Cardinal sin redirects here. For the former Archbishop of Manila, see Jaime Cardinal Sin; for the painting by Hieronymus Bosch see The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things; for the video game, see 7 Sins.

The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, suggest a classification of vices and were enumerated in their present form by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. They oppose the Seven Holy Virtues.

History

The seven deadly sins were first introduced by St. Gregory the Great (d. 604) in Moralia in Job:

(Moralia in Job, XXXI cap. xlv).

The sin ‘Tristia’ was later replaced by ‘Accidia’, or Sloth (Wenzel (1967), 38). This sin was taken from earlier catalogues of vice, in particular, the eight evil thoughts listed by Greek monastic theologian Evagrius of Pontus(346-99), and the eight principal vices proposed by the mid fourth-century writer St. John Cassian (Wenzel (1967), 14-21). Some of the iconography of the Sins was derived from the descriptions of the Battles between the Virtues and Vices in the Psychomachia by the fourth-century poet Prudentius.

The 8 thoughts of evil as described by Evagrius are: gluttony, fornication, love of money, discontent, anger, despondency, vainglory, and pride. Evagrius saw the escalating severity as representing increasing fixation with the self, with pride as the most egregious of the sins.

St. John Cassian in his "Conferences" describes the eight principal vices as gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, sadness, acedia (anxiety, or weariness of the heart), vainglory, and pride. He describes that excesses of each will lead to the next severe vice. For example, an excess of gluttony will lead to fornication, and an excess of fornication will lead to avarice and so on.

It was not until the late 6th century that St. Gregory the Great (then Pope Gregory I) described the seven sins in his Moralia in Job. He reduces the list to seven items. His ranking of the Sins' seriousness was based on the degree from which they offended against love. It was, from least serious to most: lust, gluttony, sadness, avarice, anger, envy and pride (abbreviated into the mnemonic palegas). Sadness would later be replaced by acedia, or sloth, in putting off what God asks you to do and not doing it at all.

"Capital" here means that these sins stand at the head (Latin caput) of the other sins which proceed from them, e.g. avarice gives rise to theft and lust gives rise to adultery. Later theologians, most notably Thomas Aquinas, would contradict the notion that the seriousness of the sins would be ranked.

The capital sins are not to be confused with mortal sins.

The Sins

Ranked in ascending order of severity as per Dante's Divine Comedy (in the Purgatorio), the seven deadly sins are:

• Lust (Latin, luxuria) (fornication, perversion) —
  Obsessive, unlawful, or unnatural sexual desire, such as desiring sex with a person outside marriage or engaging in unnatural sexual appetites, or depraved thought and unwholesome morality. (Dante's criterion was "excessive love of others," thereby detracting from the love due to God). Associated with the cow and the color blue.

• Gluttony (Latin, gula) (waste, overindulgence) —
  Thoughtlessness and waste of everything, especially food, drink, or intoxicants. Marked by overindulgence, misplaced sensuality and depriving of others ("excessive love of pleasure" was Dante's rendering). Associated with pigs and the color orange.

• Greed (Latin, avaritia) (covetousness, avarice) —
  A strong desire to gain more than
  
  
  
  one has need or use for, in money or power. Associated with the frog and the color yellow.

• Sloth (Latin, acedia) (laziness, indifference) —
  Laziness; idleness and wastefulness of time allotted. Laziness is condemned because others must work harder to make up and you are abandoning the will of God. It, like gluttony, is a sin of waste, for it wastes time.
  Sloth is a state of equilibrium: one does not produce much, but one does not need much either (in Dante's theology, sloth is the "failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul"; specific examples include laziness, cowardice, lack of imagination, complacency and irresponsibility). Associated with goats and the color light blue.

• Wrath (Latin, ira) (anger, hatred) —
  Inappropriate (unrighteous) feelings of hatred, revenge, or even denial, as well as punitive desires outside of justice (Dante's description was "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite")]. Associated with the bear and the color red.

• Envy (Latin, invidia) (jealousy, malice) —
  Resentment of material or spiritual possessions of others. (Dante: "Love of one's own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs"). Associated with the dog and the color green.

• Pride (Latin, superbia) (vanity, narcissism) —
  A desire to be important or attractive to others or excessive love of self (holding self out of proper position toward God or fellow man; Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor"). In Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, superbia is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the famed Doctor of Paris, Cenodoxus. Associated with the horse and the color violet.

Theocracy

Greed, uncontrolled desire, is the keystone of the seven deadly sins. The other deadly sins are tributaries of wanton desire:

• Lust: Desire of the Flesh
• Gluttony: Desire of Excess
• Envy: Desire of Possessions
• Sloth: Desire of Avoidance
• Pride: Desire of Greatness
• Wrath: Desire of Revenge

Several of these sins interlink and various attempts at causal hierarchy have been made. For example, pride (love of self out of proportion) is implied in gluttony (the over-consumption or waste of food), as well as sloth, envy and most of the others. Each sin is a particular way of failing to love God with all one's resources and to love fellows as much as self. The Scholastic theologians developed schema of attribute and substance of will to explain these sins.

Saligia

As previously mentioned, the Latin words for the sins are: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira and accidia. The first letters of these words form the medieval Latin word saligia, whence the verb saligiare (to commit a deadly sin) is taken.

Various mnemonic devices exist for remembering the sins in English, e.g. PEG'S LAW (pride, envy, gluttony, sloth, lust, avarice, wrath).

In the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, consisting of 2,865 numbered sections and first published in 1992 by order of Pope John Paul II, the seven deadly sins are dealt with in one paragraph. The principal codification of moral transgression for Christians continues to be the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, which are a positive statement of morality and part of the Sermon on the Mount.

Catholic Virtues

The Catholic church recognises the seven virtues as opposites to the seven sins.

The Punishments

• Lust: Smothered in brimstone and fire
• Gluttony: Force-fed rats, toads and snakes
• Greed: Boiled in oil
• Sloth: Thrown into a snake pit
• Wrath: Dismembered alive
• Envy: Put in freezing water
• Pride: Broken on the wheel

Similar punishments are imagined in Dante's Inferno

Associations with demons

In 1589, Peter Binsfeld paired each of the deadly sins with a demon, who tempted people by means of the associated sin. According to Binsfeld's classification of demons, the pairings are as follows:

• Lucifer: Pride
• Mammon: Greed
• Asmodeus: Lust
• Leviathan: Envy
• Beelzebub: Gluttony
  
  
  
  (lord of the flies)
• Satan: Wrath
• Belphegor: Sloth

The Seven Deadly Sins in Art

• Hieronymus Bosch - The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things

Popular Culture: Seven Deadly Sins

• "The Seven Deadly Sins" (Die sieben Todsünden) is the name of a 1933 Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht / George Balanchine collaboration. It was originally sung by Lotte Lenya and danced by Tilly Losch.
• In the 1967 version of the feature film Bedazzled, Stanley Moon meets incarnations of the seven deadly sins.
• The Seven Deadly Sins (formerly The Seven Deadly Enemies of Man) are depicted in Fawcett Comics/DC Comics stories as magic-based supervillians, enemies of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family.
• In the graphic novel JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice, the seven deadly sins were released from their inprisonment in the Rock of Eternity and possessed seven different JLA and JSA members. Mister Terrific was possessed by Pride, Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) by Envy, Plastic Man by Greed, Batman by Wrath/Anger, Doctor Fate by Sloth, Power Girl by Lust and Captain Marvel by Gluttony.
• Modern artist Paul Cadmus painted a series of graphically disturbing, anthropomorphic depictions of the seven deadly sins, in the style of comic books. After his death, this series was willed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• The album Heaven and Hell by Joe Jackson is a modern musical interpretation of the seven deadly sins.
• "Seven Deadly Sins" is a 1990 song by the rock and roll supergroup, Traveling Wilburys.
• The feature film Se7en is about a serial killer obsessed with the seven deadly sins, reconstructing his crimes in order to represent each on of them.
• A series of seven skeleton monsters in the online role-playing game, Final Fantasy XI, are named after the seven deadly sins.
• The Super Nintendo game, ActRaiser 2, features seven demon bosses representing the seven deadly sins. They are represented by: a giant snail (sloth), a decaying, worried zombie head (envy), an ant/scorpian chimera (gluttony), a muscular man on fire resembling a Japanese demon (wrath), a jewel and gold-wearing dragon (greed), a goat-man creature with a human trapped in its belly (lust, but is renamed as deception in the US version) and a god-like machine (pride).
• In the fourth season of the American contest television series America's Next Top Model the final seven contestants portray the seven deadly sins in a photo shoot. Brittany was Sloth, Christina was Lust, Kahlen was Wrath, Keenyah was Gluttony, Michelle was Pride, Naima was Envy, and Tatiana was Greed.
• In an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, Heffer gets sent to HECK (they censored it for the show) after swallowing a whole fried chicken, and the Dark Lord, Peaches (a possible parody of Satan or a censored version of it), explains that he was sent there due to gluttony. Heffer keeps mispronouncing gluttony as "glue-ten-ney" (i.e. "What's a glue-ton?")
• The Bangsian webcomic Jack features the seven deadly sins as characters. Having committed the sins to such extremes, they became the embodiment of the respective sins in Hell.
• The video game Devil May Cry 3 features demonic entities that represent the seven deadly sins early in the game. These grunts are the jailkeepers of their respective sins. Each one of the demons is formed from sand, except for Envy, which is formed from a thick green liquid. Furthermore, each of the seven "devil" bosses in the game also represents one specific sin.
• The Digimon anime series had a group of Mega (or Ultimate in Japan) Virus Digimon called The Seven Great Demon Lords. It consists of Lucemon Falldown Mode (Pride), the leader, Barbamon (Greed), Lilithmon (Lust), Leviamon (Envy), Beelzemon (Gluttony), Daemon (Wrath) and Belphemon (Sloth). The sins are dark versions of the Crests. The exception is Lucemon Falldown Mode because once Lucemon Mode Changes, he skips his Champion (or Adult in Japan) form. When he reaches his Ultimate (Mega) form, Lucemon Satan Mode, each of the crests show up on his wings.
• The anime/manga/game series Fullmetal Alchemist has a group of creatures called Homunculi which are named after the seven deadly sins. The characters are named Lust, Gluttony, Envy, Greed, Sloth, Pride, and Wrath. Dante is also referenced.
• A song by Flogging Molly about seven drunken pirates is titled "Seven Deadly Sins."
• The Iron Maiden album "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" starts and ends with a melodic verse on the 7 deadly sins.
• In the book A Northern Light, Mattie thinks there is another deadly sin (the eighth): Hope
• In the seven-book series for teens entitled Seven Deadly Sins by Robin Wasserman, each book focuses on a person and his/her relationship to one sin.
• In the movie Serenity, the main antagonist makes references to the seven deadly sins.
• Each of the days in "The Keys to the Kingdom" series by Garth Nix represents one of the sins.
• The rock group Simple Minds has a song titled "7 Deadly Sins" on its Good News From the Next World album.
• The LucasArts videogame Afterlife is a SimCity-like game played with Heaven and Hell. Areas are zoned according to the Seven Sins (in Hell) and the Seven Virtues (in Heaven).
• The four bad children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory represent four of the seven deadly sins: Augustus Gloop represents gluttony; Violet Beauregarde, (possibly) pride; Veruca Salt, greed; and Mike Teavee, sloth/wrath.
• Mest has recently released a DVD titled, 7 Deadly Sins.
• Subtle, underlying theme of writer/director Quentin Tarantino's film "Pulp Fiction" contained the 7 deadly sins.
• Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's character Aziraphale states in his 2006 New Year's Resolutions that he will "redouble efforts to have the utterance of the phrase 'core values' classified as a deadly sin."
• A pretext for the seven comic sketches in the motion picture The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971).
• In the 1960s TV situation comedy "Gilligan's Island", the characters are personifications of the seven deadly sins: Ginger is Lust, Mary Ann is Envy, The Professor is Pride, Mr. Howell is Greed, Mrs. Howell is Sloth, the Skipper is Anger and Gluttony.
• Magnum (ice cream) produced a limited seires of ice-cream called the 7 deadly sins.
• Seven Deadly Sins series by blackeri is a popular digital art series on deviantART.
• Hell is a New Zealand-based pizza chain that has pizzas named after the seven deadly sins.
• Lawrence Sanders (died Feb. 1998) author of the book The Anderson Tapes (1969), featuring Edward X. "Iron Balls" Delaney, retired chief of detectives in New York, New York, who was also featured in four other novels by Sanders: The First Deadly Sin (1973), The Second Deadly Sin (1977), The Third Deadly Sin (1981), and The Fourth Deadly Sin (1985).
• is a set of photos on Flickr, re-enacted by Gummy bears.
• The Seven Deadly Sins is a book series released by Oxford University Press. The series is a collaboration involving seven distinguished writers: Wendy Wasserstein, Simon Blackburn, Robert Thurman, Francine Prose, Michael Dyson, Joseph Epstein, and Phyllis Tickle.
• In an episode of Charmed, 'Sin Franciso', a demon, Lukas, infects the Charmed Ones with a sin. Prue is infected with Pride, Piper with Gluttony, Phoebe with Lust, and Leo with Sloth. A business man is infected with Greed, and a police officer with Anger, and a pastor with Envy.
• A fan site called The Seven Deadly Sims has produced a series of downloadable items that can be used in Electronic Art's The Sims. The items are categorized by the seven deadly sins based on color, function, and style.

Further Reading

• Summa Theologiae: Saint Thomas Aquinas
• Inferno: Dante Alighieri
• Purgatorio: Dante Alighieri
• The Concept of Sin: Josef Pieper
• The Traveller's Guide to Hell: Michael Pauls& Dana Facaros
• Sacred Origins of Profound Things: Charles Panati

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