Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins Edited by Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard (review)

Abstract

Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins. Edited by Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard. (Rochester, NY: York University Press in association with Boydell Sc Brewer. 2012. Pp. xvi, 338. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-903153-41-3.)Thirteen authors examine a variety of representations of the Seven Deadly Sins over many centuries, in words, music, and art. Generalizations about the decline of the heptad and its replacement by the Ten Commandments are accepted or confronted and revised. The subjects range from the greats (St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Gerson, Hieronymus Bosch, Edmund Spenser, Philipp Melanchthon) to the less famous and the obscure. Richard G. Newhauser's learned introduction provides a valuable overview, but there is a singular attraction in the diversity of the subjects and the richness of the details-which this brief review can only list and suggest.James B. Williams recounts the central role played by St. Benedict of Aniane (and the Carolingian reformers) in expanding the definition of acedia from spiritual to physical labor, and intimates a wider influence through Benedictine pastoral work. Kiril Petkov believes that the seven deadly sins are now more likely to elicit praise than condemnation-except for the minor vice of arrogance, whose ancient and medieval identity as vainglory continues to arouse moral indignation. Kate Gunn identifies traditional sources (Cassian, St. Gregory the Great) for the twelfth-century dialogue Vices and Virtues. Intended for use, not for show (p. 84), it occupies a transitional place among guides to confession prior to 1215 (with comparisons to the more forward-looking De vera et falsa penitencia, which it quotes, and the Ancrene Wisse). Eileen Sweeney compares Aquinas's treatment of the seven deadly sins in De malo (dependent on Gregory the Great) and the Aristotelianized Summa theologiae 2a 2ae. Abandoning ascetic dualism, the Summa accepts the passions as natural (gluttony preserves life, lust promotes procreation, anger can be righteous, etc.). Yet sexuality is the place where Aquinas loses a little of his unflappable detachment (p. 95). Holly Johnson presents a fifteenth-century Franciscan preacher's ingenious interweaving of interrelated heptads-deadly sins, diseases, Christ's sufferings, and cures-in a meticulous analysis of the sermon's argument, logic, and rhetoric. Nancy McLoughlin describes Gerson's application of the deadly sins to defenses and critiques of medieval hierarchies, most particularly the Church, secular authority, and the university (which Gerson equated with charity, reason and divine wisdom [p. …