Boilers to boil. Souls to suffer and be tortured, unclean. Devils and demons to haunt people who have sinned. Images taken from Dante's Hell. One surefire way to experience all of this is to have at least one of them seven deadly sins.
How they arose, however, in the lives of Christians since they are not mentioned in any of the Gospels that conveyed to people his work and words Jesus; The seven deadly sins, in short, did not exist but had to be created. The reason is simple. The church had to somehow show the faithful what they should and especially what they should not do.
And since there are seven deadly sins, then there must be all seven virtues. The "adversary awe" who, since the believer knew what he should not do to go to paradise, would "show" him what he must do in order to secure a place in the kingdom of heaven.
The seven deadly sins
As already mentioned none of the Gospel does not write the slightest thing about the existence of the seven deadly sins. What exists is essentially a holistic way of behaving that should characterize believers in religion. This is exactly the way we behave, in a more structured form, we encounter for the first time in his letter Apostle Paul to the Gauls. There the Apostle in an attempt to determine the rules of conduct mentions lust, jealousy, adultery, etc. without, however, making any reference to "deadly sins".
"Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God," the Apostle writes characteristically.
This is exactly the letter that the first Christians took many years later and gradually turned it into what we know today as the list of the seven deadly sins.
According to what is known, the first to attempt to do such a thing in a more structured form was a monk and Byzantine writer, Evagrios Pontikos, who was born in the city of Iberia of Pontus in 345 AD and was the first Christian to compile the list. . The only "issue" is that the seven deadly sins as described by Evagrios were… eight and specifically: 1) Gastronomy, 2) Prostitution, 3) Avarice, 4) Pride, 5) Sadness, 6) Anger, 7) Vanity and 8) Ἀκηδία.
Evagrios' list was written in Greek. Then it was translated into Latin and in the 6th century, Pope Gregory I the "Great" adopted the list as official and Christian που proper. This happened in 591 AD and after the pope had first made some minor improvements. He united arrogance with pride and affliction with sorrow (forming the sin of laziness). At the same time, he added jealousy and thus the sins became seven! Moreover, he prioritized them and put them at the top and therefore worst of all the arrogance, which he defined as the root of all evil. Then and always in order… seriousness was jealousy, anger, laziness, greed, greed and finally, lust.
The hell of Dante and the demons
Obviously, the fate of those Christians who did not follow the list of the seven deadly sins was a journey without returning to hell. This is how he entered the life of Christians. And because what affects (positively or negatively) people's lives soon passes into art, there were many who gave an artistic dimension to the subject. To this day, the most inspiring example is the police action movie "Seven" starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. Of course, before the film, great works had preceded, such as theatrical essays, sculptures and paintings.
However, when we talk about the seven deadly sins, everyone's mind goes almost completely to Dante's famous "Divine Comedy". In this great work, the author connects, in fact, each of the seven sins with a demon as punishment, while at the same time he gives a short explanation:
1. Arrogance (Superbia) / arrogance, to consider oneself superior / Azazel
2. Jealousy (Invidia)/ envy, jealousy, one who is bothered by the success of others / Leviathan
3. Anger (Ira) / anger, resentment and vengeful behavior / Satan (Satan / Amon)
4. Laziness (Acedia) / escape, laziness / Belphegor
5. Greed (Avaritia) / greed, a situation in which one wants more and more / Mammon
6. Gluttony (Gula) / bulimia, when one eats a lot, non-stop and fast / Beelzebub
7. Lust (Luxuria) lust, a state in which man does not control his sexual desires / Asmodeus.
The seven redemptive virtues
Because, however, where there is evil, there is also good for the balance of things, in parallel with the seven deadly sins there are the corresponding redemptive virtues which, as is normal, close the way to hell and open the one that leads to hell. Paradise. The list compiled by later theologians is as follows:
1. Humiliation
2. Almsgiving
3. Wisdom
4. Fasting
5. Love
6. Long-suffering and
7. Prayer