Some of the Vices
ANGER
ENVY
LUST
The capital sins were soon ordered into a septenary, first by John Cassian and especially by Pope Gregory the Great, who gave them their canonical form for the Middle Ages. The importance of the septenary was also strongly reaffirmed in the 12th century, particularly in Hugh of St Victor's De quinque septenis.
Pride is considered by Gregory the Great as the root of the seven deadly sins and is later generally reintegrated within the septenary, in place of vain glory. This supremacy, well illustrated by De fructibus carnis et spiritus, was however contested by avaritia, from the 12th century onwards, so much so that the same tension of the humilitas/caritas pair is found again. Two main systems are used to order the deadly sins: Gregory the Great's system is genealogical, with each sin generating the next (vain glory, envy, wrath, accedia, avaritia, gula, luxuria). The one developed by the scholastics in the 13th century places the three most serious sins at the head of the list and is characterised by its mnemotechnical virtues (the initials S A L I G I A appear, for pride, avarice, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy and welcome). Finally, the capital sins can no longer define all possible vices on their own and must therefore be completed by the ramifications that Gregory the Great associates with each of them.
However, although representations of the septenary of vices began to develop from the 12th century, particularly in the miniatures mentioned above, their role remained limited until the 14th century, especially in monumental iconography. In addition to the use of typologies based on other numbers, the lack of a precise correspondence for each term between the septenary of virtues and the septenary of deadly sins, which hindered the development of the latter, was an obstacle. From the 14th century onwards, many specific themes confirmed the success of the sectenary of sins. This is the case with the Cavalcade of Vices, sketched in the miniature of the years around 1390, following a model taken up in numerous 15th-century manuscripts.
This theme was particularly successful in mural painting from the middle of the 15th century onwards: around forty examples are known, mainly from the Alpine region and south-western France. The same cavalcade unites this time the seven sins, chained together and dragged towards the mouth of hell. The image of the vices, both moral and social, is relatively stable and partly inspired by earlier traditions: Pride is often a king or lord on a lion; Avarice is a merchant or bourgeois holding a purse and generally riding on a monkey or badger; Lust is a woman in the mirror, elegant and impudent, placed on a goat or billy goat; Wrath is a young man stabbing himself, on a leopard or a boar; Gluttony is an obese man carrying meat and a mug on a pig or a wolf; Envy is a very thin man with his arms crossed, riding a dog; Sloth is often a farmer on a donkey. On the other hand, a different but equally effective system contributes to the success of the septenary: it shows the bad man from whom seven dragons with gaping jaws emerge, containing representations of the characteristic actions of the deadly sins.
During the Middle Ages, the Church also included sadness in the deadly sins, since this sentiment indicated contempt for the works that God had done for mankind, as did vainglory, at least until Gregory the Great, when they were recomposed and sadness was considered part of acedia, while vainglory was joined to the new vice of pride.
ANGER
ENVY
LUST