Capital Vices

CAPITAL VICES. - Pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth are called c. v. or capital sins, according as they are considered as a habit or propensity (vice) or as a single act (actual sin). Before being a vice they are sinful acts: repetition creates the habit, that is, the vice.

These vices are called capital not because as sins they are the gravest — on the contrary, they often do not exceed venial guilt — but because they are the origin and guide to numerous other sins. Just as metaphorically the word head is used to indicate one who presides and guides, so too metaphorically these sins are the cause and guide of other sins (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 84). Such causality, however, is neither physical nor moral, but only impulsive and occasional, particularly, according to the Angelic Doctor, by reason of the end, inasmuch as he who is dominated by some capital vice is capable of committing any sin or crime, provided he may satisfy his vicious passion.

II. SEPTENARY NUMBER

Already in Sacred Scripture the various vices are named numerous times, individually or in groups; but these are not systematic enumerations. Some foundation for a logical classification may have been provided by the following texts: Sir. 10:15; 1 Tim. 6:9-10; 1 John 2:16. In fact, the first writers who attempt a classification place pride as the first universal source, on the basis of Sirach (10:15). After pride they enumerate the other seven vices: vainglory, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger and sloth, giving the number eight, which prevails in the East (v. below). In the West, on the other hand, after St. Gregory the Great (Moralia, XXXI, 45: PL 76, 620), the septenary number is commonly accepted, albeit with some dissent (cf. for example, to the contrary: St. Isidore of Seville, Differentiarum, II, no. 161 ff.: PL 83, 96 ff.; Alcuin, Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, 27-34: PL 101, 653-736). Moreover, even in the East there had not been lacking authors who adhered, for one reason or another, to the number seven (John Climacus, Scala paradisi, 30: PG 88, 948-1164; St. Maximus, Questiones ad Thalassium, prol.: PG 90, 253). St. Thomas observes (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 84, a. 4) that the number seven corresponds to the seven fundamental vicious tendencies of man. Man inordinately desires four kinds of goods, and shrinks from three other goods, because evil is joined to these. The first good desired is of a spiritual order: one's own excellence, honor and glory, which when desired inordinately cause pride and vainglory. The second good is that of the body, which is twofold: a) the preservation of the individual: and the inordinate use of food and drink is the cause of the vice of gluttony; b) the preservation of the species: and the inordinate use of the senses is the cause of lust. The fourth good is riches, attachment to which, when not guided by right reason, is the cause of avarice. There are then the three goods from which man inordinately shrinks: a) his own spiritual good, which is neglected because of fatigue; in this consists sloth; b) the good of others, which we flee from or which saddens us insofar as it lessens our excellence: this is envy; c) again the good of others, which we flee from and which drives us to vengeance; this causes anger (Sum. Theol., loc. cit.).

II. MALICE OF CAPITAL VICES

It always consists in a disorder, by which some good is desired or shunned. It does not exceed the malice of the other sins; on the contrary, there are some that are far graver: the hatred of God, blasphemy, for example. Often the capital sin does not reach the level of grave or mortal guilt; ordinarily, indeed, the sins of gluttony and anger are venial. Nor is it even a venial sin to procure a moderate pleasure in the use of food and drink, because it is willed by the author of nature in order to prompt their use, with the aim of preserving the individual; the disorder, and therefore the sin, lies in abuse by excess.

III. REMEDIES AGAINST CAPITAL VICES

Man is bound to combat the vices and to avoid their sins. Whoever knowingly and willingly fosters evil propensities and habits is in proximate danger of sinning gravely, and the wish to remain in such proximate danger is in itself a grave sin. The general means against all the capital vices are prayer, the frequent use of Penance and of the Eucharist, and a moderate practice of Christian mortification. The special remedies proper against the individual vices are: to consider in the light of faith the deformity of that particular vice, the baseness, for example, of avarice, which makes man so unreasonably a slave of riches as to come even to deprive himself of what is necessary for life, and his neighbor of the help owed to him in given circumstances. A most efficacious remedy is the imitation of Our Lord, striving to practice after his example acts of the virtues contrary to the individual vices: humility, against pride; generosity, almsgiving, against avarice; the exercise of temperance against gluttony, etc. For the treatment of the individual sins and capital vices, v. the relevant entries.

Gennaro Moretti

IV. CAPITAL VICES AMONG ORIENTALS

It is characteristic of the East to treat not of seven, according to the usage that prevailed in the West from the time of St. Gregory the Great, but of eight capital vices, following Evagrius and St. Maximus the Confessor, who moreover held that there is but one common vice, the root of the others: φιλαυτία (self-love). Comparing the list of the vices

one notices at once: a) the different order of the sins; b) the absence in the Western catalogue of vainglory and sadness; c) the characteristic splitting, in the Eastern one, of pride and vainglory; d) envy is not named in the East but is certainly included, according to the various authors, sometimes under ὀργή and sometimes under ἀκηδία.

The plausible origin of this theory, rejecting several hypotheses that are less or not at all well founded (Zöckler, Schiwietz), seems to have to be traced back to the allegorical explanation of the monk Serapion (of Tmui?), according to which the ascetic must undertake the struggle against the seven vices of the list, beginning with the 2nd, after having conquered the 1st of all, γαστριμαργία, in the manner in which Israel had still to overcome seven other nations after the victory over Egypt (Deut. 7:1; Cassian, Collatio, V, 17-18; PL 49, 635-36). Eight vices to be overcome, represented in the allegory of the eight nations. Nevertheless Serapion, and therefore Evagrius, who formed the system, would have drawn on the primordial form of the allegorical interpreter of Scripture, Origen, in whom is already found also the name λογισμοί (cf. Mt. 15:19), common to the Orientals for designating the eight capital vices (on the number eight for the capital vices, cf. also St. Nilus, Tractatus de octo spiritibus, 1: PG 79, 1145-64).

The order of these, then, established by Evagrius, seems to have to be derived from the tripartite division of the spiritual life proposed by him: 1) πράξις, to which would correspond the victory over the first three coarser vices; 2) θεωρία θεοτέρα, to which is rather suited the struggle against the vices that impede the first degree of contemplation, that is, the 3 following ones of the catalogue; 3) θεωρία προτέρα, to which are opposed the subtler vices (the last two), proper to the gnostics according to the authors of Eastern spirituality. Cassian further discussed the causality among the first six vices, different from the last two, while he alluded to the theory of the struggle against the dominant passion, since the struggle of each one could begin from different vices, as is obvious.

V. ICONOGRAPHY: v. VIRTÙ, Iconography.