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A
Brief History of Sin
Now
is it bihovely thyng to telle whiche been the sevene deedly
synnes, this is to seyn, chiefaynes of synnes. Alle they renne
in o lees, but in diverse manneres. Now been they cleped chieftaynes,
for as muche as they been chief and spryng of alle othere
synnes.
--Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
People have always been
immoral, shiftless, self-gratifying, good-for-nothing shits. But for
ages, humankind struggled to find a conceptual system to operationalize
their spiritual shortcomings. The challenge was formidable: the system
had to be complex and inclusive enough to implicate a vast range of
disgusting behavior, yet simple and memorable enough to inspire guilt
in an illiterate peasant.
According to Sacred
Origins of Profound Things, by Charles Panati,
Greek monastic theologian Evagrius of Pontus first drew up a
list of eight offenses and wicked human passions:. They were, in order
of increasing seriousness: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger,
acedia, vainglory, and pride. Evagrius saw the escalating severity as
representing increasing fixation with the self, with pride as the most
egregious of the sins. Acedia (from the Greek "akedia," or "not to care")
denoted "spiritual sloth."
In the late 6th century,
Pope Gregory the Great reduced the list to seven items, folding vainglory
into pride, acedia into sadness, and adding envy. His ranking of the
Sins' seriousness was based on the degree from which they offended against
love. It was, from most serious to least: pride, envy, anger, sadness,
avarice, gluttony, and lust. Later theologians, including St. Thomas
Aquinas, would contradict the notion that the seriousness of the sins
could be ranked in this way. The term "covetousness" has historically
been used interchangeably with "avarice" in accounts of the
Deadly Sins. In the seventeenth century, the Church replaced the vague
sin of "sadness" with sloth.
Throughout the Middle
Ages, Church hierarchy emphasized teaching all lay people the Deadly
Sins and Heavenly Virtues. Other
spiritual manuals embellished on this tradition. Gerson presents a list
of Contrary Virtues in his ABC
des simples gens, which was derived from the Psychomatica,
or Battle for the Soul, a fifth-century epic poem by Prudentius. He
believed these virtues would help counteract temptation toward the Deadly
Sins.
According to The Picture
Book of Devils, Demons and Witchcraft, by Ernst and Johanna Lehner,
each of the Sins was associated with a specific punishment in Hell.
I once saw a set of 16th-century engravings by George Pencz that used
animals in their depictions of the Sins. The prints also used women
to symbolize all the Sins, which was probably okay in the sociopolitical
climate of the 16th century but probably wouldn't be encouraged nowadays.
| Sin |
Punishment
in Hell |
Animal |
Color |
| Pride |
broken on the
wheel |
Horse |
Violet |
| Envy |
put in freezing
water |
Dog |
Green |
| Anger |
dismembered
alive |
Bear |
Red |
| Sloth |
thrown in snake
pits |
Goat |
Light Blue |
| Greed |
put in cauldrons
of boiling oil |
Frog |
Yellow |
| Gluttony |
forced to eat
rats, toads, and snakes |
Pig |
Orange |
| Lust |
smothered in
fire and brimstone |
Cow |
Blue |
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