The Seven Deadly Sins

Summary

Dan Snow's History Hit – "The Seven Deadly Sins" (May 14, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Snow is joined by historian Peter Jones, author of Self Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living. Their lively conversation traces the origins, cultural impact, and enduring relevance of the seven deadly sins, exploring how these ancient concepts shaped medieval society and still resonate in the modern world. Dan even takes a playful "sin quiz" to discover his personal cardinal vice.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of the Seven Deadly Sins

• Not Biblical, but Monastic:
  Dan Snow opens by reminding listeners that the seven deadly sins are not found in the Bible; they originate from a system devised by the 4th-century Greek monk, Evagrius Ponticus (03:05).
  • “You’ll be surprised to learn that the seven deadly sins aren’t in the Bible. They were thought up by a Greek monk, really in the 4th century..." – Dan Snow [03:05]
• Evagrius’ System:
  After a scandal, Evagrius retreated to the Egyptian desert, where he conducted introspective exercises and categorized “generic thoughts” or temptations into eight groups (06:03).
  • “He spends his day weaving baskets, watching the sun rise and set...decides he's going to write down every tempting, negative, difficult thought in this enormous thing which he later publishes as a book.” – Peter Jones [06:08]
• From Eight to Seven:
  Originally eight categories, including both pride/vainglory and sloth/sadness. Pride and vainglory were merged and sadness dropped, while envy was later added by Pope Gregory the Great (07:21, 12:22, 12:28).
  • “There were two things that we now call pride: pride and vainglory… and two kinds of sadness: sloth and sadness.” – Peter Jones [07:21]

---

2. Evolution and Institutionalization

• Branding & Spread:
  The system was spread and popularized by John Cassian, who reframed the “generic thoughts” as deadly sins for preaching and teaching (08:30).
  • “John Cassian goes to the desert and discovers the Vagrias system and thinks, this is fantastic… But he thinks it needs a tweak.” – Peter Jones [07:56]
• Role of Gregory the Great:
  Pope Gregory further streamlined and gave a hierarchy to the sins, cementing their place in Christian doctrine (12:22, 12:28).
• Societal Control:
  The Church used the seven deadly sins as a practical and psychological framework to guide moral behavior, especially after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 mandated annual confession (13:45, 15:12, 16:12).
  • “One of them is that every single person must make confession once a year... These confessions, suddenly priests have to get really serious.” – Peter Jones [16:12]
• Beyond the Bible:
  The sins became central to popular piety, entering art, literature, and the very fabric of medieval daily life (22:11).
  • “They just take off exponentially after 1215… You go into any library in Europe… chances are you’re going to see the seven deadly sins somewhere there.” – Peter Jones [22:11]

---

3. The Seven Sins in Practice and Thought

• The List, Hierarchies, and Meanings:
  The canonical order and deeper meanings were clarified:

  1. Pride
  2. Envy
  3. Anger
  4. Sloth (Acadia, more accurately depression/burnout)
  5. Avarice
  6. Gluttony
  7. Lust

• Psychological Insights:
  Both speakers liken the seven deadly sins to a “periodic table of the mind,” mapping universal human weaknesses.

  • “I see them as the periodic table of the mind. They diagnose this kind of periodic table of desire and impulse that still stands up and still works.” – Peter Jones [10:44]
  • Dan notes their ongoing relevance regardless of faith:
    • “Useful, whatever your belief system today. Quite useful to be aware of these and recognize it in yourself and others.” – Dan Snow [11:13]

• Sloth as Acadia/Depression:
  Peter clarifies that medieval “sloth” was more akin to depression or burnout rather than laziness (24:34).

  • “Sloth is… somewhere between inertia, depression, what we might now call depression, boredom, restlessness… it’s the medieval language of depression.” – Peter Jones [24:34]

---

4. Compassion or Control? The Sins in Medieval Society

• Tools for Growth, Not Just Punishment:
  The sins were more often presented as opportunities for introspection and self-improvement than as sticks for social control.
  • “The majority of texts are really understanding and compassionate… The message is all of us have to work on these constantly, and that work is never done.” – Peter Jones [27:34]
• Therapy before Therapy:
  Dan likens the process of confession and reflection to therapy, with Peter confirming that “raising people’s awareness” and ongoing self-work were key (29:55, 33:17).
  • “Actually this sounds like therapy...a quite a compassionate system.” – Dan Snow [29:55]
  • “They wanted you to talk through these seven and recognize these and work on them. I don't think they wanted you to eradicate them at all. The surprise is that medieval Christianity wasn't a system for making perfect souls.” – Peter Jones [33:31]
• The Sins in Community Life:
  The sins mapped neatly onto daily concerns—envy in the village, sloth in farmwork, pride in social hierarchies—making them pragmatic guides for ordinary people (26:12, 26:41).

---

5. After the Middle Ages

• Reformation Weakens Their Hold:
  The Reformation diminished the cultural dominance of the seven deadly sins, as Protestants refocused on scripture and rejected many extra-biblical traditions (34:20).

  • “Reformation...is kind of where they lose some of their power...they're part of that architecture that gets ripped away in the Reformation.” – Peter Jones [34:20]

• Still Culturally Important
  The sins endure in literature, art, and popular culture; their archetypes remain recognizable and powerful (34:44).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Enduring Relevance of the Sins

• "I can't find a single species of human wrongdoing or, you know, even right-doing that doesn't come back to one of these seven things."
  — Peter Jones [10:44]

On Sloth/Acadia

• "It's a sense of falling out of love with all the things that used to light up your life."
  — Peter Jones [24:34]

On Envy

• "If I'm envious of you, I don't want your antique clocks. I want your antique clocks to explode."
  — Peter Jones [43:29]

On Gluttony

• "Gluttony…also includes a fixation and a fuss about food and drink...you refuse because you don't like the food in that restaurant...or you fuss too much about your coffee.”
  — Peter Jones [45:17]

On Anger

• "Medieval theologians describe it as a love of being right, the enjoyment of being right… anger is when you start to enjoy the feeling of being right more than putting things right itself."
  — Peter Jones [42:45]

On Avarice

• "Avarice is not just a desire for money. It's an appreciation of objects, an attention to the beauty and complexity of material things in a way that involves a lot of care… What makes avarice antisocial is when our attention to objects makes us more interested in the objects than we are in people."
  — Peter Jones [40:29]

---

Fun Segment: Dan’s Sin Quiz

• Peter walks Dan through a light-hearted quiz to diagnose his personal “sin.”
  • “Dan, your sin is avarice.” – Peter Jones [40:14]
  • Peter reframes avarice affectionately as a passion for objects and craftsmanship, only problematic when it turns into social withdrawal (40:29).
  • Dan: “They would not have liked Instagram.” – Dan Snow [41:42]

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:05] – Introduction to the seven deadly sins: origins and misconceptions
• [07:11] – The original eight categories of “generic thoughts”
• [12:22] – Pope Gregory the Great's role and the creation of the canonical seven
• [15:12] – The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and compulsory annual confession
• [22:11] – Explosion of the sins’ popularity in art, sermons, and literature
• [24:34] – The true meaning of sloth (Acadia) as depression/burnout
• [27:34] – How the sins could become tools for compassion or control
• [29:55] – The sins as a therapeutic, introspective process
• [33:17] – Confession as talking therapy for self-awareness, not perfection
• [34:20] – Reformation and the decline of the sins’ dominance
• [37:31] – Dan’s personal seven deadly sins quiz
• [40:14] – Diagnosis: Dan’s cardinal sin is avarice
• [41:58] – Deeper meanings of avarice, anger, pride, envy, gluttony, and lust

---

Key Takeaways

• The seven deadly sins are not biblical but were developed as a psychological system by early Christian monks to understand and regulate human behavior.
• Their medieval evolution shaped art, literature, and religious practice, ultimately becoming both a means for societal control and a compassionate, introspective tool.
• Each sin represents a universal human impulse taken to excess—love, pride, desire, hunger, and so on—and medieval thinkers generally prescribed moderation and self-awareness as antidotes.
• The system encourages ongoing personal work and offers a framework that still resonates today, whether as a tool for self-improvement or cultural reference.

---

Conclusion

Dan and Peter’s conversation reveals the unexpected depth and nuance of the seven deadly sins—not as rigid doctrines, but as flexible, psychologically astute guides to human nature and morality. Their humor and insight invite listeners to reflect on their own “periodic table of the mind,” demonstrating that medieval wisdom remains surprisingly modern.

Notable final thought:
“All of these sins in moderation, they’re fantastic things… If you don’t have enough of these things, that’s actually equally bad.” — Peter Jones [48:29]

---

For more, Peter Jones’ book "Self Help from the Middle Ages" is out now. Hit follow/subscribe for more of Dan Snow’s History Hit.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe.

[Peter Jones]

Acast Powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[Brooke Devard]

Hello? Hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care, journeys, wellness tips, and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for Naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.

[Hayden]

Okay, Caller one wins courtside seats to tonight's game. What? I won floor seats.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

You?

[Hayden]

I've been calling for 13 months. Wait. Chris.

[Dan Snow]

Yes.

[Hayden]

I finally did it. What are you gonna wear? Men's Wearhouse. They've got today's looks for any occasion. And I need to look like a celebrity. Don't want to stick out. Exactly. They've got Chill Flex by Kenneth Cole, Joseph Abboud, and a tailor at every store for the perfect fit.

[Peter Jones]

Congrats. You can stop calling now.

[Hayden]

Not a chance. Hit any look for every occasion at Men's Wearhouse. Love the way you look.

[Stephen]

Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on The Dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24, 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price. Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety protect yourself [e-mail] safety

[Dan Snow]

Lust. Gluttony. Wrath. Pride. Envy. Sloth. Greed. Seven deadly sins, the root of human evil, at least according to medieval Christianity. Now, don't worry, this isn't going to be a religious sermon. I'm certainly not qualified to administer that. But instead, I might be able to soothe your anxiety, soothe your soul with a bit of a history lesson. You will be surprised to learn that the seven deadly sins aren't in the Bible. They were thought up by a Greek monk, really in the 4th century, who fled to the Egyptian desert after becoming embroiled in a scandal with a married woman. There. Isolated, doing some mindfulness, the monk Evagrius Ponticus began to map the darkest patterns of the human mind. And he came up with what would become the seven deadly sins. By the Middle Ages, people were obsessed with them. They were painted into murals, they appeared in sermons, in popular literature. It was believed that of those seven deadly sins, everyone had one in particular that they had to work on a weakness that revealed who they truly were. In this episode of Dan Snow's history hit, I've been told that I'm going to find out what my particular sin is, which I'm really looking forward to. And I'm really looking forward to sharing it with all of you. I'm being joined by the expert, the historian Peter Jones, who's just written a new book, Self Help from the Middle Ages. What the seven deadly sins can teach us about living. We're going to delve into them. We're going to talk about sin, and we're going to look into the history of this religious and cultural phenomenon. It was a system of control. Sure. It was a system of working out how people could live alongside each other in society. We're gonna find out how the medieval mind understood human behavior and psychology. Enjoy. Pete, thanks for coming on.

[Peter Jones]

Thank you. What a pleasure.

[Dan Snow]

Well, we get pleasure to be talking, wallowing in sin is what we're gonna be doing in a good way. They used to be eight, though. Tell me this is news to me.

[Peter Jones]

Well, it's true, right? They were once The. They weren't the eight Deadly Sins. They were once the eight Generic Thoughts, which is a terrible thoughts, terrible title for books.

[Dan Snow]

See why it didn't catch on?

[Peter Jones]

No, it didn't catch on yet. The origin is kind of strange. It begins in a political scandal. A guy called Evagrius Ponticus, who was a politician from the Black Sea coast to what is now Turkey. And there's a sex scandal.

[Dan Snow]

What period are we talking about?

[Peter Jones]

We're talking about the late three hundreds.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so Roman Empire still reasonably coherent? Absolutely.

[Peter Jones]

Writing in Greek politics, happening in Constantinople, sex scandal. Evagrius loses his career and sort of wanders off into oblivion. And he kind of. He's depressed, he's despondent, it's a midlife crisis. He drifts down to the desert just outside Alexandria.

[Dan Snow]

Classic.

[Peter Jones]

Well, everyone was doing it. Everyone was saying, well, this is just

[Dan Snow]

a well trodden path.

[Peter Jones]

We would call them now monks, but at the time it didn't have a label like this, really. These were lost souls who were looking for a radical experiment in living. And they moved to the desert about two days walk outside of Alexandria. And they'd build these little cells, you know, far away from each other, close enough you could wave and see someone waving, but not see their facial expressions. It's kind of lonely. Evagrius was one of these. Spent his day weaving baskets, watching the sun rise and set and trying to, you know, it's mindfulness, really. You know, thinking a lot, contemplating meditating. Evagrius puts himself through a load of experiments. He stands in freezing cold water. He sort of flagellates himself. But he also decides he's going to do a mind. Mind experiment. He's going to write down every tempting, negative, difficult thought in this enormous thing which he later publishes as a book which we call Talking Back. And in that book, and some of these thoughts are really petty. I miss the cup I used to hold in my hand. You know, I miss. I miss my life. I miss my family's olive grove in Ibora on the Black Sea. And he decided when he got all of these thoughts written down, they all belonged in eight sort of categories.

[Dan Snow]

Nice.

[Peter Jones]

Eight buckets. And these he called the eight generic thoughts.

[Dan Snow]

And which are they rough? Have they transmogrified into the deadly sins? Or which is the one that we don't, we've dropped.

[Peter Jones]

Okay, so there were once, for Avagrius, there were two things that we now call pride. There's pride and vainglory. Pride is kind of this ego, this inward thing, your self esteem being too high or whatever. And Vainglory is boasting, basically, so it's like bragging, okay?

[Dan Snow]

Just. That's the outward manifestation of it. So we've merged those together.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah. And he also had two kind of sadness sins. He had sloth and sadness sloth, which he called Arcadia, which is lack of care and sadness, which is just total misery, despair.

[Dan Snow]

And did these go viral? I mean, where do we get seven deadly sins from?

[Peter Jones]

Okay, so it's a great idea and Evangrious practices it himself. But, you know, it's in the desert at that point. There's a guy called John Cassian who comes to the desert and he's been tasked with finding something to popularize. He's basically. He needs to preach to peasants in the French countryside and he needs to make a book. There's a timeline. Come on. You know, get people involved, get them engaged in thinking about reforming their lives, becoming more moral. John Cassian goes to the desert and discovers the Vagrias system and thinks, this is fantastic. This is dynamite. But he thinks it needs a tweak. And it's just what you said at the beginning, generic thoughts. It's not so good. It's not so catchy. Cassian calls them deadly sins.

[Dan Snow]

You say system. He's identified these. What is it like intrusive thoughts and then dealing with them. What's the system? Beyond identifying all the difference.

[Peter Jones]

So the idea is that your brain works this way. No matter who you are, no matter how good you are. These are the eight patterns of thought that tempt you every single day. So pride, that's, you know, a kind of egotistical tendency, you know, or self belief, you know, at its sort of more modest degree, you know, I'm pretty good at this. I'm excellent at making coffee. You know, maybe other people want to share my coffee. And then it goes too far, you know, I'm the best at making coffee and all other coffee is terrible. So it's kind of. They're spectrums of thoughts, which I suppose they're excessive thoughts, you know, have none of these and you are an angel. You're not really human at all. But, you know, start to think along these pathways of ego, desire, appetite. Those are things that make us human. These kinds of tempting thoughts.

[Dan Snow]

And once you've identified them, what you can just by speaking of them, you can help to combat them. That's the idea.

[Peter Jones]

Well, look, there are different approaches. For Evagrius, the goal was to eradicate them all in himself. He wanted to reach a state he called Apathea. Which is to feel none of these things like to be. It's water off a duck's back. He would be in a true state of bliss where he felt no temptation or desire. But as we can discuss throughout the Middle Ages, I think this wasn't the model that really survives best. The model that survives best is a really compassionate model which is accepting these things. Okay, we all feel these temptations. How do we moderate them and make them work for us to do something better for other people? How do we. How do we kind of sculpt and tame these tempting thoughts into something that works for a wider community?

[Dan Snow]

This might be the wrong quote. You are historian.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

When you were right. And we'll get on, we'll keep going through the history, but, I mean, but interested in. In the. The philosophy of it. If you compare it to other cultures, other belief systems. Do you think. Do you think as someone who's now immersed yourself, do you think it's actually.

[Hayden]

Is it.

[Dan Snow]

Was it a useful process to go through? Do you think these stand up? I mean, I recognize them all in myself as well. And the responses, of course, are gonna be different depending on the context of society and whether it's punitive or. But do you admire that original thought leadership?

[Peter Jones]

Oh, I absolutely do. I think it really works. I mean, like you say, I recognize them all in myself, all the time and in the way I cannot open a newspaper without seeing, you know, everything scans onto one of the deadly sins. I can't find a single species of human, you know, wrongdoing or whatever or, you know, even right. Doing that doesn't, you know, come back to one of these seven things. I see them as the periodic table of the mind. I think they diagnose this kind of periodic table of desire and impulse that still stands. Stands up and still works. Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

So useful, whatever your belief system today. Quite useful to. To be aware of these and. And recognize it in yourself and others.

[Peter Jones]

No, I think they were onto something. Yeah, definitely.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so we got. So following this sort of rebrand, we. We are down to our canonical seven, which. Let's go through it again.

[Peter Jones]

Okay, so it's pride at the top. Always number one. The worst of the dead.

[Dan Snow]

Is that number one.

[Peter Jones]

Always one. Always number one. Yes. Pride is the root cause of all other sin. Because what. Because pride is.

[Dan Snow]

Because that's. Are you. That's.

[Peter Jones]

But it's turning away from other people. It's kind of believing you can stand alone. It's isolating yourself and saying, I don't need any of this. I Don't need other people. And that therefore that kind of selfish impulse that turning away can allow and open the floodgate for all these other things. Of course I can eat more. Who cares? You know, my judgment is the only judgment.

[Dan Snow]

Of course I can take from my neighbor, because.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah, okay, exactly. So, and then we have envy, then anger, and then in the middle, sloth, which is the enigmatic one, we'll have to come onto it because sloth is a terrible translation. That's not what this sin really is. Then we have the three lesser sins. Avarice, gluttony and then lust. They're all deadly. But, you know, there is a hierarchy.

[Dan Snow]

I didn't know there's a hierarchy. That's interesting.

[Peter Jones]

But they didn't become this seven and they didn't get this hierarchy until Pope Gregory the Great.

[Dan Snow]

Ah, Gregory. His fingerprints are on everything.

[Peter Jones]

Everything. He died in 604 to give context. But Gregory recognized that Cassian's system was, you know, really effective, really worked. And he kind of. But he trimmed them down and he added envy. So envy wasn't there before.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Peter Jones]

And it's interesting, these early desert monks, you know, if you're far enough away from your neighbour that you can't really see their facial expressions, you can see why for Evagrius, envy wasn't a big part of his life.

[Dan Snow]

I do not envy anyone around me.

[Peter Jones]

No, no, no, exactly. Whereas sadness, that he had two of those. So it's kind of interesting.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so the church hierarchy have grabbed this.

[Peter Jones]

Why?

[Dan Snow]

This is, what, just helpful way to control the behaviours, the mindsets of the flock. I mean, what's this?

[Peter Jones]

Well, at first it's a curio, you know, it's an academic thing. O, but for Gregory, he's trying to do this. It's this enormous work, the moralia and job. It's just this massive, massive, cumbersome work, actually, if we're honest, if we're critical. With Gregory, sorry, it's like an encyclopedia. He's going through every possible approach and he is trying to write something which can be like. Yeah, an encyclopedia for priests to find, something to pick and grab and choose little bits that will be useful in preaching or talking to their flocks.

[Dan Snow]

So this is your manual here, priest. This is what we want. This is everything we know about human beings and what we should be like, okay, fine. And so he's handing that out. Okay, so this is a gigantic attempt to lay out a kind of moral religious framework for Christianity.

[Peter Jones]

It's true, but it doesn't really get going until the sort of late ten hundreds with what we call the Gregorian reform, which is this process. This is when priests, theologians get really serious, Popes especially get really serious about the mission of the Church, which is to reform society as a whole. One historian, Jonathan Riley Smith, I think, described it as the Pope's goal at this point was to make every individual citizen in the whole of Christendom into a kind of monk themselves, to monasticize everyone, to make everyone have the same level of dedication and commitment to the faith that a monk would have. It's a hugely ambitious project. And that really gets going in the 1070s onwards. That's when we have, you know, clerical celibacy. Priests aren't allowed to have sex.

[Dan Snow]

Yes. I was gonna say that's when that sort of comes out.

[Peter Jones]

Exactly. And it's. So it's getting serious. You know, before this process of Gregorian reform, you have priests who are just, you know, somebody from the local community wanted the job a lot of the time, and it's a bit venal, you know, oh, my brother said I could do this, I'm going to be priest. After this, it becomes much more strict. They need to be trained, they need to be educated. There's a real self conscious objective to sort of change the church and make everyone invested and so in.

[Dan Snow]

I'm just wondering. So in the way that sort of King James organizes a Bible to be read by people in the vernacular, in English. And this is the Church going, right, we've got these seven digitarians. This is quite useful thing for people to be able to cling onto and sort of organize their faith and their life around personal confession.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah. I mean, the real moment comes in 1215, which, you know, for medievalists, huge year, but, you know, but not for Magna Carta. Very important. I mean, immeasurably important, but for a lot of us, even bigger event is happens in November, which is the fourth Lateran Council. Doesn't sound as fun, but it changes.

[Dan Snow]

But go on.

[Peter Jones]

It changes so much. You know, for example, the Mass, you know, the bread becomes the body of Christ.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, that's.

[Peter Jones]

That's instantiated in law in the fourth Utteran Council. All of these rules about heresy, legislation on Jews having to wear special marking clothes on their clothing is in fourth Auan Council. You know, all kinds of things, you know, terrible and, you know, productive in different ways. Start there. It's this enormous effort. They bring all of the bishops, major priests, cardinals, everyone to Rome for this big conference, basically, and they lay out this series of what they call canons or laws. And one of them is that every single person must make confession once a year. Everyone who's reached the age of reason so has to make.

[Dan Snow]

We're still waiting for that.

[Peter Jones]

No, no, I know.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Peter Jones]

So where do we. Is that 1427. So it's now mandatory to make a confession once a year. And these confessions, suddenly priests have to get really serious. Okay. God. You know, previously, no one's really doing these confessions. Well, people are the really enthusiastic people. But suddenly it's mandatory. It's everyone. I've got hundreds and hundreds of people in my flock. These can be long sessions of going through, you know, Tell me about your year. How's your ego been? You know, you know, what things have you done terribly? They have to get serious and they need manuals to do this. Right.

[Dan Snow]

This is the checklist.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

So the seven deadly sins over. So more important than the Ten Commandments in a way.

[Peter Jones]

I mean, well, it's more practical because, you know, it's a way to examine your kind of your inner thought process in the way that Ten Commandments, you know. Have you coveted your neighbor's ox? No, I didn't.

[Dan Snow]

I have not created a graven image. So I'm all right.

[Peter Jones]

No, no, exactly. You can let yourself off the hook quite easily with Ten Commandments, but the seven deadly sins are a way to really get into your inner core. And that's what I love about the system. Because at its core, this is a way to examine your kind of your. Those tiny little awkward, half formed thoughts. You know, I did kind of when I. When I made that coffee for my friend and, you know, I was trying to impress him a little bit. I was trying to, you know, I was, you know, that kind of self knowledge, self awareness. Like, am I doing these things for the wrong reason sometimes? You know, do I actually secretly want my friend not to get that job when he has the interview on Friday because part of me is still jealous in some residual way. You know, obviously no. The answer is no for me.

[Dan Snow]

Of course it is. Of course it is.

[Peter Jones]

But, you know, there is that kind of. The seven deadly sins are a doorway into thinking about these kind of tiny little ways that we. That we, you know, these little ticks that we have, you know, these impulses right at the bottom, I think, right at the core of our brains.

[Dan Snow]

You're listening to Dan Snow's history. We're going to be back after this break. Missed calls and slow follow ups are silent killers. It's the kind of thing that doesn't make the history books. But it probably should. Entire empires have fallen because of poor communication. And your business? It's no different. Every missed message is a missed opportunity. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelt Q U O. The business communications system built so you never miss a call. With Quo, your whole team works from one shared number. Calls, texts, everything visible in a single thread so nothing slips through the cracks and customers actually feel looked after. And it's not just smart, it's intelligent. Quo's AI logs calls, summarizes conversations, and flags next steps so you're always one move ahead, even after hours. It's simple, streamlined, and keeps your business responsive when it matters most. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com snow that's Q U.com snow

[Hayden]

howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Dan Snow]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

[Aura Ad Voice]

Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the Dark Web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, Dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 247 US based fraud support. Other Companies might sell just credit monitoring or even just a vpn. Aura gives you of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial [e-mail] safety. Protect yourself [e-mail] safety.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history. With me, Dr. Kate Lister, listen to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts brought to you by the award winning network history hit.

[Dan Snow]

And so they. So now from in the 13th century onwards, that's when they start appearing in art, in a sort of popular. The popular imagination latches onto these things completely.

[Peter Jones]

They just take off exponentially after 12:15. Because priests need tech handbooks. My God, right? I've got to make all of these confessions. I've got hundreds and hundreds of parishioners. I need a guidebook. So guidebooks get written. And these guidebooks often have the seven deadly sins right at the heart. You know, this is the core template. There's a theologian who was asked in the 1200s by a group of women who came to him, theologians called Raul. And these women say, give us moral advice. He turns straight to the seven deadly sins. Okay, here's your template. Let's start with pride, then envy, then anger. So they become the structuring framework for all kinds of discussions about people's well being, people's morality. So then we have all these handbooks and you go into any library in Europe, any archive of medieval manuscripts, open any manuscript at random, the chances are you're going to see the seven deadly sins somewhere there. Honestly, I know that sounds bizarre. Scrawled in the martyrs, I found treatises on the seven deadly sins used as the binding for manuscripts. There must have been so many of these texts that you could just say, okay, we'll use one of those. They just burst in popularity. We also have preaching, so we have preachers giving sermons on. And that becomes more and more popular in the 1200s. And so many of these sermons, the words that come up over and over again, pride, envy, lust, avarice, and very

[Dan Snow]

interesting because they don't appear in the Gospels. I mean, they sort of obviously are rooted, of course, in the teachings of Jesus and the Gospels and the Ten Commandments. But this is a sort of fascinating. It's central. Becomes central to Christianity. And yet, I mean, I guess Jesus does occasionally speak out against sloth, but it feels that they've got a prominence that, you know, society created these rather than perhaps the founding fathers of the Christian faith.

[Peter Jones]

And that's what's great about medieval Christianity. It's so interesting when you dig, they made this whole folklore, this mythology which is way outside of the Bible. For example, Judas. Right, Judas. There are stories of Judas where it's like Oedipus, he marries his mother and kills his father. You know, they make these. Lucifer only appears really briefly in the Bible, but there's this huge folklore and mythology about him. There are plays about him and the Seven Deadly Sins belong to that. There are this kind of extra textual fun apparatus which develops as a way to kind of. Yeah, it's embellishing and, you know, it's building on the kind of the core of the Bible.

[Dan Snow]

You, You. I just want. You said sloth is a. Is a was. It was the mistranslated one. That's. I'm interested in that as a slothful person. Let me know. Let me know if I'm. Perhaps I'm not sinful as I think.

[Peter Jones]

Well, it's my sin as well. Perhaps sloth is. The original Greek word was Acadia, right. Which means something like lack of care. And in the Middle Ages, they never translated it into Latin. They left it as Acadia because they couldn't come up with the right word. What does it mean? It's somewhere between inertia, depression, what we might call now depression, boredom, restlessness. It's kind of. Okay, so what is it? It's described by William Peraldas in this Summer of Vices that. It's like you're standing in a freezing cold river and the water's rushing towards you, but you can't move. It's a sense of falling out of love with all the things that used to light up your life. Elizabeth of show now, who's this nun from the 12th century in the Rhineland. She describes her Arcadia this way. She used to love being a nun. Everything about it. The reading, the singing, all of it. Perfect. One day she's late for mass and suddenly when the singing starts, her lips move, but the voice doesn't come out. She goes to read a book later and she can't get Through a page, puts it down. It's all nothing to her now. Everything that used to make her heart sing now leaves her feeling cold and dead. Ins. This is Arcadia. It's when all the love we've built up for something is inverted inside us and suddenly we feel the weight of its absence. I mean, people have described it as a bit like depression. There's a great book by a guy called Andrew Solomon called the Noonday and Demon where he says Arcadia basically maps it onto depression. I think he's right. It is kind of the medieval language of depression. But it's more than that as well. It's also burnout. It's also a sense of directionlessness.

[Dan Snow]

So as you're saying this, I'm wondering if I'm being very cautious, but is there a sort of Darwinian, I mean, with these. If you're a medieval person or a utility in the land. Actually, this is a pretty decent list because if you do feel that inertia and that sort of. That burnout, you know, you're not gonna prepare the ground. You're not gonna prepare the ground for the next year's harvest. I mean, this is. It is. They're quite useful sins to be aware of and sort of live by. Right. And if you are too proud, you might get bumped on the head by the community that think you're a pain in the ass, all that sort of stuff.

[Peter Jones]

It's completely true. And actually, yeah, Prouder says that sloth is when you take your hand from the plough. So they're always thinking in terms that will relate to the ordinary person in this situation. Yeah, I think. But having said that, I can't think of a single human situation where these aren't relevant. They kind of. They map onto anything. I mean, Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, made a speech where he talked about, you know, Silicon Valley thrives on the seven deadly sins. And he said, every great app, every great product that Silicon Valley develops is that it's going to be great if it maps onto one of these sins, if it exploits it. You know, we could give examples, but.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, well, there's plenty that I'm sure if I can come up with that's interesting. Okay, now, is there a. We're making this sound quite benign, quite good life architecture. Do things in the way that they tend to do in the hands of human beings? Do they get warped, distorted? Does it become a kind of people getting called out, some sort of punitive. There's a punitive aspect to this?

[Peter Jones]

Oh, absolutely. I think at their Worst, you know, this is a tool to sort of of, you know, hit people with it. You know, and some there, you know, there's bad theology out there. There are about. There are texts that say, you know, you should live completely without, you know, ego, or completely without, you know, anger. You know, best to just, you know, fight these things and eradicate them and then punishing people. Yeah. There'll be penances that you have to do. Okay, Right. You were too angry. You know, here's your penance. But generally, no, the thing that strikes me is that those are in the minority, those kind of extremist kind of terrorists texts. The majority of texts are really understanding and compassionate. You know, I think Dante, you know, died in 1321, didn't he? You know, Dante's Purgatore puts it best, right. You know, in Dante's Commedia, which goes through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, who gets straight to paradise? Only the saints, really. The rest of us. Okay, so the worst people go to hell. The people who don't recognize their sins, and people who just are there saying, yes, I did terrible things, but it wasn't my fault. They're all in hell, but. But the rest of us, I hope. I hope I count myself are in Purgatory. No matter how good you are, no matter how moral you were in your life, all the great things you did, your moral mission, you still have to purge yourself of those seven deadly sins. So in Dante's Purgatory, it moves up the mountain. You've purged yourself of your pride with big rocks on your back. And then envy, have your eyelids stitched together. So the message of that is all of us have to work on these constantly, and that work is never done. The seven Deadly Sins are with us until we die. And then we still have to work

[Dan Snow]

on when is peak prominence. I mean, if Dante's writing all about them, that feels like by the 14th century, they are culturally very dominant, I think.

[Peter Jones]

The 1300s. Absolutely. They are everywhere. They're in church walls, you know, they're in little frescoes. Jotto paints them in the Arena Chapel in the first, and they're wonderful paintings of the sins. We have Dante, of course, purgatorio in the 1310s. And then by the end of that century, we have Chaucer and someone like John Gower who structures his Confessio Amantis all around the seven deadly sins. So the 1300 high point. They're everywhere. You, you know, you can't pick up a great work of literature without seeing the sins in there.

[Dan Snow]

Tough century 1300s as well. I mean, you know, lot going on.

[Peter Jones]

It really is Black Death.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Peter Jones]

Famine. Yeah. No, so they needed, they needed a break. Did they need to hit themselves over the head? No, I think that's why they're so compassionate. They needed the compassion of this system.

[Dan Snow]

Okay. And yes, sorry, the compassion is important. So it's about as you. So I came in thinking this was all going to be a little bit. So control vicious, using infractions to then punish. Actually this sounds like therapy. I mean it sounds like a quite a compassionate system.

[Peter Jones]

I think that's what I've tried to say in my book Self Help from the Middle Ages. That you can use this system as a compassionate system to sort of forgive yourself in many ways and see the process of, for example, fighting your ego or fighting your laziness or fighting your kind of greed as an ongoing process and be compassionate about it. Because medieval advice is always that we need to keep working on these things and forgive ourselves for them because they are the things that make us human.

[Dan Snow]

And I suppose, yes, I suppose being told that this is something that makes you human and being told there's something that everybody deals with if you're lonely and you've, you're. You're struggling, you think, why, why am I jealous of my friend getting that job on Friday? That fear. Am I a terrible person? And the answer is no. Look, there's. You're. You're among. We're all, we are all feeling like that.

[Peter Jones]

And it's interesting when we think I'm very happy. My.

[Dan Snow]

Like you. I mean I'm pro, pro friends getting jobs.

[Peter Jones]

No, no, me too.

[Dan Snow]

Really positive about it.

[Peter Jones]

And good luck, by the way.

[Dan Snow]

Good luck. Totally. I'm so happy that you're doing so well.

[Peter Jones]

Completely. But yeah, I think Acadia is a good example of that. If, if the fourth deadly sin is really burnout, depression and all of these other things, it's one of the seven. And you're making confession every year. That means everyone in Europe, you know, every Christian in Europe rather is talking about these things and reflecting on them and being told that this is normal, this is a normal part of humanity to feel this way and this way. So they're not framing it as a, as a mental illness or something like this. They're framing it as just an ordinary part of being human. Human.

[Dan Snow]

Are they effective when, when you're looking for self help from the Middle Ages, what were the cures is probably the wrong ways. Antidotes. What were the ways in which they said, look we all get like this. In this particular case, this is what we recommend. Or is it just about acknowledging them, talking about them, and. And being aware of them?

[Peter Jones]

No, it's case by case. But generally speaking, the answer they come up with by the late 1200s is to moderate and to recognize when you've gone beyond what is social. So, for example, ego. We start with pride. Right. You know, okay, so if I say, right, I'm gonna. I am a worm. You know, I'll act like that. You know, I'll just say, I can't do anything. I'm no good at everything. That's not good either. That's what Thomas Aquinas called pusillanimity. You know, weakness of spirit, you know, and you're not standing up for yourself, and ultimately, therefore, you're not being useful. You know, I probably can rewire that plug. You know, I shouldn't have said that.

[Dan Snow]

You've just gone and written the best book about the seven deadly sins ever. Pub. No, hang on. I've overshot the Runway.

[Peter Jones]

Okay, all right. But, you know, but, you know, maybe there is something interesting to say. You've done some research, You've got something interesting to say. Yeah, there you go. Don't be weak of spirit. You know, go on history here. Talk about it, own it. But when it becomes, you know, if I then sort of say, well, and it's fantastic, and all of these other scholars, you know, they got it totally limits.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Peter Jones]

You know, then we're starting to push into an area where I'm going. I'm getting into that excessive place where I'm. I'm starting to be a bit antisocial, you know what I mean? So the message of that one is to recognize when are you overestimating your own limits? When have you gone beyond self awareness and self knowledge? And now you're inflating and kind of inventing an alternative self, which is so it's. It's kind of combating the deadly sins is all about recognizing their limits. That where they go beyond a boundary that's kind of socially acceptable.

[Dan Snow]

And it feels like talking therapy, either with your priest or with intimates, is that it's not like I'm going to administer 10 lashes and that's going to recalibrate my level of pride. It sounds like a very civilized way of working out where that level is.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah, I think what they wanted was to induce self awareness. They wanted you to talk through these seven and recognize these and work on them. I don't think they wanted you to eradicate them at all. And I think that that's kind of the surprise, you know, that medieval Christianity wasn't a system for making perfect souls. You know, only angels are perfect, is the idea. Or saints. You know, in fact, it's actually just a system for raising people's awareness and getting them to work on their kind of quirks.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so after the 1300s, after the 4th century, what happens? These deadly saints, I mean, they're still there.

[Peter Jones]

They're still there in literature and plays in the 1400s. The Reformation, I think, generally speaking, is kind of where they lose some of their power. Although there's a great emphasis on interiority in the Reformation, there just isn't that same. Confession doesn't have the same kind of role.

[Dan Snow]

And because they don't appear in the Gospels, presumably Protestants are like, look, definitely read the Gospels, as you say, interiority, work on yourself. But you don't necessarily need this Gregorian checklist, presumably, is that right?

[Peter Jones]

No, no, exactly. I mean, someone like Luther will still use these words. Okay. And I think that they still apply, but, yeah, they're not. They're part of that architecture that gets ripped away in the Reformation.

[Dan Snow]

You're not painting them on walls.

[Peter Jones]

No, exactly.

[Dan Snow]

Creating lovely artwork.

[Peter Jones]

And all that we said earlier about, you know, the mythology of Christianity that went beyond the text that's being taken away. So seven deadly sins are part of that.

[Dan Snow]

Well, Pete, very excitingly, in the spirit of therapy and living a better life, you are gonna give me a quiz on the sins and my sins. So I'm really looking forward to this. But first of all, we're gonna take a break, so join us after this. This.

[Peter Jones]

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend

[Michaela Matthews]

if you've ever dreamed of quitting your job to take your side hustle full time. Listen up, this is Michaela Matthews, aome, host of side Hustle Pro, a podcast that helps you build and grow from passion project to profitable business. Every week, you'll hear from guests just like you who wanted to start a business on the side. If you can't run a side hustle, you can't run a business. They share real tips. And so I started connecting with all these people on LinkedIn, and I saw Target supplier diversity was having office hours. Real advice. Procrastination is the easiest form of resistance. And the actual strategies they use to turn their side hustle into their main hustle. Getting back in touch with your tangible cash. Cash and sitting down and learning to give your money a job like it Changes something. Check outside Hustle Pro every week on your favorite podcast app and YouTube.

[Peter Jones]

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[Aura Ad Voice]

Acast.com Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24. 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or even just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price. Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial [e-mail] safety. Protect yourself [e-mail] safety.

[Dan Snow]

Pete, the time has come.

[Peter Jones]

Right?

[Dan Snow]

No more talking. In fact, lots more talking because you are going to give me a quiz.

[Peter Jones]

I am. It's rigorously scientific. It's heavily footnoted. So if listeners want to. If they want to know, I can give you detailed footnotes on why these all make sense as medieval questions. Okay, Dan, so there are five questions. And, you know, we'll work, do, relax, super relaxing.

[Dan Snow]

Lots of people are about to hear my innermost, my sinful thoughts.

[Peter Jones]

Okay. And as I say, these are. Are rigorously footnoted.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Peter Jones]

Which of these is the perfect afternoon? A long train journey alone with your thoughts, B, winning a game of squash, or C, all you can eat tapas.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, my goodness. Oh, I'm afraid. Okay, I'm gonna say all you can eat tapas, I'm afraid.

[Peter Jones]

Excellent choice. Great. Okay, Good, good. Question 2. Which of these are you most likely to collect?

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Peter Jones]

A, antique clocks, B, anecdotes about your colleagues, or C, pornographic pilgrim badges from the 14th century.

[Dan Snow]

Wow. Well, from that really comprehensive list of options, I suppose anecdotes about my colleagues. Really in that one.

[Peter Jones]

Okay, that's good. Good answer. Okay, fair enough. Question three. When you're driving, do you always follow the sat nav's advice?

[Dan Snow]

No.

[Peter Jones]

No. Okay, interesting, interesting. Okay, good, good, good. Question four. For Your birthday. Which of these will you do? A, a hot air balloon ride over Staffordshire with mugs of hot chocolate.

[Dan Snow]

Sounds good.

[Peter Jones]

B, an hour with the punch bag in the garage, then go for a hot stone massage. Or C, finally buy that monogram silk kimono.

[Dan Snow]

Well, that's a hard one. These are quite random. Given that choice. Goodness me. I would actually. This isn't a bit manosphere coming. I think I might do the punch bag, actually. Okay, good, good, good.

[Peter Jones]

Okay, right. I'm now totting up. Okay, good. We're in a good place.

[Dan Snow]

Thank goodness.

[Peter Jones]

Okay, right, so we're now going to do the quotation. These are all quotations from medieval guidebooks on the sins. So these are all quotations. So I want to know which of these medieval quotations feels most accurate these days, because I do not fear my enemies. They will be crushed.

[Dan Snow]

Whoa.

[Peter Jones]

That's a. B, it's the fire that's in the cup that kindles the soul's torches. It's the heart that's drenched in wine that flies to heaven's porches. Sorry, there's a bit. Bit much. Bit long. Or C, our eyes rise up to truth when we gaze at beautiful things.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, well, I'm afraid I'm circumstantial. Yeah.

[Peter Jones]

Beautiful.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Peter Jones]

Okay. So tossing these up, this is quite tough. But I'm afraid, Dan, your sin is avarice.

[Dan Snow]

Avarice, greed.

[Peter Jones]

Well, you know.

[Dan Snow]

How funny.

[Peter Jones]

You know. Well, what I will say about this is it's actually a beautiful sin. And actually it gets the best treatment in the book.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, listen, you're like those horoscope people who go, actually, Sagittarius is the best.

[Peter Jones]

No, it is well done for being Capricorn.

[Dan Snow]

Okay.

[Peter Jones]

Okay. Avarice is not just. It's not greed in the way we understand it. It's not just a desire for money. Avarice is an appreciation of objects. Avarice is an attention to the beauty and complexity of material things in a way that involves a lot of care done right. And this is. Now we're getting horoscopes done right. Avarice is a commitment to finding soul in objects. You know, you collect things, you make beautiful objects, and in so doing, you recognize that you're building the story about yourself in the world and you're imbuing things with something soul gone wrong. However, avarice becomes an attachment to these objects. We just, you know, instead of hanging out with my friends. It's okay. I've got to go back to the antique clocks. I've got to, you know, I've got to I've got to work on making that boat. And it's kind of the turning away from people. What makes avarice antisocial when it becomes a deadly sin is when our attention to objects makes us more interested in the objects than we are in people. And ultimately, if it's clothes, for example, it's when, you know, the clothes we wear are more interesting than us, ourselves. We become mannequins, you know?

[Dan Snow]

Right.

[Peter Jones]

Medieval theologians describe it as kind of the becoming object yourself. You get so attached to objects, you become the object.

[Dan Snow]

They would not have liked Instagram. No, to be honest, because I always wanted the. The experience that you are. The. The curation of the experience becomes more important than the experience itself. It's interesting. Okay, so that's. That's. Well, I now. Thank you very much. I will look out for that in my. Myself. What are they?

[Hayden]

What.

[Dan Snow]

Since we're here, what are some of the other deep. That was lovely. That deeper explanation of what. That. That sin is. What about anger, for example? I mean, is anger more obvious, is just losing it? What.

[Peter Jones]

What's the anger is. Yeah. Okay, so it's kind of got an obvious definition, you know, the loss of control. You know, I'm. I've got. I've gone into a frenzy because something has upset me, but really, it's. Medieval theologians describe it as a love of being right, the enjoyment of being right. The part. And at its. At its best, anger is, you know, you recog wrongdoing. You recognize when things are wrong and you want to put them right. You know, it's fantastic. You know, like the legal system functions on anger in this way. You know, why do QCs get out of bed in the morning? Because they need to make right. They need to. And in the Middle Ages, there's a lot of recognition of this. The Crusades function on righteous anger.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Peter Jones]

But it goes wrong when you start to enjoy the thing, the feeling of being right more than putting things right itself. In other words, it's when you're online and you have an argument and you win that argument completely, you could prove their point wrong and that you get this great buzz. But then you want to find another argument. So then you start another argument just to get that buzz again. There's a theologian called John Iton who describes it this way. He calls it rixa or quarrelsomeness, which is the addiction to being right.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, quarrelsomeness. Very nice.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Okay. And so let's start at the top, since we're getting definitions. Start at the top is pride. Is the top.

[Peter Jones]

Pride is. Yep. Pride is the first sin. Superbia in Latin.

[Dan Snow]

And we've talked a bit about that.

[Peter Jones]

We have. It's what, you know, saying you don't need other people believing. You can always stand on your own. Everything.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, let's come down to the next one.

[Peter Jones]

Envy.

[Dan Snow]

Yes.

[Peter Jones]

Envy is. It's not quite what we think it is. It's not wanting what someone else has. If I'm envious of you, I don't. Let's say you've got those antique clocks. If I'm envious of you, I don't want your antique clocks. I want your antique clocks to explode. Catch fire.

[Dan Snow]

Yes. Right.

[Peter Jones]

I want you to fail. So in other words, if my friend has a job interview on Friday, this friend.

[Dan Snow]

This friend's. I don't know who this friend is.

[Peter Jones]

Want his. I don't want his job for myself.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Peter Jones]

I want him not to.

[Dan Snow]

I know. Which is horrible.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

It doesn't affect you in any way, shape or form.

[Peter Jones]

I know, I know. And I hate myself for it. So envy is the enjoyment of other people's failure. And so the idea is. And I suppose I should have said this earlier, all the seven deadly sins are supposed to be love gone wrong or love gone to an excessive place. Your love of yourself gone too far. Your love of objects gone too far. For avarice, for envy. Your love of success, which is not so bad in itself. To be successful is. Is not a bad thing. But your love of success has curdled to the point where you enjoy other people's failure.

[Dan Snow]

What a lovely one. So it's wanting your neighbor's crops to fail.

[Peter Jones]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

Like what? That's horrible. Yeah. Okay, okay. But we all feel that. Okay, we are. There's a. We all have a. There's a. There can be a tendency there. Right. So what?

[Peter Jones]

Next one down is anger. We've already had that one. Then sloth. Which we've already done.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. Very interesting.

[Peter Jones]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

And next one.

[Peter Jones]

Avarice, which we've already done. Yes.

[Dan Snow]

Talked about my avarice.

[Peter Jones]

Y. Sorry, Gluttony is next. Remember, we're into the lesser sins now. Avarice, Gluttony last. So congratulations on making it sins. Yes.

[Dan Snow]

It's a very small thing.

[Peter Jones]

You've none of the above problems. And then we come to the last three. Gluttony is not just eating too much. This is quite interesting. Gluttony also includes a fixation and a fuss about food and drink. So the idea is. Okay, so eating too much is still a problem, but so is Eating too little because it's fussing about food.

[Dan Snow]

Tell me about it. So annoying. Yeah.

[Peter Jones]

So gluttony is that moment where. Where you really insist on something. Like, you know, your friend suggests you go for lunch somewhere at this restaurant and you refuse because you don't like the food in that restaurant. I know, Don't.

[Dan Snow]

So annoying.

[Peter Jones]

Or because you've got your heart set on that lobster roll that you promised yourself and you know the way it tastes, the buttery sort of taste of that lobster roll is too much for you to resist. You're fixating too much on the food. Or fuss. Right. You know, when I make coffee and you know, friends have told me it's terrible actually, my coffee, but still I fuss over it. Right. I pour the water off the spoon to cool it down to 90 degrees. It deflects the it off the spoon. I make sure it's only 10% of the coffee to cafeteria ratio. I fuss too much. I make sure it's Ethiopian. I love that stuff. It's that level of fuss. Why is it a deadly sin? Because I'm shutting out other things and I'm actually becoming a bit of a bore. Gluttony is when you, you know, you're a food boar. You know. Have you heard about the. No. Try this beer. Not this beer.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, you want to drive 45 minutes across town because you can only get us. Yeah.

[Peter Jones]

Yes. And then you shut people out because actually they're secretly really bored with your coffee making or your heard all day.

[Dan Snow]

Because that's one of my personal bugbears. Drives me crazy. Okay, so that's good gluttony. What else?

[Peter Jones]

And then finally lust. Yeah. Which, you know, the least deadly of the seven in the sense that they thought in the Middle Ages it was closest to love. So it's the most kind of redeemable sin. But of course, it's love gone wrong in the most obvious way. William Peraldos again describes it as a feeling of out of time. Meaning what? That you lust is, you know, love has a duration. You know, I love you and I'm interested in your stories about your childhood and I'm interested in your future. Lust isn't interested in any of those things. I don't really care about your childhood, blah, blah, blah. And your job interview next week. Whatever. Is there a next week for us? It's only now. Lust is a fixation on this present moment. So. And of course it's. It's caring about the body and not the person. It's treating someone like an Object or a toy. And they describe this really well in medieval texts. So that's the lust. It's also kind of sensuality in that way and an appreciation of the surfaces of things. So it's redeemable in the sense that, you know, you are at least paying attention to, to how things are. You know, you're interested in other people if you have lust, but you know, maybe just in the wrong way. Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

And you can. Yeah. And lust, it can turn into love. I mean it's. Yeah, as you say, it's redeemable. Interesting. All right. And so what's. Which is your sir? Well, which is your sin?

[Peter Jones]

I came out with pride, which completely makes sense.

[Dan Snow]

And let's be clear, that's the worst one.

[Peter Jones]

No, I know. Look, I, I lose this, this quiz. Why I definitely don't listen to the sat nav. I have no. You know, and when I'm floating in that hot air balloon, I'm interested in being above other people at some level. I'm interested in being up high and surveying from afar. No, but I think the thing is, with pride, I, I recognize it in myself. You know, sometimes I don't listen enough to other people's advice and I'm trying to work on it, but you know, that sort of bloody minded convinced.

[Dan Snow]

But then with a. Without some of that, you would not have written this fabulous book.

[Peter Jones]

That's true.

[Dan Snow]

Because you have decided that there is something to be said about this centuries old topic on which millions of other people have written books. And if you didn't have that little bit of belief and a little bit thinking, I can add something to this historiography, then you wouldn't have done it. So don't worry, don't be too hard on yourself.

[Peter Jones]

This is great. The confessor terms confession.

[Dan Snow]

Yes, I know. Switching it up here.

[Peter Jones]

Love it, love it. Thank you. No, it's true, it's true. I think like, you know, the point is that all of these sins in moderation, they're fantastic things.

[Dan Snow]

That's what makes it so tantalizing. Because we've got to just hit that. We've got to get the dashboard. We've got to get all the levers in the right place on the dashboard.

[Peter Jones]

Exactly.

[Dan Snow]

I like that point. If you don't have enough of these things, that's actually equally bad.

[Peter Jones]

No, no. Pride would be. No, avarice would be terrible. You know, what would I, what would my life be like? I'd have no interest in objects. I'd have no interest in enriching the environment around me.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. No lust. You'd have no joy of, you know, love and companionship.

[Peter Jones]

I never want to connect to another. No gluttony, you know, what would that look like?

[Dan Snow]

Wow. We guys, we got to get it. You just got to get it right. You got to calibrate it right. Thank you very much helping us do that today.

[Peter Jones]

The book is called Self Help from the Middle Ages.

[Dan Snow]

Brilliant. Enjoy.

[Peter Jones]

Thank you.

[Dan Snow]

Well, thanks so much to my guest Peter Jones coming onto the podcast. Help me better understand the curious ideas that shaped society in medieval Europe. But also, also I think to help me better understand myself, my strengths and my weaknesses. Make sure if you're listening to this hit follow in your podcast play. If you're watching on YouTube, you gotta smash that subscribe button and you'll get more. Dan Snow's history hit next week. See you next time.

[Peter Jones]

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[Brooke Devard]

Hello, hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care, drama, journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for naked beauty on your podcast and listen along. I hope you'll join us.

[Dan Snow]

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard iii. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week and there's always some something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com subscribe. Sa. Sam.