Charts

The Tree of the Virtues

The names are St. Thomas's where he gives one. The words under each virtue are also St. Thomas's, and each virtue's page shows how the manuals name and number its parts. The theological virtues have no parts in the sense the cardinal virtues do, so under each is the division the authors draw.

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The Virtues and Their Gifts

Each virtue with the gift of the Holy Ghost that St. Thomas joins to it, in St. Thomas's words.

The gift of fear answers to two virtues. Wouters: “the gift of fear of the Lord corresponds both to the theological virtue of hope and to the cardinal virtue of temperance.” n. 481. What each manual says of the gift is on each virtue's page.

The Powers of the Soul

Each power in which St. Thomas places virtue, with what it is ordered to, the virtues and gifts that perfect it, the wound original sin left in it, and the passions that belong to it. Every name is St. Thomas's, and each reference opens the article.

What the Manuals Say

The Tree of the Capital Vices

The division into goods sought and goods shunned is St. Thomas's, I-II, q. 84, a. 4, and so are the words under each vice, the daughters, and the headings they fall under. Beside a daughter that has an entry of its own stands the virtue under which that entry is found.

The Wheel of the Sevens

The medieval teachers set the Church's sevens in rings. This wheel follows Bontempi, who gives them after St. Bonaventure: each vice with the virtue opposed to it, the petition of the Our Father against it, the gift and beatitude that petition asks, and the reward. Read it from the outside in. The beatitudes are given by their merit in the inner ring next to the reward each one promises.

Slide the wheel sideways to see all of it.

From Bontempi, Palladium V, Q. VI, nn. 8-29. The pairing is not the only one. St. Thomas reports St. Augustine's, which goes in another order (II-II, q. 83, a. 9, ad 3), and notes that “In adapting the beatitudes to the gifts a twofold congruity may be observed” (II-II, q. 121, a. 2). Bontempi's own petitions also name other virtues in passing, and the virtue ring here is the separate list at n. 10. The last column shows the gift and beatitude St. Augustine gives to the same petition.

St. Thomas, in St. Augustine's Order

St. Thomas joins each virtue to its gift, and each gift to a beatitude, a reward and the fruits that answer to it, keeping St. Augustine's order of the gifts. Read it from the outside in. Every ring is in St. Thomas's words, and each name opens the article.

Slide the wheel sideways to see all of it.

St. Thomas's Own Arrangement

St. Thomas's own account of the beatitudes sorts them by three kinds of life and matches them to the gifts by what they are about. Fear takes two of them, piety two, and fortitude the meek. Read it from the outside in.

Slide the wheel sideways to see all of it.

How One Leads to Another

Besides its daughters, a capital vice can give rise to another capital vice, though “not so frequently.” The words on the chart are Merkelbach's, after St. Gregory.

1. vainglory
2. envy
3. anger
4. acedia
5. avaricegluttonylust

“envy from vainglory, anger from envy, acedia from anger, and from acedia avarice, gluttony, and lust.” Merkelbach, n. 514.

The Virtues Their Daughters Sin Against

A capital vice is opposed to one virtue, but its daughters reach others. Each line runs from a capital vice to one of its daughters, and on to the virtue under which that daughter's entry is found. A daughter that arises from more than one vice is drawn once, with a line from each: from the vices whose own lists name it, and, dotted, from those St. Thomas says it also arises from (his words are below the chart). Solid lines come from the vices that seek a good, broken lines from those that shun one. Only the daughters with an entry of their own are drawn. Choose a name to follow it alone.

The Golden Mean

Each virtue between the vice of excess and the vice of defect, with the matter it governs in St. Thomas's words. The names are St. Thomas's wherever St. Thomas sets a vice on one side or the other. Elsewhere the manual is named beside the word. The mark ‡ means the authors name these differently or set them on opposite sides, and it opens the full table of every author.

Remedies at a Glance

Each number is how many remedies that author gives against that vice, in the lines gathered on its page. A filled square opens them. An empty square means only that none has been gathered from that author there.

Where the Authors Disagree

Where the Authors Disagree has a page of its own: 404 points, by the kind of question (how grave it is, which side of the mean, what a thing is or requires, where it belongs, how many, one word, two senses) and by virtue.