Dan Snow's History Hit - The Seven Deadly Sins

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath! You might be surprised to learn the true history of the Seven Deadly Sins doesn't start in the bible. Rather, they were first thought up by a Greek monk in the 4th century who'd fled to the desert after becoming embroiled in a scandal with a married woman…Dan is joined by historian and author Peter Jones to trace the true history of the Seven Deadly Sins, why they took the Middle Ages by storm, and how they have shaped European society for centuries.You can learn more in Peter's new book, ' Self Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living'Produced by Mariana Des Forges, McKenna Fernandez and James Hickmann. Edited by Matthew WilsonWe need your help! Let us know what you want from Dan Snow's History Hit by filling in our anonymous survey here: https://forms.gle/PvgayWLkWGjYT4St6Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history hit.com slash subscribe. Lust, gluttony, wrath, tried, envy, sloth, greed. Seven deadly sins, the root of human evil. At least according to medieval Christianity. Now, don't worry, this isn't going to be a religious sermon, I'm certainly not qualified to administer that.

But instead, I might be able to soothe your anxiety, soothe your soul with a bit of a history lesson. You will be surprised to learn that the seven deadly sins aren't in the Bible. They were thought up by a Greek monk, really, in the fourth century who fled to the Egyptian desert after becoming embroiled in a scandal with a married woman. There, isolated, doing some mindfulness,

the monk Evagrius Ponticus began to map the darkest patterns of the human mind. And he came up with what would become the seven deadly sins. By the Middle Ages, people were obsessed with them. They were painted into murals. They appeared in sermons in popular literature. It was believed that of those seven deadly sins, everyone had one in particular that they had to work on. A weakness that revealed who they truly were.

In this episode of Dan Snow's history hit, I've been told that I'm going to find out what my particular sin is, which I'm really looking forward to, and I'm really looking forward to sharing it all of you. I'm being joined by the expert, the historian Peter Jones, who's just written a new book, Self-Help from the Middle Ages. What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living. We're going to delve into them.

We're going to talk about sin. And we're going to look into the history of this religious and cultural phenomenon. It was a system of control, sure. It was a system of working out how people could live alongside each other in society. We're going to find out how the medieval. mind understood human behaviour and psychology. Enjoy. Pete, thanks coming on. Thank you. It's what a pleasure. Well, we get a pleasure to be talking, wallowing in sins is what we're going to be doing in a good way. There used to be eight, though. Tell me, this is news to me. Well, it's true,

right, they were once the, they weren't the eight deadly sins, they were once the eight generic thoughts, which is a terrible, terrible title to the book. See why it didn't catch on. No, didn't catch on. Yeah, the origin is kind of strange. It begins in a political scandal. A guy called Evagius Ponticus, who was a politician from the Black Sea coast to what is now Turkey. There's a sex scandal. What period are we talking about? We're talking about the late 300s. Okay.

So Roman Empire still reasonably coherent? Absolutely. Writing in Greek. Politics happening in Constantinople. Sex scandal. Evagrius loses his career and sort of wanders off into oblivion. And he kind of, he's depressed, he's despondent, it's a midlife crisis. He drifts down to the desert just outside Alexandria.

Classic. Well, everyone was doing it. Everyone's seeing it. Well, this is just a well-trodden path. We would call them now monks, but at the time it didn't have a label like this, really. These were lost souls who were looking for a radical experiment in living. And they moved to the desert about two days' walk outside of Alexandria, and they'd build these little cells, you know, far away from each other.

Close enough, you could wave and see someone waving, but not see their facial expressions. It's kind of lonely. Vagoras was one of these. Spent his day weaving baskets, watching the sunrise and set, and trying to, you know, it's mindfulness really, you know, thinking a lot, contemplating, meditating. And Vagrius puts himself through a load of experiments. He stands in freezing cold water. He sort of flagellates himself.

But he also decides he's going to do a mind experiment. He's going to write down every tempting, negative, difficult thought in this enormous thing, which he later publishes as a book, which we call Talking Back. And in that book, some of these thoughts are really petty. I miss the cup I used to hold in my hand. You know, I miss my life. I miss my family's Olive Grove in Iborra on the Black Sea. And he decided, when he got all of these thoughts written down,

they all belonged in eight sort of categories. Nice. Eight buckets. And these, he called the eight generic thoughts. And which, are they rough, have they transmogrified into the deadly sins, or which is the one that we don't, where we've dropped? Okay, so there were two, for Avragos, there were two things that we now call pride, there's pride and vain glory.

Pride is kind of this ego, this inward thing, your self-esteem being too high or whatever. and vanglory is boasting, basically. So it's like bragging. Okay, just an out, that's the outward manifestation of it. So we've merged those together. Yeah, and he also had two kind of sadness sins. He had sloth and sadness, sloth, which he called Acadia, which is lack of care,

and sadness, which is just a total misery, despair. And did these go viral? I mean, where do we get seven deadly sins from? Okay, so it's a great idea, and Navagrius practices it himself, but, you know, it's in the desert at that point. There's a guy called John Cassian, who comes to the desert, and he's been tasked with finding something to popularise.

He's basically, he needs to preach to peasants in the French countryside and he used to make a book. There's a timeline. Come on, you know, get people involved, get them engaged in thinking about reforming their lives, becoming more moral. John Cassian goes to the desert and discovers a agoracist system and thinks this is fantastic, this is dynamite, but he thinks it needs a tweak,

and it's just what you said at the beginning. Generic thoughts, it's not so good. It's not so catchy. Cassian calls them deadly sins. You say system, he's identified, these? Is it like intrusive thoughts and then dealing with them? What's the system beyond identifying all the difference? So the idea is that your brain works this way, no matter who you are, no matter how good you are, these are the eight patterns of thought that tempt you every single day. So pride, that's,

you know, a kind of egotistical tendency, you know, or self-belief, you know, at its sort of more modest degree, you know, I'm pretty good at this. I'm excellent at making coffee, you know, maybe other people want to share my coffee and then it goes too far, you know, I'm the best to make. making coffee and all other coffee is terrible. So it's kind of, they're spectrums of thoughts, which I suppose they're excessive thoughts. You know, have none of these and you are an angel. You're not really human at all. But, you know, start to think along these pathways of ego, desire, appetite. Those are things that make us human, these kinds of tempting thoughts. And once you've identified them what you can just, by speaking of them, you can help to combat them.

that's the idea. Well, look, there are different approaches. For Avagrius, the goal was to eradicate them all in himself. He wanted to reach a state he called Apothea, which is to feel none of these things. It's water off a duck's back. He would be in a true state of bliss where he felt no temptation or desire. But, you know, as we can discuss, throughout the Middle Ages, I think this wasn't the model that really survives best. The model that survives best is a really compassionate model, which is accepting these things. Okay, we all feel these temptations. How do we moderate? them and make them work for us to do something better for other people. How do we kind of sculpt and tame these tempting thoughts into something that works for a wider community?

This might be a wrong question. You are a historian. When you were right and we'll get on, we'll keep going through the history. But I mean, interested in the philosophy of it, if you compare it to other cultures, other belief systems, do you think, as someone who's now immersed yourself, do you think it's actually, was it a useful process to go through? Do you think these stand up. I mean, I recognize them all in myself as well. And the responses, of course, are going to be different depending on the context of the society, whether it's punitive. But do you admire that original thought leadership? Oh, I absolutely do. I think it really works. I mean, like you say, I recognize them all in myself all the time. And I cannot open a newspaper without

seeing, you know, everything scans onto one of the deadly sins. I can't find a single species of human, you know, wrongdoing or whatever, or, you know, even right-doing, that doesn't, you know, come back to one of these seven things. I see them as the periodic table of the mind. I think they diagnosed this kind of periodic table of desire and impulse that still stands up and still works, yeah. So useful, whatever your belief system today, quite useful to be aware of these and recognize it and yourself and others. No, I think they were onto something, yeah. Okay, so we got, so following this sort of rebrand, we are down to our canonical. Which, let's go through it again.

Okay, so it's pride at the top, always number one, the worst of the dead of things. Is that number one? Always one. Always number one, yes. Pride is the root cause of all other sin. Because what? Because pride is... Because that's... Well, it's turning away from other people. It's kind of believing you can stand alone.

It's isolating yourself and saying, I don't need any of this. I don't need other people. And that, therefore, that kind of selfish impulse, that turning away, can allow and open the floodgate for all these other things. Of course, I can eat more. Who cares? My judgment is the only judgment of the matter. Of course I can take from my neighbour. Exactly.

Yeah, okay. Exactly. And then we have envy, then anger. And then in the middle, sloth, which is the enigmatic one. We'll have to come onto it because sloth is a terrible translation. That's not what this sin really is. Then we have the three lesser sins, avarice, gluttony, and then lust. They're all deadly, but, you know, there is a hierarchy.

I didn't know the hierarchy. That's interesting. But they didn't become this seven, and they didn't get this hierarchy until Pope Gregory the Great. Oh, Gregory's finger prints on everything. Everything. He died in 604 to give context. But Gregory recognized that Cassian's system was really effective, really worked. But he trimmed them down.

And he added envy. So envy wasn't there before. And it's interesting, these early desert monks, if you're far enough away from your neighbour that you can't really see their facial expressions, you can see why for Avagraeus envy wasn't a big part of his life. I do not envy anyone around me. No, no, exactly. Whereas sadness, he had two of those.

So it's kind of interesting. Okay. So the church hierarchy have grabbed this, why, this is what, just helpful way to control the behaviours, the mindsets of the flock?

I mean, what's this? Well, at first, it's a curio. You know, it's an academic thing. Okay. But for Gregory, he's trying to do this. It's this enormous work, the Moralia and Job. And it's just this massive, massive,

cumbersome work, actually, if we're honest, if we're critical with Gregory, sorry. He's going, it's like an encyclopedia. He's going through every possible approach. And he is trying to write something which can be like,

Yeah, an encyclopedia for priests to find something, you know, to pick and grab and choose little bits that will be useful in preaching or talking to their flock. So this is your manual. Here, priest, this is what we want. There's everything we know about human beings, what we should be like, okay, fine. And so he's handing that out. Okay. So this is a gigantic attempt to lay out a kind of moral religious framework for Christianity.

It's true. But it doesn't really get going until the sort of late 1000s, with what we call the Gregorian Reform, which is this process. This is when priests, deologians, get really serious, popes especially, get really serious about the mission of the church, which is to reform society as a whole. One historian, Jonathan Riley Smith, I think, described it as the Pope's goal at this point was to make every individual citizen in the whole of Christendom into a kind of monk themselves, to monasticize everyone, to make everyone have the same level

of dedication and commitment to the faith that a monk would have. It's a hugely ambitious project, and that really gets going in the 1070s onwards. That's when we have, you know, clerical celibacy, priests aren't allowed to have sex. Yes, I was going to say that's when that sort of comes up. Exactly. And so it's getting serious. Before this process of Gregorian reform, you have priests who are just, you know, somebody from the local community wanted the job a lot of the time. And it's a bit venal, you know, oh, my brother said I could do this.

I'm going to be priest. After this, it becomes much more strict. They need to be trained. They need to be educated. There's a real self-conscious objective to sort of change the church and make everyone invested. And so in... I'm just wondering. So in the way that sort of King James organizes a Bible to be read by people in the vernacular in English,

and this is the church going right. We've got these seven days. This is quite useful thing for people to be able to cling onto and sort of organize their faith and their life around. Their personal confession. Yeah. I mean, the real moment comes in 1215, which, you know, for medievalists, huge year. But, you know, but not for Magnicata. Very important.

I mean, in measure it would be important. But for a lot of us, even bigger event is. happens in November, which is the Fourth Latteren Council. It doesn't sound as fun, but it changes... But go on. It changes so much. You know, for example, the mass, you know, the bread becomes the body of Christ. That's right.

That's interesting. That's instantiated in law in the Fourth Lateran Council. All of these rules about heresy, legislation on Jews having to wear special marking on their clothing is in Fourth Atron Council. You know, all kinds of things, you know, terrible and, you know, productive in different ways. start there. It's this enormous effort. They bring all of the bishops, major priests, cardinals, everyone to roam for this big conference basically.

And they lay out this series of what they call cannons or laws. And one of them is that every single person must make confession once a year. Everyone who's reached the age of reason. So has to make... We're still waiting for that. No, no, yeah. So where do we... Is that 14, 27? So it's now mandatory to make a confession once a year. And these confessions, suddenly priests have to get really serious. Okay, God, you know, previously no one's really doing these confessions. Well, people are, they're really enthusiastic people. But suddenly it's mandatory, it's everyone.

I've got hundreds and hundreds of people in my flock. These can be long sessions of going through, you know, tell me about your year. How's your ego being? You know, what things have you done terribly? They have to get serious. And they need manuals to do this. Right. This is the checklist? Yeah, yeah.

So the seven deadly sins. So more important than the Ten Commandments in a way? I mean... Well, it's more practical, because, you know, it's a way to examine your kind of your inner thought process. In the way that Ten Commandments, you know, have you coveted your neighbour's ox? No, I didn't do that. I have not created a graven image, so I'm all right. No, exactly.

You can let yourself off the hook quite easy with the Ten Commandments. But the Seven Deadly Sins are a way to really get into your inner core. And that's what I love about the system. Because at its core, this is a way to examine your kind of... Those tiny little, awkward, half-formed thoughts. You know, I did kind of, when I made that coffee for my friend, and, you know, I was trying to impress him a little bit. I was trying to, you know, I was trying, you know, that kind of self-knowledge, self-awareness, like, am I doing these things for the wrong reason sometimes? You know, do I actually secretly want my friend not to get that job when he has the interview on Friday?

Because part of me is still jealous in some residual way, you know, obviously, no, the answer is no, for me. Of course it is. Of course it is. But, you know, there is that kind of, the seven daily sense were a doorway into thinking about these kind of tiny little ways that we, that we, you know, these little ticks that we have, you know, these impulses right at the bottom, I think, right at the core of our brains. You're listening to Down Snow's history. We'll be back after this brain.

And so they, so now from in the 13th century onwards, that's when they, well, they start appearing in art, in a sort of popular, the popular imagination latches, on to these things. Completely. They just take off exponentially after 1215 because priests need handbooks. My God, right, I've got to make all of these confessions. I've got hundreds and hundreds parishioners. I need a guidebook. So guidebooks get written. And these guidebooks often have the seven deadly sins right at the heart. This is the core template. There's a theologian who was asked in the 1200s by a group of women who came to him. Theologians called Raul and these women say, give us moral advice. He turns straight to the seven deadly sins. Okay, here's your template. Let's

start with pride, then envy, then anger. So they become the structuring framework for all kinds of discussions about people's well-being, people's morality. So then we have all these handbooks. You go into any library in Europe, any archive of medieval manuscripts, open any manuscript at random. The chances are you're going to see the seven deadly sins

somewhere there. Honestly, I know that sounds bizarre. Scrawled in the margins. I found treaties on the seven deadly sins used as the binding for manuscripts. There must have been so many of these texts that you could just say, okay, we'll use one of those. They just burst in popularity. We also have preaching.

So we have preachers, giving sermons on, and that becomes more and more popular in the 1200s. And so many of these sermons, the words that come up over and over again, pride, envy, lust, avarice. And very interesting because they don't appear in the Gospels. I mean, they sort of obviously are rooted, of course, in the teachings of Jesus and the Gospels and the Ten Commandments. But this is a sort of fascinating, it's central, becomes central. Christianity and yet, I mean, I guess Jesus does occasionally speak out against sloth, but it feels that they've got a prominence that, you know, society created these rather than perhaps the founding fathers of the Christian faith. And that's what's great about medieval

Christianity. It's so interesting when you dig. They made this whole folklore, this mythology, which is way outside of the Bible. And for example, Judas, right? Judas, there are stories of Judas where it's like Oedipus. He marries his mother and kills his father. You know, they make these Lucifer only appears really briefly in the Bible, but there's this huge folklore and mythology about him. There are plays about him. And the seven deadly sins belong to that. There are this kind of extra-textual, fun apparatus

which develops as a way to kind of, yeah, it's embellishing and, you know, it's building on the kind of the core of the Bible. You said sloth is a, was the mistranslated one. I'm interested in that as a slothful person. Let me know. Let me know if perhaps I'm not as sinful as I think. Well, it's my sin as well, perhaps.

Sloth is the original Greek word was Acadia right which means something like lack of care and in the Middle Ages they never translated it into Latin they left it as Acadia

because they couldn't come up with the right word what does it mean it's somewhere between inertia depression what we might call now depression boredom restlessness

it's kind of okay so what is it it's described by William Peraldas in this summer of vices that it's like you're standing in a freezing cold river and the water's rushing

towards you, but you can't move. It's a sense of falling out of love with all the things that used to light up your life. Elizabeth has shown now, who's this nun from the 12th century in the Rhineland, she describes her Arcadia this way. She used to love being a nun. Everything about it, the reading, the singing, all of it, perfect. One day she's late for mass, and suddenly, when the singing starts, her lips move, but the voice doesn't come out.

She goes to read a book later, and she can't get through a page, puts it down. It's all nothing to her now. Everything that used to make her heart sing now leaves her feeling cold and dead inside. This is Acadia. It's when all the love we've built up for something is inverted inside us and suddenly we feel the weight of its absence. It's so, I mean, people have described it as a bit like depression. There's a great book by a guy called Andrew Solomon called The Noonday and Demon, where he says Arcadia, he maps it onto depression.

I think he's right. It is kind of the medieval language of depression. but it's more than that as well. It's also burnout. It's also a sense of directionlessness. So as you're saying this, I'm wondering if I'm being very cautious about, is there sort of Darwinian? I mean, with these, if you're a medieval person or you're tilling the land, actually this is a pretty decent list because if you do feel that inertia and that sort of that burnout, you know, you're not going to prepare the ground for the next year's harvest. I mean, this is, it is, they're quite useful sins to be aware of and sort of live by, right?

are too proud, you might get bumped on the head by the community that think you're a pain in the ass, all that sort of stuff. It's completely true. And actually, yeah, William Prouder says that Sloth is when you take your hand from the plough. So they're always thinking in terms or relate to the ordinary person in their situation. Yeah, I think, but having said that, I can't think of a single human situation where these aren't relevant. They kind of, they map onto anything. I mean, Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn made a speech where he talks about, you know, Silicon Valley thrives on the Seven Deadly Sins. And he said, every great app. every great product that Silicon Valley develops,

is that it's going to be great if it maps onto one of these things, if it exploits it. Okay. We could give examples. Yeah, well, there's plenty that I'm sure if I can't come up with. That's interesting. Okay. Now, is there a, we're making this sound quite benign.

Quite good life architecture. Do things in the way that they tend to do in the hands of human beings? Do they get warped distorted? Does it become a kind of people getting called out, some sort of punitive aspect to this? Oh, absolutely. I think at their worst, you know, this is a tool to sort of, you know, hit people with. You know, and some, you know, there's bad theology out there.

There are texts that say, you know, you should live completely without, you know, ego or completely without, you know, anger, you know, best to just, you know, fight these things and eradicate them. And then punishing people, yeah, there will be penances that you have to do. Okay, right, you were too angry, you know, here's your penance. But generally, no, the thing that strikes me is that those are in the minority, those kind of extremist, kind of. texts. The majority of texts are really understanding and compassionate. I think Dante, you know, died in 1321, didn't he? You know, Dante's purgatoria puts it best. In Dante's Comedia, which goes through hell, purgatory and heaven, who gets straight to paradise? Only the saints,

really. The rest of us, okay, so the worst people go to hell, the people who don't recognize their sins, people who just are there saying, yes, I did terrible things, but it wasn't my fault. They're all in hell. But the rest of us, I hope, I hope I count my sense. are in purgatory, no matter how good you are, no matter how moral you were in your life, all the great things you did, your moral mission, you still have to purge yourself with those seven-deady sins. So in Dante's purgatory, it moves up the mountain.

You've purged yourself with your pride, big rocks on your back, and then envy, have your eyelids stitched together. So the message of that is all of us have to work on these constantly, and that work is never done. The seven-deadies sins are with us until we die, and then we still have to work on them. When is peak prominence? I mean, if Dante is writing all about them, that feels like by the 14th century, they are culturally very dominant.

I think the 1300s, absolutely. They are everywhere. They're in church walls, you know, they're in little frescoes. Jotto paints them in the Arena Chapel in the first. And they're wonderful paintings of the sins. We have Dante, of course, Pocateorio in the 1310s. And then by the end of that century, we have Chaucer and someone like John Gower, who structures his confessio or mantis all around the 7th.10s. deadly sins. So the 1300s are the high point. They're everywhere. You can't pick up a great work of literature without seeing the sins in their... Tough century, 1300s as well. I mean, you know, a lot going on. It really is. Black death. Yeah. Berman. Yeah. No, so they needed a break. Did they need to hit themselves over the head of seven deadens. No, I think that's why they're so compassionate. They needed the compassion of this system. Okay. And yeah, sorry, compassion's important. So it's about, as you, so I came in thinking this was all going to be a little bit,

control, vicious, using infractions to then punish. Actually, this sounds like therapy. I mean, it sounds like quite a compassionate system. I think that's what I've tried to say in my book, self-help from the Middle Ages, that you can use this system as a compassionate system to sort of forgive yourself in many ways and see the process of, for example,

fighting your ego or fighting your laziness or fighting your kind of greed as an ongoing process and be compassionate about it. Because medieval advice is always that. We need to keep working on these things and forgive ourselves for them because they are the things that make us human. And I suppose, yes, I suppose being told that this is something that makes you human and being told this something that everybody deals with,

if you're lonely and you're struggling, you think, why am I jealous of my friend getting that job on Friday? Am I a terrible person? And the answer is, no, look, you're among, we're all feeling like that. And it's interesting when we think. By the way, I'm very happy, Mike, like you. I mean, I'm pro-friends getting jobs. No, no, me too.

I'm really positive about it. Good luck, by the way, on Friday. Good luck. Totally. I'm so happy that you're doing so well. Completely. But I think Acadia is a good example of that. If the fourth deadly sin is really burnout, depression and all of these other things, it's one of the seven. And you're making confession every year.

That means everyone in Europe, you know, every Christian in Europe, rather, is talking about these things and reflecting on them and being told that this is normal, this is a normal part of humanity to feel this way and this way. So they're not framing it as a mental illness or something like this. they're framing it as just an ordinary part of being human. Are they effective when you're looking for self-help from the middle ages? What were the, perhaps cures is probably the wrong ways, antitotes, what were the ways in which they said, look, we all get like this.

In this particular case, this is what we recommend, or is it just about acknowledging them, talking about them and being aware of them? No, it's case by case, but generally speaking, the answer they come up with by the late 1200s is to moderate, and to recognise when you've gone beyond what is social. So, for example, ego, we start with pride, right? You know, okay, so if I say, right, I'm going to,

I am a worm, I'll, you know, I'll act like that, you know, I'll just say, I can't do anything, I'm no good at everything. That's not good either. That's what Thomas Aquinas called puzzleanimity, you know, weakness of spirit. You know, and you're not standing up for yourself and ultimately, therefore you're not being useful.

You know, I probably can rewire that plug. You know, I shouldn't have said off. You've just gone and written the best book about The Seven Deadly Sins ever pub. No, hang on now. I've overshot the runway. Okay, well, okay, all right. But, you know, maybe there is something interesting to say. You've done some research.

You've got something interesting to say. There you go. Don't be a week of spirit. You know, go on history here. Talk about it. Yes. Own it. But when it becomes, you know, if I then sort of say, well,

and it's fantastic. And all of these other scholars, you know, they got it totally wrong. Yeah. You know, then we're starting to push into an area where I'm getting into that excessive place where I'm starting to be a bit antisocial, you know what I mean? Okay. So the message of that one is to recognize when are you overestimating your own limits? When have you gone beyond self-awareness and self-knowledge?

And now you're inflating and kind of inventing an alternative self. So it's kind of combating the deadly sins is all about recognizing their limits where they go beyond a boundary that's kind of socially acceptable. And it feels like talking therapy, either with your priest or with intimates, is that it's not like, I'm going to administer 10 lashes, and that's going to recalibrate my level of price. It sounds like a very civilised way of working out where that level is. Yeah, I think what they wanted was to induce self-awareness.

They wanted you to talk through these seven and recognize these and work on them. I don't think they wanted you to eradicate them at all. And I think that that's kind of the surprise. Medieval Christianity wasn't a system for making perfect souls. Only angels are perfect, is the idea, or saints. In fact, it's actually just a system for, raising people's awareness and getting them to work on their kind of quirks. Okay, so after the 300th, after the 14th century, what happens these deadly sins?

I mean, they're still there. They're still there in literature and plays in the 1400s. The Reformation, I think, generally speaking, is kind of where they lose some of their power. You know, although there's a great emphasis on interiority in the Reformation, there just isn't that same confession doesn't have the same kind of role. And because they don't appear in the Gospels, presumably Protestants are like, look, definitely read the Gospels, as you say, interiority, work on yourself, but you don't necessarily need this Gregorian checklist, presumably, is that what to say?

Someone like Luther will still use these words. And I think that they still apply, but yeah, they're part of that architecture that gets ripped away in the Reformation. You're not painting them on walls. No, exactly. Creating lovely artwork. And all that we said earlier about, you know, the mythology of Christianity that went beyond the text.

That's being taken away. So Seven Deaden's a part of that. Well, Pete, very excitingly, in the spirit of third, and living a better life. You are going to give me a quiz on the sins and my sins, so I'm really forward to this. But first of all, we're going to take a break, so join us after this. Pete, the time has come. No more talking. In fact, lots more talking, because you are going to give me a quiz. I am. It's rigorously scientific. It's heavily footnoted. So if listeners want to, if they want to know, I can give you detailed footnotes on why these all make sense as many more

questions. Okay, Dan, so there are five questions. And, you know, we'll work. Do relax. Yeah, it's super relaxing. Lots of people are about to hear my innermost, my sinful thoughts. Okay, and as I say, these are rigorously footnoted. Okay. Which of these is the perfect afternoon? A long train journey alone with your thoughts. B, winning a game of squash or C, all you can eat tapas. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, okay, I'm going to say all you can eat tapas, I'm afraid. Excellent choice. Great, okay, good, good. Question two, which of these are you most likely to collect? Okay. A, antique clocks. B, anecdotes about your colleagues. Or C, pornographic pilgrim badges from the 14th century.

Wow. Well, from that really comprehensive list of options, I suppose anecdotes about my colleagues, really, in that one. Okay, that's good. Good answer. Okay, fair enough. Question three, when you're driving, do you always follow the satnav's advice? No. No, okay. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, good, good, good. Question four. For your birthday, which of these will you do?

A, a hot air balloon ride over Staffordshire with mugs of hot chocolate. Sounds good. B, an hour with the punch bag in the garage, then go for a hot stone massage. Or C, finally buy that monogram silk kimono. Oh, that's a hard one. These are quite random. Given that choice, goodness me, I would actually, This is a bit Manosphere coming out. I think I might do the punch bag, actually.

Okay, good, good, good. I like quite air balloon. Okay, right, I'm now totting up. Okay, good, we're in a good place. Thank goodness. Okay, right. So we're now going to do the quotation. These are all quotations from medieval guidebooks on the sins.

So these are all quotations. So I want to know which of these medieval quotations feels most accurate these days. I do not fear my enemies. They will be crushed. Whoa. That's A? B, it's the fire that's in the cup that kindles the soul's torches.

It's the heart that's drenched in wine that flies to heaven's porches. Sorry, there's a bit much, a bit long. Or C, our eyes rise up to truth when we gaze at beautiful things. Okay, well, I'm afraid I'm C there. Beautiful, okay. Okay, so totting these up, this is quite tough, but I'm afraid, Dan, your sin is avarice. Averis. Greed.

Well, you know, how funny. You know, well, what I was saying is. about this is it's actually a beautiful sin and actually it gets the best treatment in the book. Listen, you're like those horoscope people who go actually, Sagittarius is the best. No, it is. Well done for being Capricorn. Okay. Okay. Averis is not just, it's not greed in the way we understand it. It's not just a desire for money. Averis is an appreciation of objects. Averis is an attention to the beauty and complexity of material things in a way that involves a lot of care. Done right, and this is, now we're getting horoscopes, done right, Averis is, is a commitment to finding soul in objects. You know, you collect things, you make beautiful objects. And in so doing, you recognize that, you know,

you're building the story about yourself in the world and you're imbueing things with soul. Gone wrong, however, Averis becomes an attachment to these objects. We just, you know, instead of hanging out with my friends, it's okay, I've got to go back to the antique clocks. I've got to, you know, I've got to work on making that boat. and it's kind of the turning away from people. What makes avarice antisocial, when it becomes a deadly sin,

is when our attention to objects makes us more interested in the objects than we are in people. And ultimately, if it's clothes, for example, it's when the clothes we wear are more interesting than us ourselves. We become mannequins. Medieval Theologisms describe it as kind of the becoming object to yourself. You get so attached to object that you become the object. They would not have liked Instagram.

No. To be honest. Because I always wanted, the experience that you are, the curation of the experience becomes more important than the experience itself. It's interesting. Okay, so that's, well, I now thank you very much. I will look out for that in myself. What are they, what, since we're here, what are some of the other, that was lovely,

that deeper explanation of what that sin is. What about anger, for example? Is anger more obvious? It's just losing it. What's the, anger is, yeah, okay, so it's kind of got an obvious definition. You know, the loss of control, you know, I've gone into a frenzy because something has upset me. But really, medieval theologians describe it as a love of being right, the enjoyment of being right. And at its best, anger is, you know, you recognize wrongdoing.

You recognize when things are wrong and you want to put them right. You know, it's fantastic. You know, like the legal system functions on anger in this way. You know, why do QCs get out of bed in the morning? Because they need to make right. They need to. And in the middle ages, there's a lot of recognition of this. The Crusades function on righteous anger.

Yeah. But it goes wrong when you start to. enjoy the feeling of being right more than putting things right itself. In other words, it's when you're online and you have an argument and you win that argument completely. You could prove their point wrong and you get this great buzz, but then you want to find another argument. So then you start another argument just to get that buzz again. There's a theologian called John Eiton, who describes it this way. He calls it Rixir or quarrelsomeness, which is the addiction to being right. Yes, quarrelsomeness. Very nice. Yeah, yeah. Okay, and so Remight, let's start at the top,

Since we're getting definitions, so at the top, pride is the top one. Pride is, yeah, pride is the first sin, superbia in Latin. And we've talked a bit about that. We have. It's saying you don't need other people. Believing you can always stand on your own and everything.

Okay, let's come down to the next one. Envy. Yes. Envy is, it's not quite what we think it is. It's not wanting what someone else has. If I'm envious of you, let's say you've got those antique clocks. If I'm envious of you, I don't want your antique clocks. I want your antique clocks to explode.

Oh, yes. I want you to fail. So in other words, if my friend has a job interview on Friday... This friend... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know who this friend is. I don't want his job for myself.

I want him not to get that job. I know, which is horrible. It doesn't affect you in any way. It doesn't affect you in any way. Your love of yourself gone too far. Your love of objects gone too far for Averis. For envy, your love of success, which is not so bad in itself, to be successful, is not a bad thing.

But your love of success has curdled to the point where you enjoy other people's failure. What lovely one. So it's wanting your neighbour's crops to fail. Exactly. Like, that's horrible. Yeah, okay. It's terrible. Okay, but we all feel that.

Okay. We all have a, there's a, there can be a tendency to that. Right. So, what next one down? Is anger. We've already had that. Then Sloth, which we've already done. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. And next one.

Averis, which we've already done. Yes, talked about my Averis. Yes, sorry. Gluttony is next. Remember, we're into the lesser sins now, Averous Gluttony last. So congratulations on making it. It's a very small thing. You've none of the above problems. And then we come to the last three.

Gluttony is not just eating too much. This is quite interesting. Gluttony is also includes a fixation and a fuss about food and drink. So the idea is, okay, so eating too much is still a problem. but so is eating too little because it's fussing about food so annoying so gluttony is that moment where

you really insist on something like you know your friends suggest you go for lunch somewhere at this restaurant and you refuse because you don't like the food in that I know don't so annoying or because you've got your heart set on that lobster roll that you promised yourself and you know the way it tastes

the buttery sort of taste of that lobster roll is too much for you to resist you're fixating too much on the food or fuss right you know when I make coffee and, you know, friends have told me it's terrible actually my coffee, but still, I fuss over it, right? I pour the water off the spoon to cool it down to 90 degrees, deflect it off the spoon,

I make sure it's only 10% of the coffee to cafeteria ratio. I fuss too much. I make sure it's Ethiopian. I love that stuff. It's that level of fuss. Why is it a deadly sin? Because I'm shutting out other things, and I'm actually becoming a bit of a bore.

Gluttony is when you, you know, you're a food bore. Have you heard about the, no, try this beer, not this beer. Yeah. The hops are. Oh, we don't drive 45 minutes across town because you can only get a, yeah, Yes, and then you shut people out because actually they're secretly really bored with your coffee making or your craft beer session. This is the best news I've heard all day because that's one of my personal bug bears me crazy.

Okay, so that's good. Glastney, what else? And then finally, lust. Yeah. Which, you know, the least deadly of the seven in the sense that they thought in the middle ages it was closest to love. So it's the most kind of redeemable sin. But of course, it's love gone wrong in the most obvious way. William Peralds again describes it as a feeling out of time, meaning what, that you,

lust is you know love has a duration you know I love you and I'm interested in your stories about your childhood and I'm interested in your future uh lust isn't interested in any of those things I don't really care about your childhood blah blah blah and your job interview next week whatever is there a next week for us it's only now lust is a fixation on this present moment um so um and of course it's it's caring about the body and not the person is treating someone like an object or a toy um and they described this really well in medieval texts so that's lust it's also kind of sensuality in that way, an appreciation of the surfaces of things. So it's redeemable in the sense that, you know,

you are at least paying attention to how things are. You're interested in other people if you have lust, but, you know, maybe just in the wrong way. Yeah. And you can, yeah, and lust, it can turn into love. I mean, yeah, as you say, it's redeemable. Interesting. All right, and so which is your sin?

I came out with pride, which completely makes sense. And let's be clear, that's the worst one. No, I know. Look, I lose this quiz. Why? I definitely don't listen to the sat-nav. I have no, you know. And when I'm floating in that hot air balloon, I'm interested in being above other people at some level.

I'm interested in being up high and surveying from afar. No, but I think the thing is, with pride, I recognize it in myself. You know, sometimes I don't listen enough to other people's advice, and I'm trying to work on it. But, you know, that sort of bloody-minded convinced... But then without some of that, you would not have written this fabulous book. That's true. Because you have decided that there is something to be said about this centuries-old topic

on which millions of other people have written books. And if you didn't have that little bit of belief and a little bit of thinking, I can add something to this historiography, then you wouldn't have done it. So don't worry, don't be too hard on yourself. This is great. The confessor terms confession. Yes, I know, switching it up here. Love it, love it. Oh, thank you. No, it's true. It's true.

I think, like, you know, the point is that all of these sins, in moderation, they're fantastic things. That's what makes it so tantalizing, because we've got to do. just hit that. We've got to get the dashboard. We've got to get all the levers in the right place on the dashboard. I like that point. If you don't have enough of these things, that's actually equally bad. No, no pride would be terrible. No average would be terrible. You know, what would my life be like? I'd have no interest in objects. I'd have no interest in enriching the environment around me. Yeah, no lust. You'd have no joy of, you know, love

and companionship. I'd never want to connect to another person. No gluttony, you know, what would that look like? Wow, we, guys. You've got to get it, you just got to get it right. You've got to calibrate it right. Thank you very much helping us do that today. The book is called. Self-help from the Middle Ages. Brilliant. Enjoy. Thank you. Well, thanks so much to my guest, Peter Jones, coming on to the podcast,

help me better understand the curious ideas that shaped society in medieval Europe. But also, I think, to help me better understand myself, my strengths and my weaknesses. Make sure if you're listening to this, hit following your podcast play. If you're watching on YouTube, you've got to smash that subscribe button. and you'll get more Dan Snow's history hit next week. See you next time. Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up's history and watch the world's best history documentaries

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