How Have the 7 Deadly Sins Influcned Culture or Art

The Seven Deadly Sins and Their Antidotes

Florence Eccleston

Reblogged from Introducing Medieval Christianity.

The motif of the Seven Deadly Sins was extremely popular in the late medieval period, featuring in everything from literature, hymns, sermons, and manuals to wall paintings, manuscripts, and morality plays. The sins were Superbia, Avaritia, Luxuria, Ira, Gula, Invidia, and Acedia, now generally understood every bit Pride, Forehandedness (or Covetousness), Lust, Wrath (Acrimony), Gluttony, Green-eyed, and Sloth (Laziness). They followed a loose hierarchy. Pride, the most demonic sin from which sprung the residual, came starting time. Information technology was followed by the 'spiritual' vices, envy and wrath. Then came the vices related to the flesh: sloth, and then gluttony, avarice, and lust. All were believed to fatally bear upon the private'southward spiritual health. As Dan Jon Gaytrygge'southward mid-fourteenth century sermon expressed information technology, 'For als the venym of the neddire slaas manes body, swa the venym of syn slaas manes saule' ('for as the venom of the adder slays human'south torso, and then the venom of sin slays man's soul.')

The thought of enumerating sins in this mode originated in the early medieval period, and the motif of the Seven Deadly Sins in particular relies on a listing made past Pope Gregory I in 590. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Gregory's list was being defended, deliberated, and extensively explained. A rationale was evolved to explain why seven (a number of great religious significance) and why those specific sins (a tricky matter to prove), and subsets of vices were added to each sin. After the Quaternary Lateran Council of 1215 advised annual confession and gave the church building greater dominance for the remittance of sins, this definition of sin began to appear more ofttimes in popular literature, sermons, and guides for confessors. The Council stated that the worshippers should 'faithfully confess all their sins at least one time a year to their own (parish) priest and perform to the best of their power the penance imposed', the priest 'advisedly inquiring into the circumstances of the sinner and sin'. The Council added 'let this salutary decree exist published oftentimes in the churches, that no one may discover in the plea of ignorance a shadow of excuse'. Clearly information technology was extremely of import for every member of the laity and clergy to protect both themselves and/ or their parishioners from spiritual death and eternal damnation.

Lay people and clergy akin needed tools for recalling and identifying the sins to exist confessed, and the numerical device of the 7 Deadly Sins proved very popular. The sins were and so oftentimes expounded and depicted in art that it is probable everyone would sympathise them. By confessing their Mortiferous Sins, the perpetrator could achieve complete absolution and a penance to perform equally amende. (More than modest sins, called impropriety sins, could exist forgiven without the sacrament of confession, as long as the sinner had made a sincere resolution to reform their behaviour.) Confessing sins was not just about penalisation: it encouraged regular self-reflection, and the human action of penance and the provocation of shame was believed to bring the soul closer to God and reclaim individuals from a life of sin.

A tree of the Seven Deadly Sins and their fruits (BL Arundel MS. 83, f. 128). For discussion of such images, see this article

The Black Decease in the middle of the fourteenth century seems to take increased the prevalence of the Seven Deadly Sins motif, equally preparing for death and the afterlife became a chief business. Dying without fully confessing one'due south sins was greatly feared, since it would lead direct to hell. The calibration and suddenness of the pandemic, with its estimated 30-60% mortality charge per unit, made this fearfulness a very pressing consequence. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the always-present threat of death and subsequent fear for the fate of one'southward soul became a widespread theme in fine art and literature.

Paintings of the Vii Deadly Sins in churches would warn the worshipper of the danger and help them to gain protection against Purgatory and Hell. A famous instance is institute at Trotton in West Sussex, where the Last Judgement mural on the west (back) wall of the church, dating to the last two decades of the fourteenth century, presents the 7 Deadly Sins leading direct to damnation. Christ is depicted at the highest point, atop a deject, performing judgement from the heavens. Below him to his right are the Seven Mortiferous Sins, personified past a naked human surrounded by scenes of each sin emerging from the mouths of dragons. Above, an angel sends a soul to hell on Christ'due south command. The painting instructs the parishioner on the fundamental behaviours to avert in life to escape eternal damnation in the afterlife.

Trotton Seven Deadly Sins (Medieval Wall Painting in the English Church)

Antidotes to the Seven Deadly Sins

Increasing cultural emphasis on death and the afterlife in the second one-half of the fourteenth century did not just answer to a fear of hell, simply likewise led to a greater interest in codes of morality and virtuous behaviour. The 'remedies' to the Seven Deadly Sins were cited in fine art and literature, and were as well classified into Sevens: the Vii Heavenly Virtues and the Seven Works of Mercy. The Seven Virtues combined the four cardinal virtues (Justice, Temperance, Prudence, and Courage) and the 3 theological virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity), and were thought to protect against the temptation to sin.

The Seven Works of Mercy referred to actions rather than attitudes, simply were also thought to enhance the ability to avoid sin. They are divided into two groups of seven: corporeal ('bodily') works, which deal with concrete and textile needs, and spiritual works, which concern the needs of the soul. The corporeal works are:

• To feed the hungry
• To requite water to the thirsty
• To clothe the naked
• To shelter the homeless
• To visit the ill
• To visit the imprisoned or ransom the captive
• To bury the dead

Unlike the Seven Deadly Sins, this enumeration is based directly on a list in the Bible. The kickoff half-dozen works are listed in Christ'south Parable of the Sheep and the Goats as acts of charity which will atomic number 82 to conservancy. The last was added in the early medieval period to bring the number up to seven, influenced past the emphasis in the Book of Tobit on giving proper burial to the dead. In the Trotton wall-painting, the antithesis to 'sinful' man, surrounded by the Vii Deadly Sins, is 'good' man personified equally a Franciscan friar, surrounded past the corporeal Works of Mercy. These behaviours are therefore sharply classified into expert and bad, moral and immoral. Depictions of the Seven Works of Mercy are also frequently constitute in medieval art, equally in the example below:

The Works of Mercy in a fourteenth-century manuscript (British Library, Yates Thompson MS. 31, f. 110v)

The spiritual Works of Mercy are:

• To instruct the ignorant
• To counsel the doubtful
• To admonish sinners
• To bear patiently with those who wrong united states
• To forgive offences
• To comfort the affected
• To pray for the living and the dead

Neither of these groupings are in direct opposition to the 7 Mortiferous Sins, and treatises looking exclusively at both the Seven Heavenly Virtues and the Sins are rare. In other words, the sins and virtues exercise not mirror each other every bit positive and negative moral positions: for case, the contrary of lust, chastity, is not found among the Seven Virtues, or in any of the actions recommended past the Seven Works of Mercy. Thus although the 7 Deadly Sins is a very common motif in medieval fine art, it was not usually paired with the moralities, and it was even rarer for them to be directly opposed. More frequently they formed two separate codes of morality – what to practise, and what not to do.

However, performing – or not performing – the Seven Works of Mercy was also a question of sinful behaviour, and and then could as well be used for confession. A late fifteenth-century teaching for priests, published by Wynkyn de Worde, lists the numerical devices to work through during confession: 'Synnes exist confession of the sevene dedly synnes, […] and thanne in non fulyllyng the seven werkes of mercy' ('Sins are confession of the 7 Deadly Sins… and so in not performing the 7 Works of Mercy'). This emphasises that sin is defined not only past sinful action merely also neglect of moral duties. Information technology is possible to sin by omission (failing to perform a duty) as well equally by commission (committing an actively sinful human action).

Both the Sins and Works gained popularity in the Middle Ages every bit applied tools to analyse moral behaviour. These lists were aids to the memory and the censor, helping Christians to interpret and reflect on their own actions and providing simple, memorable guidelines on how to behave more than virtuously.

Farther reading

For a survey of the 7 Mortiferous Sins from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages, see Morton W. Bloomfield, Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature (East Lansing, Michigan, 1952).

Richard Newhauser, The Seven Mortiferous Sins: From Communities to Individuals, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions Series, No. 123 (Brill, 2007).

Richard M. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard, eds., Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Civilization: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins (York Medieval Press, 2012).

A great online resources is Miriam Gill, 'The 7 Deadly Sins and Seven Corporal Works of Mercy in English Medieval Wall Painting: Imperfect Parallels' (Academy of Leicester), bachelor at https://www.le.ac.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland/arthistory/seedcorn/imperf.html

A Annotation From Florence:

I began writing for Introducing Medieval Christianity in the second year of my undergraduate degree in History of Art subsequently seeing a call for articles open to anyone at any stage of their bookish career. I wanted to broaden my interests and knowledge of other disciplines, and I thought researching and writing would exist a practiced place to start. I emailed Eleanor with some possible topics, and wrote my first article 'Light and Colour in Medieval Christianity'. Since then, I've written three more than manufactures, as and when I had the time and inspiration! It has been really cracking being able to communicate my interests and research to a wider audition.

For more than medieval matters from Oxford, accept a look at the website of the Oxford Medieval Studies TORCH Programme and the OMS blog!

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Source: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/article/the-seven-deadly-sins-and-their-antidotes

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