Virtues and Vices
What each virtue and vice is, what belongs under it, what opposes it and how it is gained or overcome, as St. Thomas and the manuals set it out. The arrangement here is ours and follows St. Thomas. Every quotation is the author's own, in this library's English, and every reference opens the passage.
How they all relate: each virtue's family, the vices on either side, and what the capital vices feed.
Charts: the trees of the virtues and the vices, the powers of the soul, the virtues the daughters sin against, the golden mean on one sheet, the gifts, the wheels of the sevens, the remedies at a glance, and where the authors disagree. The medieval trees are on their own page.
The Theological Virtues
The Cardinal Virtues
Prudence
“right reason applied to action”
Its parts: integral parts, subjective parts, potential parts
Justice
“a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will”
Its parts: integral parts, subjective parts, potential parts
Fortitude
“firmness only in bearing and withstanding those things wherein it is most difficult to be firm”
Its parts: subjective parts, integral and potential parts
Temperance
“withholding the appetite from those things which are most seductive to man”
Its parts: integral parts, subjective parts, potential parts
The Queen of the Vices
Pride
“the queen and mother of all the vices”
Outside the seven for St. Thomas; first among them for some of the manuals.
Goods sought inordinately
Vainglory
“the excellence of honor and praise”
7 daughters: boasting, love of novelties, hypocrisy, obstinacy, discord, contention, disobedience
Gluttony
“meat and drink”
5 daughters: dullness of sense in the understanding, unseemly joy, loquaciousness, scurrility, uncleanness
Lust
“the preservation of the species”
8 daughters: blindness of mind, rashness, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, self-love, hatred of God, love of this world, despair of a future world
Covetousness (Avarice)
“riches”
7 daughters: insensibility to mercy, restlessness, violence, falsehood, perjury, fraud, treachery
Goods shunned on account of an attendant evil
Sloth (Acedia)
“sadness about one's spiritual good, on account of the attendant bodily labor”
6 daughters: despair, faint-heartedness, sluggishness about the commandments, spite, malice, wandering after unlawful things
Envy
“sadness about another's good as being a hindrance to one's own excellence”
5 daughters: tale-bearing, detraction, joy at another's misfortune, grief at another's prosperity, hatred
Anger
“with recrimination with a view to vengeance”
6 daughters: indignation, swelling of the mind, clamor, blasphemy, contumely, quarrels
The division into goods sought and goods shunned is St. Thomas's, I-II, q. 84, a. 4. The daughters on each card are his; the manuals' lists are on each vice's page.
How One Arises from Another
Besides its daughters, one capital vice can lead to another: “envy from vainglory, anger from envy, acedia from anger, and from acedia avarice, gluttony, and lust.” (Merkelbach, n. 514, after St. Gregory.)
The confessor needs this order, because “when the cause has been removed, the effect also is taken away.” (Merkelbach, Pastoral Questions.)
How Each Author Numbers Them
| Author | The seven | Pride |
|---|---|---|
| St. Thomas | vainglory, envy, anger, sloth, covetousness, gluttony, lust I-II, q. 84, a. 4 | “the queen and mother of all the vices” II-II, q. 162, a. 8 |
| Prümmer | vain glory, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, sloth n. 407 | “better called the queen and beginning of every sin” n. 407 |
| Merkelbach | vainglory, gluttony, lust, avarice, sloth, envy, anger n. 495 | “the cause of all the capital sins, and the mother and queen of all vices” n. 496 |
| Noldin | pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, sloth n. 335 | Counted among the seven |
| Wouters | pride, avarice, lust, envy, anger, sloth, and gluttony n. 299 | Counted among the seven |
The Authors Consulted
St. Thomas gives the frame. Beside him stand two of his own Order, Prümmer and Merkelbach; the Jesuit Noldin; and the Redemptorist Wouters. St. Thomas has no article on remedies, and Noldin lists them only against drunkenness. What these two say elsewhere is gathered on each vice's page. The fuller lists come from Prümmer, Wouters and Merkelbach's Pastoral Questions.