What are the seven deadly sins? Where the list comes from

The seven deadly sins are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth: the seven vices that Christian tradition holds are the sources of all other sins. They are not listed in the Bible. The list grew out of a 4th-century monk's catalog of eight "evil thoughts", was reshaped by Pope Gregory I around 590, and was spread through medieval Europe by theologians, preachers and poets such as Dante.

In short

• The seven are pride, greed (avarice), lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, each traditionally paired with a virtue that opposes it.
• "Deadly" here means "capital", from the Latin for "head": these are the head sins from which others spring, not necessarily the worst acts.
• The list was built by monks and theologians between the 4th and 13th centuries; the Bible's own list of seven in Proverbs 6 is a different one.

What are the seven deadly sins?

Each of the seven names a disordered desire, and later tradition paired each with a contrary virtue. The pairings were never fixed; this is the most common modern set.

Sin	Latin	What it is	Contrary virtue
Pride	Superbia	Putting oneself above others and above God; the root of the rest	Humility
Greed	Avaritia	An excessive love of money and possessions	Generosity (charity)
Lust	Luxuria	Disordered sexual desire	Chastity
Envy	Invidia	Sorrow at another's good, and pleasure at their harm	Kindness
Gluttony	Gula	Excess in eating and drinking	Temperance
Wrath	Ira	Anger beyond what is just, a wish for revenge	Patience
Sloth	Acedia	Spiritual apathy: indifference to the good, not just laziness	Diligence

Two of the words have shifted. Sloth, in the older sense of acedia, was a monk's sickness of soul, a listless boredom with prayer and with God, and only later came to mean idleness in general. Lust, luxuria, once covered self-indulgence in luxury as well as sex. The contrary virtues are a later tradition, loosely traced to the poet Prudentius's Psychomachia, a 5th-century poem about virtues and vices battling for the soul. They are not the same as the "seven virtues" of medieval teaching, which are faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude.

Are the seven deadly sins in the Bible?

No. No book of the Bible lists pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth as a set. The Bible condemns each of them somewhere, and two passages often get confused with the list. Proverbs 6:16–19 does name seven things, the ones "the Lord hates": "haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community" (Bible Gateway, NIV). Only the first, haughty eyes, clearly matches one of the deadly sins, pride. Paul's letter to the Galatians (5:19–21) lists "works of the flesh", such as hatred, jealousy, fits of rage and drunkenness, but more than seven of them and in no fixed scheme. The seven deadly sins are a product of later Christian reflection, part of the long tradition of Christianity, not of its scripture.

Where does the list come from?

The list was built in stages over about 900 years, by people trying to understand how temptation works.

When	Who	What they contributed
Late 4th century	Evagrius Ponticus, a monk in the Egyptian desert	Eight "evil thoughts" (logismoi) that assail a monk: gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory and pride
c. 420s	John Cassian, who had studied under Evagrius	Carries the eight into Latin, in writings for the monasteries of Gaul
590s	Gregory I, pope from 590, in his Moralia on Job	Sets pride apart as the "root" and "queen" of all vices, merges and adds to the rest, and arrives at seven: vainglory, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony and lust
1215	The Fourth Lateran Council	Requires every Christian in the Western church to confess at least once a year; manuals for confessors spread the seven as a checklist
c. 1270	Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae	Explains the seven as "capital vices", restores acedia in place of sadness
c. 1308–1321	Dante, the Purgatorio	Seven terraces of a mountain, one for each sin purged, from pride at the bottom to lust at the top
c. 1390s	Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Parson's Tale"	The seven sins explained at length in English
1992	The Catechism of the Catholic Church	Lists the seven capital sins: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth or acedia

Evagrius was writing for monks, as a practical guide to the thoughts that pull a person away from prayer, and scholars have noted how much his analysis of passions draws on Greek philosophy, including the Stoics' account of how an impression becomes a passion only when the mind assents to it. Gregory's list was for a wider church. By Dante's time the seven were the common frame of moral teaching, painted on church walls and preached from pulpits.

Why are they called "deadly"?

"Deadly" is the popular name; theologians say "capital", from the Latin caput, "head". Aquinas explains that a capital vice is not one punished by death, nor necessarily the gravest sin, but one "from which other vices arise", a head that directs others toward its own goal (Summa Theologiae, I–II q. 84). The Catholic Catechism says the same: they are called capital "because they engender other sins, other vices" (Catechism, 1866).

That is a different question from how serious a single act is. In Catholic teaching, a mortal sin, one that cuts a person off from God, is a grave act done with full knowledge and deliberate consent. A flash of envy is an instance of a capital vice without being a mortal sin, and a mortal sin need not appear on the list at all.

How one vice leads to others

The medieval writers made the idea concrete by naming each vice's "daughters", the sins it tends to produce. Here is greed, as Gregory and then Aquinas describe it (Summa Theologiae, II–II q. 118):

1. The head: an excessive love of money, which promises to get a person whatever they want.
2. In the heart: restlessness, a mind that cannot stop thinking about gain, and insensibility to mercy, a heart hardened to people in need.
3. In words: falsehood and perjury, lying and swearing falsely to keep or win money.
4. In deeds: fraud and treachery, cheating and betraying others, and finally violence.

Read that way, the list is less a ranking of crimes than a map of motives: it asks not "what did you do?" but "what desire was steering you when you did it?"

What do the seven deadly sins mean today?

Outside the church, the seven have become a cultural shorthand, the frame for paintings, plays, novels and films, and a way to talk about character without theology. Their logic still interests philosophy and psychology: Aristotle had treated many of the same failings as excess or lack of a feeling, and modern discussions of envy, anger and self-control often echo the old analysis. Some Christian writers today argue the list still names real dangers better than any newer scheme. Others note that it was built for monks and confessors and leaves out sins later Christians stress, such as injustice and cruelty to the poor, which the Catechism treats elsewhere. How a list like this fits within religion more broadly, as a practice of self-examination rather than a doctrine, is part of what makes it last.

Check yourself

• Without looking back: why is the list called "deadly" or "capital", and what does that word have to do with heads?
• Who first listed the evil thoughts, how many were there, and how did Gregory change them?
• Why isn't the list in Proverbs 6 the same as the seven deadly sins?

Sources

• Seven deadly sins — Wikipedia
• Summa Theologiae, I–II, question 84 — Thomas Aquinas, via New Advent
• Summa Theologiae, II–II, question 118 — Thomas Aquinas, via New Advent
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, The proliferation of sin — The Holy See, 1992
• Proverbs 6:16–19 — Bible Gateway, New International Version
• Evagrius Ponticus — Wikipedia