Seven Deadly Sins Trivia
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100 free Seven Deadly Sins trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The seven deadly sins are not in the Bible. They were whittled down from a desert monk's list of eight temptations, translated into Latin, and fixed at seven by Pope Gregory I in 590, who added envy and decided pride was the worst of the lot. Since then the list has organised a mountain in Dante, a circular panel in the Prado, a Brecht and Weill ballet, a Canterbury tale and one very dark David Fincher film. These 100 questions move from theology to pop culture: the Latin names, Aquinas's five ways to overeat, which sin men confess most and which women do, the letters on Dante's forehead, Philip II's favourite Bosch, Gandhi's seven social sins, the knights of Nakaba Suzuki's manga and the homunculi of Fullmetal Alchemist. Easy ones ask which sin is hubris; hard ones ask who wrote the Psychomachia. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a pub round.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which virtue is the traditional remedy for the deadly sin of wrath?
Patience
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.
Q 02Which sixth-century pope revised an older monastic list of vices into the seven deadly sins?
Gregory I
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.
Q 03Which sin was added in 590 that had not been on the earlier list of eight?
Envy
Its Latin name is invidia; he also merged two pairs of older vices to land on seven.
Q 04How many forms of temptation did the monk Evagrius Ponticus settle on in the fourth century?
Eight
His Greek list of logismoi included sadness and boasting, which later lists merged away.
Q 05Which student of Evagrius carried his list of vices into the Latin West?
John Cassian
Cassian's Latin list included tristitia (sorrow) and vanagloria (vainglory) as separate entries.
Q 06What is the Latin name for the sin of sloth on the old Western list?
Acedia
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.
Q 07Which Latin word for a deadly sin means anger?
Ira
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.
Q 08Which theologian called the seven 'capital sins' because they are the head of all others?
Thomas Aquinas
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'.
Q 09Which queen does Dante place among the lustful in the second circle of his Inferno?
Cleopatra
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.
Q 10Gluttony shares its root with the Latin verb gluttire, which means what?
To gulp down
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.
Q 11How many forms of overindulgence in food did Aquinas list, including eating too soon?
Five
Laute, studiose, nimis, praepropere and ardenter: too expensively, daintily, much, soon and eagerly.
Q 12Aquinas defined which sin as 'sorrow about spiritual good'?
Sloth
Unlike the others, it is a sin of avoiding responsibilities rather than committing an act.
Q 13Which Shakespeare play calls jealousy, envy's close cousin, 'the green-eyed monster'?
Othello
Othello hears the warning from Iago, the very man who is busy stoking his jealousy.
Q 14Which philosopher wrote in The Conquest of Happiness (1930) that envy is a potent cause of unhappiness?
Q 21A 2009 Jesuit study of confessions found which sin was most often confessed by women?
Pride
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'.
Q 22Which of these belongs to the three theological virtues rather than the four cardinal virtues?
Charity
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.
Q 23Which virtue is usually paired against lust on the list of seven capital virtues?
Chastity
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.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell ranked envy next to worry among the causes of misery, yet in the same chapter he called it 'the basis of democracy'.
Q 15Which author wrote in Mere Christianity that pride is 'the complete anti-God state of mind'?
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis called pride 'the great sin', arguing that it leads to every other vice and sets a person directly against God.
Q 16'Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall' comes from which Bible book?
Proverbs
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.
Q 17Which Greek word for overbearing pride is often used as another name for the deadly sin?
Hubris
Hubris was a crime in ancient Athens, where the word covered wanton violence meant to shame a victim; English borrowed it for overbearing pride.
Q 18Which vice, listed separately in early catalogues of the deadly sins, was later merged into pride?
Vainglory
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.
Q 19Desert monks called the listless boredom that became the sin of sloth the demon of which time of day?
Noon
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.
Q 20A 2009 study of confessions found which sin was most commonly confessed by men?
Lust
The same Jesuit study found that women most often confessed to pride.
Q 24The poem Psychomachia pits personified vices against virtues in what kind of contest?
A battle
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.
Q 25Which poem by Dante has souls climb seven terraces, one for each deadly sin?
Purgatorio
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.
Q 26On Dante's first terrace, how are the proud souls punished?
Bent under huge stones
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.
Q 27Which letter, read as the Latin for sin, does an angel erase from Dante's forehead on each terrace?
P
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.
Q 28Which sin does Dante's fourth terrace purge with souls in ceaseless activity?
Sloth
Having failed to act in pursuit of love in life, the slothful run around the terrace calling out examples of zeal.
Q 29On Dante's fifth terrace, how are the avaricious and prodigal punished?
Face-down on the ground
Face-down on the ground and unable to move, they stare at the earth because in life they cared too much for earthly goods.
Q 30Which French king personifies greed on Dante's fifth terrace?
Hugh Capet
He bemoans how avarice motivated his successors and 'prophesies' events after the poem's date.