Historical and modern definitions of the deadly sins
Lust
Lust or
lechery (carnal "
luxuria") is usually thought of as excessive thoughts or desires of a
sexual nature. Aristotle's criterion was
excessive love of others, which therefore rendered love and devotion to God as secondary
[citation needed]. In Dante's
Purgatorio, the penitent walks within flames to purge himself of lustful/sexual 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.
Main article:
Extravagance (Latin,
luxuria) is
unrestrained excess. Extravagant behaviour includes the frequent purchase of
luxury goods and forms of
debauchery.
In the
Romance languages, the
cognates of
luxuria (the Latin name of the sin)
evolved to have an exclusively sexual meaning; the
Old French cognate was
adopted into English as
luxury, but this lost its sexual meaning by the 14th century.
[9]
Gluttony
Derived from the Latin
gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow,
gluttony (Latin,
gula) is the over-indulgence and
over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. In the Christian religions, it is considered a sin because of the excessive desire for food or its withholding from the needy.
[10]
Depending on the culture, it can be seen as either a vice or a sign of status. Where food is relatively scarce, being able to eat well might be something to take pride in. But in an area where food is routinely plentiful, it may be considered a sign of self-control to resist the temptation to over-indulge.
Medieval church leaders (e.g.,
Thomas Aquinas) took a more expansive view of gluttony,
[10] arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods.
[11] Aquinas went so far as to prepare a list of six ways to commit gluttony, including:
- Praepropere - eating too soon.
- Laute - eating too expensively.
- Nimis - eating too much.
- Ardenter - eating too eagerly (burningly).
- Studiose - eating too daintily (keenly).
- Forente - eating wildly (boringly).
Greed
Main article: Greed (sin)
Greed (Latin,
avaritia), also known as
avarice or
covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. However, greed (as seen by the church) is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of
wealth,
status, and power. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that greed was "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. "Avarice" is more of a blanket term that can describe many other examples of greedy behavior. These include disloyalty, deliberate
betrayal, or
treason,
[citation needed] especially for personal gain, for example through
bribery .
Scavenging[citation needed] and
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 profits from soliciting goods within the actual confines of a church.
As defined outside of Christian writings, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs or deserves, especially with respect to
material wealth.
[12]
Sloth
Over time, the "acedia" in Pope Gregory's order has come to be closer in meaning to
sloth (Latin,
Socordia). The focus came to be on the consequences of acedia rather than the cause, and so, by the 17th century, the exact
deadly sin referred to was believed to be the failure to utilize one's talents and gifts.
[citation needed] Even in Dante's time there were signs of this change; in his
Purgatorio he had portrayed the penance for acedia as running continuously at top speed.
The modern view goes further, regarding laziness and indifference as the
sin at the heart of the matter. Since this contrasts with a more willful failure to, for example, love God and his works, sloth is often seen as being considerably less serious than the other sins, more a sin of omission than of commission.
Acedia
Acedia (Latin,
acedia) (from Greek ακηδία) is the neglect to take care of something that one should do. It is translated to
apathetic listlessness; depression without joy. It is similar to
melancholy, although
acedia describes the behaviour, while
melancholy suggests the emotion producing it. In early Christian thought, the lack of joy was regarded as a wilful refusal to enjoy the goodness of God and the world God created; by contrast, apathy was considered a refusal to help others in time of need.
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.
Despair
Despair (Latin,
Tristitia) In this context, Despair is the precipitating cause of suicide. Feelings of hopelessness, despondency, pessimism and impending doom, were not the same as the condition,
melancholy. "If the man be bereft, give him solace. If he be in physical torment, give him medicine. If he be to the desire of death, give him hope. Reason, encouragement, and faith bring hope, therefore, use them liberally." (
Francis of Assisi). Since sadness often results in acedia, Pope Gregory's revision of the list subsumed
Despair into
Acedia.
Wrath
Wrath (Latin,
ira), also known as
anger or "rage", may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. Anger, in its purest form, presents with self-destructiveness, violence, and hate that may provoke
feuds that can go on for centuries. Anger may persist long after the person who did another a grievous wrong is dead. Feelings of anger can manifest in different ways, including
impatience,
revenge, and
vigilantism.
Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest (although one can of course be wrathful for selfish reasons, such as jealousy, closely related to the sin of envy). Dante described vengeance as "love of
justice perverted to
revenge and
spite". In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally rather than externally. Thus
suicide was deemed as the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of wrath directed inwardly, a final rejection of God's gifts.
Envy
Like greed,
Envy (Latin,
invidia) may be characterized by an insatiable desire; they differ, however, for two main reasons:
- First, greed is largely associated with material goods, whereas envy may apply more generally.
- Second, those who commit the sin of envy resent that another person has something they perceive themselves as lacking, and wish the other person to be deprived of it.
Dante defined this as "a desire to deprive other men of theirs." Envy can be directly related to the
Ten Commandments, specifically "Neither shall you desire... anything that belongs to your neighbour". In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. Aquinas described envy as "sorrow for another's good".
[13]
Pride
In almost every list
Pride (Latin,
superbia), or
hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour." In 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 perhaps the best-known example, the story of
Lucifer, pride (his desire to compete with God) was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into
Satan. In Dante's
Divine Comedy, the penitents were forced to walk with stone slabs bearing down on their backs to induce feelings of humility.
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.
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, of irrelevant accuracy, that it retains today.
[14] 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).
