The Seven Heavenly Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins

Christian tradition pairs each deadly sin with an opposing virtue: greed with generosity, sloth with diligence, wrath with patience, pride with humility, gluttony with temperance, lust with chastity and envy with kindness. The list of seven sins was finalized by **Gregory the Great** in **590**, although eight had circulated before then.

## From eight thoughts to seven sins
**Evagrius of Pontus**, a fourth-century monk, listed around 375 eight "evil thoughts" that assault the mind. John Cassian brought them to the West, and **Gregory the Great** reduced them to seven in **590**. Deadly comes from the idea of capital, from the Latin caput, head: they are the root from which other vices spring.

Thomas Aquinas organized them in the Summa Theologiae, completed in **1274**, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated in 1992, keeps that list. Tradition presents the two catalogs as opposite paths: some thoughts push toward vice, others toward virtue.

## Sloth is not lying on the sofa
Sloth translates the Greek **acedia**, the negligence of the spirit that Evagrius called the **noonday demon**. Nothing to do with not sweeping the floor. The monk was to combat it with diligence, not with a full schedule. Detecting which one rules in each of us is harder than it seems.

KEY POINTS
- Gregory the Great reduced the deadly sins to seven in 590.
- Evagrius of Pontus had listed eight evil thoughts around 375.
- "Capital" comes from the Latin caput, head: they are the root of other vices.
- The original acedia was called the noonday demon, not mere laziness.
- Thomas Aquinas organized them in the Summa Theologiae, completed in 1274.