100 Fun Facts About Seven Deadly Sins

Which virtue is the traditional remedy for the deadly sin of wrath?

Patience counters wrath in the scheme that gives each deadly sin an opposing virtue to practise as its cure, such as humility for pride and diligence for sloth.

Which sixth-century pope revised an older monastic list of vices into the seven deadly sins?

Gregory I, known as Gregory the Great, set out his seven in a work called the Moralia and added envy, which the monks' earlier list had lacked.

Which sin was added in 590 that had not been on the earlier list of eight?

Its Latin name is invidia; he also merged two pairs of older vices to land on seven.

How many forms of temptation did the monk Evagrius Ponticus settle on in the fourth century?

His Greek list of logismoi included sadness and boasting, which later lists merged away.

Which student of Evagrius carried his list of vices into the Latin West?

Cassian's Latin list included tristitia (sorrow) and vanagloria (vainglory) as separate entries.

What is the Latin name for the sin of sloth on the old Western list?

Acedia comes from a Greek word for indifference, literally 'lack of care'; long before it meant laziness it named a monk's listless neglect of his spiritual duties.

Which Latin word for a deadly sin means anger?

Ira gives English the word ire. Medieval theology counted it sinful only when it defied reason; anger directed against vice was called 'zealous anger' and judged good.

Which theologian called the seven 'capital sins' because they are the head of all others?

Thomas Aquinas took 'capital' from the Latin caput, a head. His own seven left pride off the list, ranking it above the rest as the 'queen of them all'.

Which queen does Dante place among the lustful in the second circle of his Inferno?

Cleopatra is flung about with Dido and Helen of Troy in a storm that never rests, an image of how desire carried the lustful away in life.

Gluttony shares its root with the Latin verb gluttire, which means what?

To gulp down, or swallow, is the sense of gluttire. Medieval theologians stretched the sin well beyond overeating to cover eating too soon, too expensively or too daintily.

How many forms of overindulgence in food did Aquinas list, including eating too soon?

Laute, studiose, nimis, praepropere and ardenter: too expensively, daintily, much, soon and eagerly.

Aquinas defined which sin as 'sorrow about spiritual good'?

Unlike the others, it is a sin of avoiding responsibilities rather than committing an act.

Which Shakespeare play calls jealousy, envy's close cousin, 'the green-eyed monster'?

Othello hears the warning from Iago, the very man who is busy stoking his jealousy.

Which philosopher wrote in The Conquest of Happiness (1930) that envy is a potent cause of unhappiness?

Bertrand Russell ranked envy next to worry among the causes of misery, yet in the same chapter he called it 'the basis of democracy'.

Which author wrote in Mere Christianity that pride is 'the complete anti-God state of mind'?

C. S. Lewis called pride 'the great sin', arguing that it leads to every other vice and sets a person directly against God.

'Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall' comes from which Bible book?

Proverbs 16:18 is usually shortened to 'pride goes before a fall', but in the verse pride comes before destruction and it is a haughty spirit that precedes the fall.

Which Greek word for overbearing pride is often used as another name for the deadly sin?

Hubris was a crime in ancient Athens, where the word covered wanton violence meant to shame a victim; English borrowed it for overbearing pride.

Which vice, listed separately in early catalogues of the deadly sins, was later merged into pride?

Vainglory, not pride, sat on the sixth-century list of seven; pride stood above them all as their 'queen' until later lists folded the two together.

Desert monks called the listless boredom that became the sin of sloth the demon of which time of day?

Noon was when it struck: the monk John Cassian wrote that it troubles a hermit around the sixth hour like a recurring fever, and that some elders took it for the 'midday demon' of the Psalms.

A 2009 study of confessions found which sin was most commonly confessed by men?

The same Jesuit study found that women most often confessed to pride.

A 2009 Jesuit study of confessions found which sin was most often confessed by women?

Pride led for women in the Jesuit scholar Roberto Busa's study of confessions; presenting it in the Vatican newspaper, the Pope's theologian wrote that 'men and women sin in different ways'.

Which of these belongs to the three theological virtues rather than the four cardinal virtues?

Charity joins faith and hope as the three theological virtues, while the four cardinal virtues go back to the pagan philosopher Plato; put together they make seven.

Which virtue is usually paired against lust on the list of seven capital virtues?

Chastity belongs to a second set of seven virtues, each chosen as the direct opposite of one deadly sin; in the same scheme temperance is kept for gluttony.

The poem Psychomachia pits personified vices against virtues in what kind of contest?

A battle: the title means roughly 'soul war', and its virtues are women warriors, Hope and Humility among them, who fight and defeat vices such as Pride.

Which poem by Dante has souls climb seven terraces, one for each deadly sin?

Purgatorio sets pride on the lowest terrace and lust on the highest; each time Dante climbs to the next, an angel wipes one mark of sin from his brow.

On Dante's first terrace, how are the proud souls punished?

Bent under huge stones, the proud are forced to look down as they walk, and the floor beneath them is carved with scenes of pride brought low.

Which letter, read as the Latin for sin, does an angel erase from Dante's forehead on each terrace?

P is usually read as peccatum, Latin for sin: an angel cuts seven of them into Dante's brow with a sword point, and he feels the climb grow lighter as each one is wiped away.

Which sin does Dante's fourth terrace purge with souls in ceaseless activity?

Having failed to act in pursuit of love in life, the slothful run around the terrace calling out examples of zeal.

On Dante's fifth terrace, how are the avaricious and prodigal punished?

Face-down on the ground and unable to move, they stare at the earth because in life they cared too much for earthly goods.

Which French king personifies greed on Dante's fifth terrace?

He bemoans how avarice motivated his successors and 'prophesies' events after the poem's date.

Which 1995 thriller follows two detectives hunting a killer who stages murders on the deadly sins?

David Fincher directed it from Andrew Kevin Walker's script; it grossed $327 million worldwide.

In the film Seven, which sin is written on the wall at the first murder scene?

Gluttony opens the killer's series: an obese man is forced to eat until it kills him, and the next crime scene is marked 'greed'.

Who plays the serial killer John Doe in Seven?

Kevin Spacey was a last-minute choice, cast only days before he started shooting his scenes as the killer.

In Seven, the killer says he himself represents which sin?

He envied Mills's life with Tracy, and urges Mills to become wrath.

Andrew Kevin Walker wrote Seven's screenplay while working as a sales assistant at which New York music retailer?

Tower Records paid Walker's rent while he wrote; he has said the film's bleak, unnamed city came out of how depressing he found New York at the time.

Who directed Seven, taking over a project first handed to the director of Christmas Vacation?

David Fincher had made only one feature, Alien 3, an experience so bruising he said he would rather die of colon cancer than make another movie.

Which writer inspired the name of Morgan Freeman's character in Seven?

W. Somerset Maugham was screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker's favourite author, so the detective became William Somerset; Walker had pictured William Hurt in the part.

Which actor did the makers of Seven originally want as the killer John Doe, only to be turned down?

Ned Beatty said no, and the search ran as far as R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who was also considered for the killer.

Which composer of The Silence of the Lambs score also wrote the music for Seven?

Howard Shore's own upbeat opening theme was dropped: the title sequence runs instead to a harsh remix of the Nine Inch Nails song 'Closer'.

Which museum displays Bosch's painting The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things?

The Prado took the panel in during the Spanish Civil War; a 2015 research project called it the work of a follower, a verdict the museum's own scholars reject.

The centre of the large circle in Bosch's sins painting is usually read as what?

The eye of God has the risen Christ as its pupil, set above a Latin warning, 'Beware, beware, the Lord sees', while the sins play out in the ring around it.

Which Spanish king owned Bosch's painting of the sins and sent it to his monastery palace of El Escorial?

Philip II sent it to El Escorial in 1574 and kept collecting Bosch: years later he bought The Garden of Earthly Delights at auction and gave that to the monastery too.

Which leader published a list of 'seven social sins' in Young India in 1925?

Mahatma Gandhi printed the list in his weekly paper but did not write it: it was sent to him, and an almost identical one had been preached at Westminster Abbey earlier that year.

The 1925 'seven social sins' list includes 'science without' what?

Humanity completes the phrase, alongside 'wealth without work' and 'commerce without morality'; the list had first been preached in a London sermon earlier that year.

Who wrote and drew the manga The Seven Deadly Sins, about knights named for the sins?

Nakaba Suzuki borrowed his knights' names from tales of King Arthur but invented their personalities and story himself; the series won a Kodansha Manga Award in 2015.

In the manga The Seven Deadly Sins, what is the name of the knights' leader?

Meliodas bears the Dragon Sin of Wrath, yet when Princess Elizabeth tracks him down he is running a travelling bar, the Boar Hat, with a pig for company.

In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, which character created the homunculi named for the deadly sins?

Father made them by casting out what he saw as his own flaws, one sin at a time, so each homunculus is a piece of his own character.

In Fullmetal Alchemist, which homunculus is called 'the Ultimate Shield' and betrays the others?

Greed can turn his skin into diamond-hard armour, hence the nickname, and he walks out on the other homunculi because he wants money, women and possessions for himself.

Which composer wrote the 1933 sung ballet The Seven Deadly Sins with Bertolt Brecht?

Kurt Weill wrote it in Paris in 1933 after the Nazi takeover drove him from Berlin; it proved to be his last major collaboration with Brecht.

Which Canterbury Tales pilgrim delivers a treatise on penitence and the sins instead of a story?

The Parson, asked for a fable, refuses to tell one and instead closes the Canterbury Tales with a long sermon on penance and the seven deadly sins.

Which chipmaker took its name from the Latin word for envy, one of the seven deadly sins?

Nvidia comes from invidia, the Latin for envy. The founders first fancied the name NVision, but a toilet-paper maker had already taken it.

Which monster of Greek myth guards the gluttons in the third circle of Dante's Inferno?

Cerberus claws at the gluttons as they lie in freezing slush under an endless icy rain. Dante's guide gets past by throwing mud into the beast's three mouths.

Which demon did Peter Binsfeld match with greed in 1589, using a New Testament word for riches?

Mammon is the word Jesus uses in 'You cannot serve both God and mammon'. Medieval writers turned that term for wealth into a demon in his own right.

In the film Seven, which sin does Detective David Mills become when he shoots the killer John Doe?

Wrath is the part John Doe has saved for Mills. The studio pushed for a more heroic ending in which Mills held his fire, but the director and his star refused to change it.

Which biblical brother does Dante's Purgatorio hold up as its great warning example of envy?

Cain is named not for killing Abel but for the jealousy that came first. On the same terrace Dante also hears voices telling stories of generosity, the opposite virtue.

Which Roman poet guides Dante up the terraces of Mount Purgatory, where the deadly sins are purged?

Virgil stands for human reason in the poem, so he can lead Dante only so far. Near the summit, where reason runs out, Beatrice takes over as guide.

Which DC superhero battles the seven deadly sins as monsters unleashed by Doctor Sivana?

Shazam fights the sins as seven demons living in a magic orb lodged in Sivana's eye socket. On the 2019 film's set they were stunt performers in motion-capture suits.

Which English epic has a proud Satan declare it better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven?

Paradise Lost traces the whole war in Heaven to pride. Satan rebels when God anoints the Son above him, and a third of the angels follow him down.

The manga The Seven Deadly Sins borrows its characters' names from tales of which legendary hero?

King Arthur and his court supplied the names, though the personalities and the plot are the author's own. He had wanted to draw an Arthurian fantasy for years and kept having the idea rejected.

The English name of the sin of sloth was built in the 12th century from which everyday adjective?

Slow plus the ending -th made the Middle English word 'slouthe'. The tree-dwelling animal only took the name in the 1610s, as a translation of its Portuguese name.

Which lesser kind of sin may be left unconfessed in Catholic teaching, unlike a mortal sin?

Venial sins injure a person's friendship with God without breaking it. Confessing them is still recommended, just not required.

Which actor cut tendons in his hand filming a rain-soaked chase as Detective David Mills in Seven?

Brad Pitt did the stunt himself, slipped on a wet car hood and went through the windscreen. He came back days later in a forearm cast, which had to be written into the remaining scenes.

In which modern language does the word Lust still simply mean pleasure, as it once did in English?

German kept the innocent sense of the word. English lust narrowed to sinful desire after Bible translators chose it for phrases such as 'lusts of the flesh'.

In which Christopher Marlowe play are the seven deadly sins paraded before a scholar who sold his soul?

Doctor Faustus is shown the pageant by Lucifer, who lays it on as a distraction the moment the scholar starts to think about repenting.

What is done to the eyes of the envious on the second terrace of Dante's Purgatorio?

Sewn shut with iron wire, their eyes can no longer look on other people's good fortune. Dante borrowed the image from falconry, where a hawk's eyelids were stitched to tame it.

Which demon, long cast as the prince of lust, kills seven husbands of Sarah in the Book of Tobit?

Asmodeus strikes down each bridegroom on the wedding night. Tobias finally drives him off with the smoke of a fish's heart and liver laid on hot cinders.

Which Canterbury Tales pilgrim preaches that greed is the root of all evils while selling fake relics?

The Pardoner happily admits he preaches against avarice only to fill his own purse. The saints' bones he carries around are really pig bones.

In the anime The Seven Deadly Sins, which thief became immortal by drinking from the Fountain of Youth?

Ban carries the fox mark of the Sin of Greed and the nickname Undead Ban. For a legendary bandit he is written as a surprisingly good-natured man.

Which streaming service licensed the anime The Seven Deadly Sins in 2015 as its second exclusive anime?

Netflix picked the series up after Knights of Sidonia. In 2017 the company said it was the fourth most binge-watched show on the platform within a day of release.

In the anime The Seven Deadly Sins, which knight's strength peaks for a single minute at noon?

Escanor looks scrawny until daylight builds him up. At the sun's zenith he becomes 'The One', stronger than any living thing, and he bears the lion mark of the Sin of Pride.

Which Rodin sculpture was first titled after Francesca da Rimini, whom Dante put among the lustful in Hell?

The Kiss began as a small relief of Francesca and her brother-in-law Paolo on Rodin's portal The Gates of Hell. In the marble version the lovers' lips never actually touch.

Which novel takes its title from a name for Beelzebub, the demon Peter Binsfeld tied to gluttony?

Lord of the Flies is a literal translation of the name Beelzebub. In William Golding's novel the title belongs to a pig's head on a sharpened stick, swarming with insects.

In Dante's Inferno, the wrathful tear at one another forever in the swampy waters of which river?

The Styx forms a stinking marsh in Dante's fifth circle. The openly angry brawl on its surface while the sullen lie sunk beneath the slime.

In Dante's Purgatorio, pride, sloth and lust alike are explained as a warped form of which impulse?

Love gone wrong is Dante's whole theory of sin: it can be aimed at harming others, be too weak, or chase good things to excess. His guide lays the scheme out halfway up the mountain.

Which Flemish painter of peasant weddings designed a 1558 set of engravings of the seven deadly sins?

Pieter Bruegel the Elder drew the designs for the Antwerp print publisher Hieronymus Cock, filling them with monsters in the manner of Bosch. He designed a companion series on the virtues too.

Which Russian-born choreographer staged the 1933 Paris premiere of the sung ballet The Seven Deadly Sins?

George Balanchine produced, directed and choreographed the premiere. In 1958 he staged it again at New York City Ballet, with Lotte Lenya back in the singing role she had created.

Which actress played Lust in the 1967 comedy Bedazzled, opposite Peter Cook and Dudley Moore?

Raquel Welch, credited as Lilian Lust, is on screen only briefly. Peter Cook's Devil keeps all seven sins on his staff, with Barry Humphries as Envy.

In Fullmetal Alchemist, which tattoo marks the body of every homunculus named for a deadly sin?

The Ouroboros, a serpent swallowing its own tail, sits somewhere different on each of them. King Bradley's is on an eye he keeps hidden under a patch.

In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, which flame-wielding colonel burns the homunculus Lust to death?

Roy Mustang blasts her with fire again and again until the Philosopher's Stone that keeps reviving her is spent. She dies taunting him about the doom to come.

The seven deadly sins grew from a list of thoughts that tempted fourth-century desert monks in which country?

Egypt was home to the hermit colonies of Nitria and Kellia, where the monk Evagrius Ponticus spent his last years writing about the temptations of desert life.

Which Jim Henson series had a 1975 pilot, subtitled Sex and Violence, built around a Seven Deadly Sins pageant?

The Muppet Show had two pilots, and this second one aired on ABC in March 1975 with Sam the Eagle helping to organise the pageant. Kermit, later the host, had only a cameo.

Which ice cream brand once sold a limited-edition 7 Deadly Sins range, with each flavour named after a sin?

Magnum's sins sold so well that in 2005 the brand tried to repeat the trick with 5 Senses, a range including flavours named Aroma, Touch and Taste.

In which film does Gordon Gekko defend one deadly sin with the line 'Greed, for lack of a better word, is good'?

Wall Street won Michael Douglas an Oscar for the part. Director Oliver Stone based the line on a real speech by the trader Ivan Boesky, who told business graduates 'I think greed is healthy'.

In the Bosch painting of the seven deadly sins, the Four Last Things are death, heaven, hell and what?

Judgment fills one of four small circles around the main ring, with Christ in glory as angels wake the dead. The sins themselves are acted out as scenes from everyday life.

In The Seven Deadly Sins anime, the heroes' travelling bar rides on the back of which giant green animal?

A pig the size of a hill, known as Hawk's Mother, carries the bar from town to town. Her talking son Hawk eats the leftovers as self-appointed captain of scraps disposal.

In the manga The Seven Deadly Sins, which princess of Liones sets out to find the disbanded knights?

Elizabeth is the third princess of Liones, the adopted younger sister of Margaret and Veronica. She wants the knights to free her kingdom from the Holy Knights who have seized it.

In the anime The Seven Deadly Sins, which band of elite demons was hand-picked by the Demon King?

The Ten Commandments each wield a curse that plays on the virtue they stand for. Those curses turn out to be fragments of the Demon King's own soul.

Which young knight is the hero of Four Knights of the Apocalypse, the sequel to The Seven Deadly Sins?

Percival was invented for the sequel. The author's first plan was to give the lead to Tristan, a boy introduced at the very end of the original series.

In the anime The Seven Deadly Sins, Diane, who bears the Serpent Sin of Envy, belongs to which clan?

Giants in the series are enormous and long-lived: Diane stands thirty feet tall and is 750 years old. Her home village is called Mega Dozer.

In Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom novels, seven villains who each embody a deadly sin are named after what?

Days of the week name the Trustees, from Mister Monday to Lord Sunday, and each of the seven books takes its title from the villain it features.

In which 14th-century poem by William Langland do the seven deadly sins make confession one by one?

Piers Plowman has the sins repent after Reason preaches to a field full of folk. As penance they try to set off on a pilgrimage to Saint Truth.

Which French New Wave director made the Sloth episode of the 1962 anthology film The Seven Deadly Sins?

Jean-Luc Godard cast Eddie Constantine as himself, a film star too lazy to go through with seducing a starlet. Claude Chabrol and Jacques Demy directed two of the other sins.

Which famously reclusive novelist wrote a 1993 New York Times essay on sloth, 'Nearer, My Couch, to Thee'?

Thomas Pynchon wrote it for a Book Review series on the deadly sins. He argues that by the time of Melville's Bartleby, sloth had turned from a sin against God into an offence against the economy.

Which friend of Chaucer wrote Confessio Amantis, where a lover confesses the seven deadly sins to a priest of Venus?

John Gower has Venus's chaplain, Genius, walk the lovesick Amans through each sin as it plays out in courtship. By the poem's own account, Richard II commissioned it after a chance meeting on the Thames.

Which demon, cast as the prince of sloth, comes to Earth to find a wife in a novella by Machiavelli?

Belphegor was the demon of sloth on a famous list of 1589, though an earlier English tract had given him gluttony. Machiavelli's tale was later turned into an opera by Respighi.

In the 1933 sung ballet The Seven Deadly Sins, a singer and a dancer play two sisters who share which first name?

Anna I sings and Anna II dances as the sisters leave Louisiana to earn the money for a family house, meeting one deadly sin in each of seven American cities.

Which apostle is traditionally credited with the letter warning that the love of money is the root of all evil?

Paul is the traditional author of the First Epistle to Timothy, where the warning appears. The verse blames the love of money, not money itself, and sits beside advice to steer clear of envy.

The deadly sin of gluttony gives which fierce member of the weasel family its Latin genus name, Gulo?

The wolverine may owe its greedy reputation to a mix-up. One theory is that a Norwegian name meaning 'mountain cat' was garbled abroad into a word meaning 'devours much'.

Which actress played Tracy, the wife of Detective David Mills, in the film Seven?

Gwyneth Paltrow was recommended by her co-star, who had been impressed by her audition for Legends of the Fall. Christina Applegate had already turned the part down.

Which American evangelist, famous for his stadium crusades, wrote the 1955 book Freedom from the Seven Deadly Sins?

Billy Graham was explaining a list that is not set out anywhere in the Bible. It grew out of early Christian teaching, and Protestant churches such as the Lutherans and Methodists kept it.