The Seven Deadly Sins
5/14/202641 min
Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath! You might be surprised to learn the true history of the Seven Deadly Sins doesn't start in the bible. Rather, they were first thought up by a Greek monk in the 4th century who'd fled to the desert after becoming embroiled in a scandal with a married woman…
Dan is joined by historian and author Peter Jones to trace the true history of the Seven Deadly Sins, why they took the Middle Ages by storm, and how they have shaped European society for centuries.
You can learn more in Peter's new book, ' Self Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living'
Produced by Mariana Des Forges, McKenna Fernandez and James Hickmann. Edited by Matthew Wilson
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First 90 secondsDan Snow· Host0:00
Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History Hit 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 historyhit.com/subscribe. 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 gonna 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 fourth 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.