
pride, so he folded vainglory into pride for his
listing of sins.[19] It is the progenitor of envy.[36]
The Latin term gloria roughly means boasting,
although its English cognate glory has come to
have an exclusively positive meaning; historically,
vain roughly meant futile, but by the 14th century
had come to have the strong narcissistic
undertones, that it retains today.[50] 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).
Detail of Pride from The

Seven Deadly Sins and the
Four Last Things by
Hieronymous Bosch, c. 1500
Catholic seven virtues

The Catholic Church also recognizes seven virtues, which correspond inversely to
each of the seven deadly sins.
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Vice
Latin
Luxuria
Lust
Gluttony Gula
Virtue
Latin
Chastity
Castitas
Temperance
Temperantia
Greed
Avaritia
Charity (or, sometimes,

Generosity)
Caritas
(Liberalitas)
Sloth
Tristitia or
Acedia
Diligence
Industria
Wrath
Ira
Patience
Patientia
Envy
Invidia
Kindness
Humanitas
Pride
Superbia
Humility
Humilitas
This
virtue is generally considered to be the greatest and the most important of
all.
Confession Patterns
Confession is the act of admitting the commission of a sin to a religious oicial,
who in turn will advise the person on what he or she should do afterwards. In the
Catholic Church, the priest in persona Christi says the words of absolution,
forgiving the penitent.
According to a 2009 study by a Jesuit scholar, the most common deadly sin
confessed by men is supposedly lust, and for women, pride.[51] It was unclear
whether these dierences were due to the actual number of transgressions
committed by each gender, or whether diering views on what "counts" or should
be confessed caused the observed pattern.[52]
In art
Dante's Purgatorio
The second book, like the rst, 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. 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 for 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
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Purgatory have the top listed sins, while the lowest levels have the more serious
sins of wrath, envy, and pride.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
luxuria / Lust [53][54][55]

gula / Gluttony
avaritia / Greed
acedia / Sloth
ira / Wrath
invidia / Envy
superbia / Pride
Georey Chaucer's "The Parson's Tale"

The last tale of the 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 nd forgiveness for one's sins.
Peter Brueghel the Elder's Prints of the Seven Deadly Sins

The Dutch artist 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
gure are images that show the distortions, degenerations, and destructions
caused by the sin.[56] Many of these images come from contemporary Dutch
aphorisms.[57]
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene

Spenser's work, 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.
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins

This work satirized capitalism and its painful abuses as its central character, the
victim of a split personality, travels to seven dierent 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
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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. [58]
Cultural references
In the 1995 movie Se7en two detectives, a rookie (Brad Pitt) and a veteran
(Morgan Freeman), hunt a serial killer who ironically uses the seven deadly sins
as his modus operandi.
In The Simpsons' Halloween special, "Treehouse of Horror XVIII" in the "Heck
House" part, Ned Flanders tries to simulate what could happen to them for their
sins through the use of crude role-playing by Rod and Todd Flanders, but they
sco at his attempts. Ned then turns to God to give him the power to scare them
into loving God and subsequently transforms into the Devil (reprising his role
from "Treehouse of Horror IV"), sending the kids to Hell. There he brings up an
enormous crystal ball revealing Springeld to be full of the Seven Deadly Sins,
and shows them simulations of how they may suer.
In the manga Fullmetal Alchemist, the seven deadly sins are personied as seven
antagonists called Homunculi.
In the Supernatural episode "The Magnicent Seven", the seven deadly sins are
personied as seven demons.
In the manga The Seven Deadly Sins, the sins are personied as the main cast.
In the web series "Ava's Demon" the demons that are with the main characters
are the seven deadly sins.
In the web novel and anime of Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World-, each sin
is represented by a Sin Archbishop of the Witch's Cult, an organisation which
worships The Witch of Envy (Jealous Witch), Satella.
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".[59]
See also
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Arishadvargas in
Hinduism
Cardinal virtues
Enneagram of
Personality
Five poisons in
Buddhism
Five Thieves in
Sikhism
Knightly Virtues
Nafs and Tazkiah in
Islam
Private Vices,
Publick Benets
Seven Social Sins

written by Mohandas
Gandhi
Susm in Islam
The Seven Sins of
Memory
Theological virtues
Tree of virtues
References
1. Tucker, Shawn (2015). The Virtues and Vices in the Arts: A Sourcebook . Cascade.
ISBN 1625647182.
2. Aquinas, Thomas (2013-08-20). Summa Theologica (All Complete & Unabridged 3
Parts + Supplement & Appendix + interactive links and annotations) . e-artnow.
ISBN 9788074842924.
3. Evagrius (2006). Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus translated by Robert
E. Sinkewicz. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199297088.
4. Cassian, John (2000). The Institutes. Newman Press of the Paulist Press.
ISBN 0809105225.
5. Manning, Henry Edward. Sin and Its consequences.
6. [bible verse Proverbs 6:1619]
7. "King James Version (Cambridge edition)". King James Version Online. Retrieved
2016-02-14.
8. "The Seven Deadly Sins Listed in the Bible". alltencommandments.com. Retrieved
2015-09-27.
9. Galatians (http://tools.wmabs.org/bibleversender2/?book=Galatians&verse=&
src=5:1921)
10. "Mortal and Venial Sin Is it Biblical?". Retrieved 2015-09-27.
11. King James Bible, Public Domain
12. Tilby, Angela (2013-04-23). The Seven Deadly Sins: Their origin in the spiritual
teaching of Evagrius the Hermit. SPCK. ISBN 9780281062997.
13. Evagrio Pontico, Gli Otto Spiriti Malvagi, trans., Felice Comello, Pratiche Editrice,
Parma, 1990, p.11-12.
14. Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2006-06-22. ISBN 9780199297085.
15. In the translation (https://archive.org/stream/Philokalia-TheCompleteText/PhilokaliaComplete-Text_djvu.txt) of the Philokalia by Palmer, Ware, and Sherrard.
16. Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/scha
/npnf211.iv.iii.html)
17. Cassian, St John (2000-01-03). The Institutes (First ed.). New York: Newman Press
of the Paulist Press. ISBN 9780809105229.
18. Refoule, F. (1967) "Evagrius Ponticus," In New Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. 5, pp.
644f, Sta of Catholic University of America, Eds., New York, NY, USA:
McGraw-Hill.
19. DelCogliano, Mark (2014-11-18). Gregory the Great: Moral Reections on the Book
of Job, Volume 1. Cistercian Publications. ISBN 9780879071493.
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20. Tucker, Shawn R. (2015-02-24). The Virtues and Vices in the Arts: A Sourcebook .
Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers.
21. "SUMMA THEOLOGICA: The cause of sin, in respect of one sin being the cause of
another (Prima Secundae Partis, Q. 84)". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved
2015-12-04.
22. Dorothy L. Sayers, Purgatory, Introduction, pp. 6567 (Penguin, 1955).
23. "Denition of LUST". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
24. Blackburn, Simon. Lust:The Seven Deadly SIns. ISBN 0-19-516200-5.
25. Dante, Hell' (1975) p. 101; Dante, Purgatory (1971) p. 67 and p. 202
26. Pyle, Eric (2014-12-31). William Blake's Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy: A
Study of the Engravings, Pencil Sketches and Watercolors . McFarland.
ISBN 9781476617022.
27. Aquinas, St Thomas (2013-01-01). Summa Theologica, Volume 4 (Part III, First
Section). Cosimo, Inc. ISBN 9781602065604.
28. Okholm, Dennis. "Rx for Gluttony" (http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2000/september4
/3.62.html). Christianity Today, Vol. 44, No. 10, September 11, 2000, p.62
29. "Gluttony". Catholic Encyclopedia.
30. "The Free Dictionary". The Free Dictionary. April 1, 1987. Retrieved July 24, 2010.
31. Lyman, Stanford. The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil. p.5.
ISBN 0-930390-81-4.
32. "the denition of sloth". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2016-05-03.
33. Lyman, Stanford. The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil. pp.67.
34. Landau, Ronnie. The Seven deadly Sins: A companion. ISBN 978-1-4457-3227-5.
35. International Handbook of Anger. p. 290
36. Aquinas, St Thomas (2013-01-01). Summa Theologica, Volume 3 (Part II, Second
Section). Cosimo, Inc. ISBN 9781602065581.
37. "Summa Theologica: Treatise on The Theological Virtues (QQ[1] 46): Question. 36
Of Envy (four articles)". Sacred-texts.com. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
38. Russell, Bertrand (1930). The Conquest of Happiness. New York: H. Liverwright.
39. Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, ISBN 978-0-06-065292-0
40. Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers . 1895. p.485.
41. Claghorn, George. To Deborah Hatheway, Letters and Personal Writings (Works of
Jonathan Edwards Online Vol. 16).
42. Aristotle. Rhetoric. p.1378b.
43. Cohen, David (1995). Law, Violence, and Community in Classical Athens . Cambridge
University Press. p.145. ISBN 0521388376. Retrieved March 6, 2016.
44. Ludwig, Paul W. (2002). Eros and Polis: Desire and Community in Greek Political
Theory. Cambridge University Press. p.178. ISBN 1139434179. Retrieved March 6,
2016.
45. "The 1920 Farrow's Bank Failure: A Case of Managerial Hubris". Durham University.
Retrieved October 1, 2014.
46. Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography.
47. Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers . 1895. p.484.
48. Kershaw, Ian (1998). Hitler 18891936: Hubris. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company. ISBN 978-0-393-04671-7. OCLC 50149322.
49. Kershaw, Ian (2000). Hitler 19361945: Nemesis. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company. ISBN 978-0-393-04994-7. OCLC 45234118.
50. Oxford English dictionary
51. "Two sexes 'sin in dierent ways' ". BBC News. February 18, 2009. Retrieved
July 24, 2010.
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52. Morning Edition (February 20, 2009). "True Confessions: Men And Women Sin
Dierently". Npr.org. Retrieved July 24, 2010.
53. Godsall-Myers, Jean E. (2003). Speaking in the medieval world. Brill. p.27.
ISBN 90-04-12955-3.
54. Katherine Ludwig, Jansen (2001). The making of the Magdalen: preaching and
popular devotion in the later Middle Ages. Princeton University Press. p.168.
ISBN 0-691-08987-6.
55. Vossler, Karl; Spingarn, Joel Elias (1929). Medival Culture: The religious,
philosophic, and ethico-political background of the "Divine Comedy" . University of
Michigan: Constable & company. p.246.
56. Orenstein, Nadine M., ed. (2001-09-01). Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Prints and
Drawings. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 9780300090147.
57. Klein, H. Arthur (1963-01-01). Graphic Work of Peter Bruegel, the Elder:
Reproducing 64 Engravings and a Woodcut After Designs By Peter Bruegel the
Elder. (1st Edition / 1st Printing ed.). Dover Publications.
58. "Paul Cadmus | The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride | The Metropolitan Museum of Art".
www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2015-12-04.
59. F. Mount, Full Circle (2010) p. 302
Further reading
Tucker, Shawn. The Virtues and Vices in the Arts: A Sourcebook, (Eugene,
OR: Cascade Press, 2015)
Schumacher, Meinolf (2005): "Catalogues of Demons as Catalogues of Vices
in Medieval German Literature: 'Des Teufels Netz' and the Alexander
Romance by Ulrich von Etzenbach." In In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and
Culture in the Middle Ages. Edited by Richard Newhauser, pp.277290.
Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
The Divine Comedy ("Inferno", "Purgatorio", and "Paradiso"), by Dante
Alighieri
Summa Theologica, by Thomas Aquinas
The Concept of Sin, by Josef Pieper
The Traveller's Guide to Hell, by Michael Pauls & Dana Facaros
Sacred Origins of Profound Things, by Charles Panati
The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser
The Seven Deadly Sins Series (http://www.oup.com/us/collections/7_sins
/?view=usa), Oxford University Press (7 vols.)
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven
Deadly Sins and Their Remedies, (Grand Rapids: BrazosPress, 2009)
Solomon Schimmel, The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian, and Classical
Reections on Human Psychology, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)
"Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe
External links
Catholic Catechism on Sin (http://usccb.org/catechism
/text/pt3sect1chpt1art8.shtml)
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Medieval mural depictions

Wikimedia Commons
(http://www.paintedchurch.org/deadlysi.htm)
has media related to
in parish churches of England (online catalog,
The Seven Deadly
Anne Marshall, Open University)
Sins.
Stranger, An Allegorical Tale of the Seven
Deadly Sins (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/397532), ISBN
9781311073846
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