Seven deadly sins: Encyclopedia II - Seven deadly sins - History

Seven deadly sins - History

The seven deadly sins were first introduced by St. Gregory the Great in Moralia in Job. The sins were derived from the eight evil thoughts as described by Greek monastic theologian Evagrius of Pontus, and the eight principal vices as described by St. John Cassian.

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, or 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki