An Introduction to the Seven Deadly Sins

Seven deadly sins. It almost seems like a cliché at this point: lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, pride, and envy. But it wasn't always so in Christian doctrine. Nor is it so for Dante.Join me, Mark Scarbrough, in this interpolated episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE as I begin to explore some of the history of the question of which sins got labeled deadly--and why there are seven of them. (Don't worry: we'll be back to Canto V and the lustful in the next episode of the podcast.)Here are the segments of this episode:[01:02] What are the seven deadly (or mortal) sins? Or more specifically, what is a "sin"? And how does Jesus make a mess out of an otherwise simple definition?[06:17] Evagrius, one of the church's great ascetics, and his list of eight evil thoughts, developed in the late 300s CE.[09:07] Pope Gregory I and the notion of "seven deadly sins"--including two new ones in the list: sloth and envy.[15:07] Dante's INFERNO plays loose and fast with the seven deadly sins.