How Catholics Transformed One Monk's Eight Evil Thoughts into Seven Deadly Sins

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the 4th century, a Christian monk named Evagrius of Pontus identified the so-called "eight evil thoughts": gluttony, lust, greed, anger, laziness, despondency, vanity and pride. This list was not written for everyone. It was only for other monks. Evagrius wanted to show how these thoughts can greatly interfere with their spiritual growth. After these thoughts were repeatedly revised by the church - something was removed, something was added … How did the final list of the seven deadly sins come about and who is it credited with?

Evagrius was a hermit monk during the time of the First Apostolic Eastern Christian Church. In his writings, he wrote about how these eight bad thoughts can hinder spirituality and life in God. Subsequently, these ideas were carried over to the western church by Evagrius' disciple, John Cassian. There the texts were translated from Greek into Latin and introduced into the canon. In the 6th century, Saint Gregory the Great, who would later become Pope Gregory I, revised them in his commentary on the Book of Job. He removed laziness and added envy. “Pride” lost its special place on the list, but the future pontiff called her the ruler of seven other vices. They later became known as the "seven deadly sins."

"They are called 'mortal' or 'lethal' because they kill the soul," says Richard G. Newhauser, professor of English at Arizona State University. The professor has edited books on the seven deadly sins. “Committing one of these mortal sins and refusing to confess without repentance will lead to the death of the soul. And then you will spend eternity in hell. Your soul will be there for eternity."

Fast forward to the 13th century, when theologian Thomas Aquinas revisited the list again in Summa Theologica. On his list, he brought back "laziness" and eliminated "sadness." Like Gregory, Aquinas called "pride" the supreme ruler of the seven sins. Now the canon of the Catholic Church has not changed much in this regard. Only "vanity" has replaced "pride."

The Seven Deadly Sins were a very popular motif in medieval art and literature. It is this that has probably helped them to survive as a concept over the centuries. Now they have firmly entered modern cinema and television. The films Se7en (1995) and Shazam (2019) are about the seven deadly sins. Even in the American sitcom "Gilligan's Island", which aired in 1964-1967, each character, according to the creator of the show, had to personify a separate mortal sin (Gilligan was a "sloth"). The list, which for so long worried and excited the minds of people, is further.

1. Vanity and pride

The usual beginning of pride is contempt for other people. This is a person who despises others, considers them much lower than himself. Everyone is not so rich, or not so smart, or not of such high origin - there can be any reason. This feeling of contempt reaches the point that he becomes the best in his own eyes. The shine of one's own splendor dazzles a person so much that everything and everyone fades and fades next to him.

Kevin Clarke, professor of Scripture and Patristics at Seminary and St. Patrick's University, says that while pride and vanity are often seen as synonymous, this is far from the case. “Vanity is a kind of vice that makes us check our likes on social media,” he says. “Vanity is our need for social recognition, and pride is a sin. This is when I take the glory of God for myself. I pride myself on my good deeds and give God what is due."

2. Selfishness

Greed is a very painful feeling. It is an insatiable desire to have, to save and add. All this is done under the guise of benefit, but often it comes to theft, deception. It is a sinful passion, an unquenchable thirst for possession.

“Gregory the Great wrote that greed is not just a desire for wealth, but also for honors, high positions,” says Newhauser. The subject of greed can be completely unexpected things. One way or another, but greed manifests itself in one way or another in each of the deadly sins.

3. Envy

Like all sinful thoughts, jealousy is a real torment. It is the unbearable sadness of the human heart for the fact that someone is good or happy. Envy does not seek good for itself or for another. She is looking for only one evil, so that her neighbor would be bad. Envy wants to see the rich as poor, the famous as unknown, and the happy as unhappy.

This defect is absent in the list of the monk Evagrius. On the contrary, there is such a sin as despondency. And this is true. After all, discouragement is actually very closely related to such a feeling as envy. Envy gives rise to joy from other people's failures and misfortunes, envy makes a person feel deeply unhappy when someone is happy and successful. Gregory formulated this when he added jealousy to his list of vices, writing that jealousy breeds "exultation over the misfortunes of one's neighbor and grief over his prosperity."

4. Anger

A person in anger looks just awful. He loses all control over himself. In rage and frenzy, he screams, curses everyone and everything, beats himself and, possibly, others. He shakes everything. In moments of anger, a person is most like a demoniac. The poor soul suffers unbearably. Furious anger raises to the surface all the poison that is hidden inside.

Anger seems to everyone to be a perfectly normal reaction to injustice. But this is far from the case. The Bible says: "For the anger of man does not do the righteousness of God." It is not for nothing that they say that you cannot commit any actions on a hot head. The consequences can be irreversible and the most dire. If anger reaches the boiling point that there is a desire to kill or cause serious harm to the offender, this is a mortal sin. Medieval artists have always depicted anger with scenes of military battles. Often these were also scenes of suicide.

5. Lust, fornication

The concept of lust is so broad that it does not include adultery, but even marital sexual relations. The Catholic Church defines lust as "indiscriminate desires or the desire for excessive sexual pleasure." The catechism condemns as sin the passion for endless enjoyment without regard to the basic purposes and aspects of marriage between a man and a woman.

Of all the deadly sins, this one is probably the only one that causes so many speculations and controversies. Although the Catholic Church officially opposes birth control and same-sex marriage, polls show that most Catholics in the United States believe the church should allow both.

6. Gluttony

Gluttony doesn't always mean indiscriminate consumption. Often this is the desire to eat earlier than expected, or to eat to the full, or to consume only goodies. The Christian must be extremely attentive to this.

Early Christian theologians understood gluttony as excessive drinking and the desire to have too much good food in addition to overeating.“If I just need to have the finest, most expensive food, it could be a form of gluttony,” says Clarke.

7. Laziness, indolence

Idleness today has come to mean "laziness." But for early Christian theologians, it meant "not caring about the fulfillment of spiritual responsibilities," says Newhauser. Although Gregory did not include laziness in his list of seven sins, he did mention it when he spoke of the sin of despondency or melancholy. He wrote that melancholy causes "laziness in carrying out orders."

When Thomas Aquinas replaced sorrow with indolence on his list of deadly sins, he maintained a bond between the two. "Laziness is a kind of sadness," he wrote, "due to which a person becomes lethargic in spiritual exercises, because they tire his body."

If you are interested in history, read our article the true story of the most famous biblical sinner or who Mary Magdalene was in real life.