By
the Middle Ages, the Christian tradition of the seven deadly, or cardinal, sins
had developed through centuries. They are: pride (Superbia), greed (Avaritia),
lust (Luxuria), wrath (Ira), gluttony (Gula), envy (Invidia) and
sloth (Acedia).
In
his book Praktikos, in the chapter on the Eight
Kinds of Evil Thought, Evagrius Ponticus (345‒399), a Christian monk, ascetic
and one of the most influential theologians of the late 4th century,
classified eight pernicious thoughts that entice humans into doing evil, thus
preventing them access to the Kingdom of God. The list helped to identify the
stated vices and their consequences and was also a handbook on how to overcome
them. Around the year 590, Pope Gregory the
Great was the first to classify the seven deadly sins on the basis of this
list. In the 13th century they were additionally acknowledged by
Thomas Aquinas and were subsequently adopted by all Catholic theologians.
Pride is regarded as the worst sin because the soul
that becomes its victim succumbs to the rest of the deadly sins too, which
leads to its death. From the seven cardinal sins all other (venial) sins also
proceed. A sin is mortal when it is committed wilfully and is grave enough to
lead to far-reaching consequences; it is not mortal if its consequences are
less serious and if it is not committed as a result of deliberation but of weakness, carelessness, indifference,
or stupidity.
The
seven deadly sins no longer hold the same position nowadays as they held in the
medieval mentality, yet with remarkable precision they continue to call
attention to what we recognize as eternal faults of human nature. Regarded from
the entirely ethic standpoint, they fully refer to the behaviour and character
of a human irrespective of his/her beliefs or religious affiliation. They point
to the weaknesses, or temptations, which people could control with their
willpower, but they too easily succumb to them. They are facts of life which
equally relate to both men and women who have experienced life. The issue of
the seven cardinal sins is timeless.
For
more than a thousand years personifications or allegories of sins both in
literature and arts assumed different appearance. The theme became for artists
a source of moral, religious and poetic inspiration, but in all cases their
purpose was to edify or preach. Personifications of sins found a place in
comedies, thus making evil a source of amusement, but also in dramas that dealt
with more serious subject matter, such as temperance, justice or judgement.
The
seven deadly sins are juxtaposed with the seven virtues, the three theological
(faith, hope, charity) and the four cardinal ones (prudence, justice, fortitude,
temperance). By their very nature the portrayals of sins are their dramatic
contrast, and imagination is given free rein in this case. The images of sins
are closer to life because artists can draw on everyday reality, so they are
more shocking and immediate. There is no danger for them to become abstract as
it often happens with the depictions of virtues. In relation to the conviction
of their reality, everyone in their imagination can freely shape their look and
add the contents.
Hinko
Smrekar (1883–1942) executed his woodcut series The Seven Deadly Sins (1927) in a well-thought-out, amusing and
provocative way. All personifications are male figures, changed to unrecognizability
due to a prolonged life in sin. They have not only been possessed by evil but
have themselves become the image of Evil. Their look with clawed hands, sharp
and long teeth, pointed ears and grotesque physiognomy is monstrous and in some
of them oversteps crude caricature and turns into the animalistic (Wrath, Gluttony, Envy). Their
essence is emphasized by their posture, which e.g. in the self-complacent,
corpulent Pride, stretched in a
period armchair, suggests excess superiority. The figure wears a crown, his
fingers are overloaded with rings with precious stones, the costume is richly
decorated, his narrowed eyes haughtily look downwards. Greed is presented as an old bony man squatting beside a chest of
jewellery, gobbling it up in secret, his body in a spasmodic posture, his eyes
feverishly bulging. Lust is a figure
of a plump hairy man, perhaps the “kindest” personification of all. He turns
his back on the viewer when he sits relaxedly in front of a picture of a female
nude that has made him lose his mind. His lust is shown by means of his nose
which acts as phallus, which is even more manifest in the coloured version of
the woodcut. Wrath, the closest to an
animal figure of all personifications, is flaming red, symbolic of hot temper, and
wildly tramples down everything that comes to his way. Gluttony is contentedly seated at a table overloaded with food and
is pushing a whole ham into his mouth. The man is corpulent, his widely open
mouth with enormous teeth looks like an entrance doorway, which indicates
immoderacy in all spheres. Envy, depicted
strictly frontally in a symmetrical posture, is the most thrilling of all. He
is squatting on the ground fully alert, his mouth waters, his eyes,
symbolically coloured red, which further enhances the evil effect, are on the watch
intently. He is a cold-blooded, evil figure, producing a destructive effect. Sloth is depicted lying in bed, with a
night cap on, deeply asleep. He seems completely exhausted, his hand has
dropped a book inscribed Adeo Cibis(So much food) which illustrates the sadness of mind and has a deeper meaning
than sloth itself.