In short
Life Lessons from History episode arguing that the “seven deadly sins” are medieval tools for self-examination and ongoing self-knowledge, not just prohibitions. It traces origins (Evagrius Ponticus’s “eight generic thoughts”), how they became “deadly sins” (John Cassian), and how Gregory the Great reduced/ranked them to seven.
Key claims
sins are patterns of thought/inclination; confession functioned like recurring therapy; pride is misrecognizing your real self (Gower’s Narcissus example); sloth is “lack of care” (akadia)—knowing what to do but lacking energy to do it.
Notable examples
SatNav “ignoring advice” as pride; William Peraldus’s freezing river image for sloth; Dante’s Purgatory as a forgiving model where everyone works through sins.
Guests
Peter Jones, medieval historian (studies Middle Ages; wrote on the sins and on teaching in Siberia; author of Self-Help from the Middle Ages: A Journey into the Medieval Mind). Host: Dave Musgrave.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroducing Peter Jones and the Seven Deadly Sins
0:51 to 1:49
Dave Musgrave introduces Peter Jones and discusses medieval perspectives on the seven deadly sins.
“Visit the website for full terms and conditions.”
Introducing Peter Jones and the Seven Deadly Sins
2:15 to 2:41
Dave Musgrave introduces Peter Jones and discusses medieval perspectives on the seven deadly sins.
“and the concept of this podcast is simple, I find great historians and archaeologists and ask them to propose a lesson from history that might help us live happier, healthier, better or more productive lives today.”
The Seven Deadly Sins: A Tool for Self-Examination
2:41 to 3:30
Exploration of how the seven deadly sins were used as a framework for understanding human behavior.
“Well, look, you know, I think we have this modern idea of the seven deadly sins, this really forbidding system of things not to do.”
Evagrius Ponticus and the Origins of the Sins
3:30 to 5:04
Discussion on Evagrius Ponticus's contributions to the concept of the seven deadly sins.
“They're kind of basic patterns of thought that we all have all of the time.”
John Cassian and the Evolution of the Sins
5:04 to 6:28
How John Cassian adapted Evagrius's ideas into the more combative concept of deadly sins.
“He writes a book called Antideticos, which is like talking back, where he documents every single one of his negative, tempting thoughts.”
The Spread of the Deadly Sins in Medieval Thought
6:28 to 8:13
Examination of how the concept of deadly sins became widespread in medieval society.
“So there are eight generic thoughts for the Vagreus and like, it's kind of forgiving.”
Impact of the Fourth Lateran Council on Confession
8:13 to 11:52
The implications of the Fourth Lateran Council on the practice of confession and the understanding of sins.
“Well, it goes, it's quite a scholarly thing at first.”
Cultural Shift in Self-Examination Practices
11:52 to 14:00
Insights into how the practice of self-examination evolved in medieval literature and society.
“Let's talk about your pride, you know, your egotistical problems.”
Understanding the Seven Deadly Sins in Medieval Times
14:03 to 14:42
Learn how everyday people in the Middle Ages internalized the concept of the seven deadly sins.
“So if I'm a peasant in 1265 living in Melton Mowbray, I'm going to know about the seven deadly sins.”
Pride: The First Deadly Sin
14:42 to 17:48
Explore the medieval understanding of pride and its implications for self-awareness.
“Right, so the conceit of our chat here is that we can learn something from people in the Middle Ages about the art of self-examination.”
Show all 20 chapters
The Nuances of Ego and Self-Perception
17:48 to 19:59
Discover how medieval views on ego differ from modern interpretations and the role of self-recognition.
“The essence of pride, and it's interesting, I've been thinking a lot, especially because I'm writing a book here.”
Moderation and Self-Reflection
19:59 to 21:03
Examine the balance between pride and humility in achieving self-knowledge.
“And sorry, and to be super clear, so when I ignored my sat-nav the other day.”
Exploring Sloth: A Deeper Understanding
22:00 to 22:46
Learn about the medieval concept of sloth and its psychological implications.
“Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+.”
Self-Examination and Modern Therapy
22:46 to 25:08
Discuss the connections between medieval self-examination practices and modern therapeutic approaches.
“book begins with myself in a period of sloth in my life right the book is set in Siberia where I was teaching a long long winter in Siberia teaching and you know I felt myself feeling this thing sloth.”
Practical Applications of Medieval Wisdom
25:08 to 28:00
Learn how to apply medieval insights on sin to improve modern living and self-awareness.
“You know, for hundreds of years, this stuff was really central to people's lives.”
Understanding the Seven Deadly Sins
28:00 to 31:21
Learn how the seven deadly sins serve as a reflection of human nature and self-awareness.
“and not to eradicate them or pretend they're not happening.”
Nuanced Views on the Deadly Sins
31:21 to 31:42
Explore a nuanced perspective on the deadly sins and their implications on social interactions.
Medieval Humor and Its Context
31:42 to 33:32
Delve into the humor of the 12th century, including its style and societal reflections.
“And you also said that it's impossible to do this.”
Exploring the Book's Insights
33:32 to 33:51
An overview of Peter Jones' book on medieval mindsets and the application of historical lessons.
Exploring the Book's Insights
35:14 to 35:43
An overview of Peter Jones' book on medieval mindsets and the application of historical lessons.
“Avatar Fire and Ash, now streaming on Disney+.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Dave Musgrove:Late night bites with friends? Already hard to beat. That first too hot bite of fries you couldn't wait for, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Now that hits different. Suddenly, the energy kicks back in, the night goes longer, and the laughs don't stop. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. The Viore Core Short moves with you. With everyday versatility and classic athletic fit. It's the one short for everything your day brings. Invest in your happiness and get 20 % off your first purchase at viore.com slash core20.
0:47Dave Musgrove:That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash K-O-R-E-2-0. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. I see you. Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go! A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick! avatar fire and ash now streaming on disney plus rated pg-13 a burst pipe a dead water heater the ac calling it quits who do you call home serve is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs with plans covering stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't instead of scrambling for a contractor you make one call to get the repair process started join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe right now.
1:49Dave Musgrove:Go to homeserve.com slash podcast for 50 % less your first year. That's homeserve.com slash podcast. Savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. We should be more honest with ourselves and we can master the art of self-examination with a little bit of help from the seven deadly sins. That's the surprising life lesson that I discuss with Peter Jones in this episode of Life Lessons from History, from History Extra. My name's Dave Musgrave and the concept of this podcast is simple, I find great historians and archaeologists and ask them to propose a lesson from history that might help us live happier, healthier, better or more productive lives today.
2:26Dave Musgrove:And then we chat about it. It's the history, wellbeing crossover that you didn't know you needed, but hopefully you might enjoy. Peter, welcome to the podcast. How are you? Pleasure to be here. Wonderful. Yes. Thank you. Good. Thank you for coming. Seven Deadly Sins. What's that all about?
2:44Peter Jones:Well, look, you know, I think we have this modern idea of the seven deadly sins, this really forbidding system of things not to do. I was always interested in them. I'm a medieval historian, right? I've been studying the Middle Ages for, I suppose, about 20 years. Every book you read, a lot of the great classics of the Middle Ages, Chaucer, Dante, Gower, the seven deadly sins will come up. But I never really paid too much attention. And then I realized they connect to everything. That's always interested me, you know, approaches to psychology, approaches to emotion in the past. Seven deadly sins are a tool, really, in the Middle Ages for examining ourselves.
3:18Peter Jones:They're not this kind of forbidding system that we kind of assume they are now. They're a kind of periodic table of the mind. These are the seven basic thoughts. That was their original term, actually, generic thoughts. We'll talk about that in a second. They're kind of basic patterns of thought that we all have all of the time. The kind of quirks that make us human, that we get a bit angry, that we get a bit egotistical, that we get a bit lazy or slothful. And so The Seven Deadly Sins were a map of a way to understand ourselves and our quirks for medieval writers.
3:49Dave Musgrove:Cool. And when were they first written down? Where did they come from, this concept?
3:53Peter Jones:So it's the late 300s, right? It's the Egyptian desert, and the language is Greek. It's a guy called Evagrius Ponticus. He's actually a failed politician. There's been a sex scandal.
4:03Dave Musgrove:It happens. It happens.
4:04Peter Jones:It's not anymore. But Evagrius drops out of his political career, and he's kind of, you know, he's about mid-30s and he doesn't know what to do with his life. And like many people in his situation, he drifts. It's actually quite a popular thing to drift into the desert at this point. There's a community, I call it a community. We would now call them monks, but it's important not to see it that way. We've got a preset idea of what a monk is. These are young, usually radical people who want to live away from the world, want to unplug, and they live in these cells in the desert, spaced apart. You can wave to each other, but you can't see each other's facial expressions.
4:37Peter Jones:That's kind of how far away they are from each other. And Vargas drifts down there, gets his own cell, weaves baskets, watches the sun rise and set. And he's trying to sort of reach what we would now call, I suppose, a state of mindfulness. He tests himself. He exposes himself to fleas and ticks sleeping outside in the desert at night. He eats only a single piece of bread a day with oil sort of, you know, rationed out. So he's really testing himself. But he also tests himself mentally. He decides he's going to map all his negative thoughts, tempting thoughts. distracting thoughts. And so he does this.
5:09Peter Jones:He writes a book called Antideticos, which is like talking back, where he documents every single one of his negative, tempting thoughts. And at the end of writing this, he kind of decides that they fit into eight buckets, eight categories. And he calls these the eight generic thoughts. And these are pride, gluttony, lust, along the ones that we now consider the seven deadly sins. So the idea begins there. There have been other things that are a little bit like deadly sins before, you know, ancient Greece has the gods, you know, that symbolize different passions, God of war and God of love, you know.
5:42Peter Jones:So it's not a totally alien idea, it doesn't come out of the blue. But Evagrius is the first to kind of make it into this set that we recognize of familiar capacities like gluttony and lust.
5:51Dave Musgrove:And is this in a Christian context?
5:54Peter Jones:Yes, Evagrius is a Christian, you know, Christianity is quite young, relatively young, right, as a religion. Yes, he's in the Greek Christian community, but they're still mapping out the contours of what Christianity would be, you know, at that point, it's still spreading, hasn't become the hegemon that it becomes, you know, later. So like, as I say, monks, this was a new idea at this point. This wasn't so well established as like a model of what it means to be a Christian. So yeah, he's right at the beginning of all that.
6:19Dave Musgrove:Yeah. Okay. And then who picks this up? Who sort of goes with the idea? Because you said there was eight and we need to get down to seven. So presumably somebody then interprets it.
6:27Peter Jones:Yeah. So there are eight generic thoughts for the Vagreus and like, it's kind of forgiving. It's like these are the generic thoughts we all have all of the time, whether we like it or not. You know, even if we're really great, you know, moral, pure people will still have these generic thoughts. If Agrius dies, a guy called John Cassian comes to the same patch of desert. And John Cassian, also writing and reading Greek, but also writing Latin. And Cassian has been given a job. He has to write a preaching text, something that's going to convert peasants in the French countryside. So he's looking for some sort of accessible idea that people are going to grab hold of and believe that Christianity is a great way to forward and all the rest of it.
7:00Peter Jones:So Cassian thinks Evagris' idea is fantastic, but he takes those eight generic thoughts and makes them eight deadly sins. He kind of dramatizes it. So Cassian really, he injects that label, deadly sins, and he makes it a bit more bellicose, a bit more combative. You've got to fight your sins. He says that we all have one special sin that defines us, right? And we have to seek it out and root it out. So he makes it more of a combat situation, and that's, I think, more accessible and more appealing than Evagris had it.
7:28Dave Musgrove:And what did Cassian understand by the deadly bit of it? How was he framing that?
7:33Peter Jones:He's pretty dramatic about it. He describes these things as being like a sickness that will paralyze your body, corrupt you from the inside. So he really ramps up some of the rhetoric, whereas Evagrius had been much more gentle, I think. So yeah, and sin, I mean, well, what is a sin? It's different from a thought, right? Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had a good definition of sin. It's something we do that's against our own better interests. So, you know, sin, I think we should be clear, sin isn't necessarily an act. It's a kind of inclination.
8:05Dave Musgrove:Yeah, okay. How does this become sort of widespread in Western medieval thought, this idea of these deadly sins?
8:13Peter Jones:Well, it goes, it's quite a scholarly thing at first. And we have Gregory the Great, the Pope, around about the year 600. He trims them down to seven and gives them a ranking. Pride at the top, then envy, then anger.
8:23Dave Musgrove:What does he get rid of?
8:24Peter Jones:Ah, yes. Actually, so there used to be vainglory and pride. And vainglory is kind of like boasting. It's more exterior ego problems and pride is more interior ego problems. So he rolled those into one. There used to be two for Evagrius. Sadness and sloth were two separate things. Gregory rolls those into just, well, he actually calls it sadness, but what we now think of as sloth. And he adds envy. So he's folded two in and he's added envy, which wasn't there before, which is really interesting. And we'll come on to envy, I suppose, in a second. Evagrius, not much envy in his life. He's in a cell on his own, so I guess envy isn't really necessarily part of his social existence, but sadness definitely was.
9:01Peter Jones:How's it become popular? They're kind of scholarly for a long time. So scholars will, people writing Latin texts, people writing about the Bible, things like this, they'll mention them. Occasionally, there'll be a sermon about them, but it's not really widespread yet. In the 12th century, my favorite century, by the way, the 1100s, the founding of the universities, the first Crusades, Gothic architecture. In the 12th century, you have preachers who are now talking about the seven deadly sins. There's one, Robert Pullen, who's like, we have to fight our pride and our envy and our anger within ourselves.
9:31Peter Jones:They're preaching these in Latin, I guess, to a literate audience, or maybe they're being translated from the Latin ad hoc. But so they're still quite scholarly at that point. The boom is the 1200s onwards. And why? Well, look, there's a boom in literature generally in the 1200s onwards and the seven deadly sins just they sort of jump out to authors i think as a really fantastic way to organize a text and dante's the most famous of that's you know early 1300s his purgatorio is a mountain with made up of the seven seven terraces of the seven deadly sins one by one in gregory the great's order i think really though for medievalists right there's 1215 is a huge year but it's not magna carta magna carta is 1215 and of course that's enormous enormous enormous but for medievalists we think the thing that happened in november 1215 is even bigger than the thing that happened in june which is the fourth lateran council not so exciting to write about but as an event it was huge and the fourth lateran council this is when so many of the kind of ordinary norms of everyday christian life change well you know there's a lot about heresy there's a lot about how the eucharist is now the bread does become the body of christ in the mass so you know that's huge and think about the reformation its impact on that but one of the things there is everyone must make confession once a year compulsory confession it's this huge impetus which the pope innocent the third had to kind of bring more people into the christian faith and sort of organize it and maybe i'm not going to say micromanage but certainly ensure that like there's more of a top-down outreach kind of impulse in the church so everyone's making confession once a year it's mandatory so suddenly all these priests a scrambling.
11:09Peter Jones:Oh my goodness, you know, I've got hundreds of people. I've got to make confession with all of them. I mean, you know, that's one a day, isn't it, on average, if you only have 350 in your flock. And they have many more than that, a lot of them. So that's a lot of private therapy sessions. And these things are a bit like therapy sessions. If you're making confession, you're coming to the priest and you're making, you know, a full account of everything you've been through that year, all the kinds of, a bit like Evagrius, you know, all the tempting, negative, eccentric, excessive thoughts and problems and desires and temptations you've had and sort of working through them.
11:40Peter Jones:And the seven deadly sins become this fantastic model for that. Priests are looking for a way to organize. You can imagine yourself if you can, you know, two or three therapy sessions a day. And, you know, this wasn't necessarily why you got into this job. The seven deadly sins are a gift, right? I've got a skeleton I can work through. Let's talk about your pride, you know, your egotistical problems. Let's talk about your envy, your problems socially. So the seven deadly sins really explode from then. And there's a huge demand for confession materials and support books. And the sins are at the heart of them.
12:07Peter Jones:So I go to a lot of manuscript libraries, any book from the 1200s onwards, mid 1200s onwards, chances are you're going to find a reference to the seven deadly sins, sometimes in the margin. I saw once little diagrams of the seven deadly sins or scrawled in margins. These things, they really take on a life of their own.
12:23Dave Musgrove:We were chatting before the interview started, and I said I'd done loads of these interviews for the History of the Podcast, and I've never seen anyone's eyes light up discussing the Fourth Lateran Council. Quite such energy. So more power to you. So that's really interesting. So was confession kind of not really a thing before the early 13th century, or is this just being formalized and the Pope saying, lads, you've got to do this?
12:46Peter Jones:No, confession was there, but it's becoming mandatory. So, I mean, it just, you know, it was optional, if you like. And of course, confession would happen in extreme cases, you know, deathbed confession, of course, things like this, there was this optional element, which is completely removed. So suddenly, you know, all those people who would go on a whole lifetime without making confession quite happily are now being dragged into it. So that's the kind of change. And you know, there's just much more focus on it. People, it's not necessarily that there, I mean, yes, there are more confessions happening, but there's more, it's a social project suddenly, you know, there's a consciousness about we want to make confession and make it well.
13:19Peter Jones:So there's a whole cultural shift where people are more conscious about their sins, their responsibility for their own interior well-being. And you see that in the literature. You know, from the literature of the 1200s onwards, it's bizarre what's happening. So many of these, like something like the Romance of the Rose, I know a little bit later, Parts of Val, which is in the 1230s, isn't it? You know, this epic about Percival and the Holy Grail. These have these long excursions into the seven deadly sins, but also they have a central character who's struggling to understand themselves. And that's the narrative motor in a lot of these great works of medieval literature, which hadn't necessarily been there before that.
13:57Peter Jones:So, yeah, it's a real cultural shift, I think.
13:59Dave Musgrove:So I want to get into this question of sort of self-examination. But just before I do, so to be like super clear. So if I'm a peasant in 1265 living in Melton Mowbray, I'm going to know about the seven deadly sins. Would they have been like universally acknowledged by that point?
14:14Peter Jones:Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we have like murals on, you know, frescoes rather on church walls, small parish churches with the seven deadly sins in them. So they're obviously widespread. They're in every text, but that means every priest knows about them. And they're so accessible, you know, preaching and everyone would have listened to sermons. These words, Acadia, Superbia, would have been said sometimes in Latin in an otherwise vernacular sermon. So people are that familiar with them. Yeah, absolutely.
14:41Dave Musgrove:Okay, cool. Right, so the conceit of our chat here is that we can learn something from people in the Middle Ages about the art of self-examination. So we've sort of got the context here that they've got these sinsless framework. What were everyday people doing to kind of internalise them to examine themselves?
14:58Peter Jones:Well, you know, in the ideal case, and we should put a huge caveat at the start of this, there were lazy priests, there were people who weren't that interested, and a lot of it could have gone over their heads. But, you know, in the ideal case, you're working through these sins one by one, and you're trying to understand yourself through them. Right, so let's start with pride. So the idea here is you're supposed to examine yourself and how you've been proud in this year that's gone by. Now, what does it mean to be proud? What is pride, right? The Latin word was superbia, which means sort of going above or beyond something, like the same super as Superman, you know.
15:32Peter Jones:And the idea is that it's, there are two kinds of things, overestimating your own abilities. And so that's going above and beyond what you are capable of doing and kind of going above and beyond what's socially acceptable with your ego in different ways, right? So you're bragging or assuming, I think a good way of putting it is assuming that I don't need your help or I don't need anyone's help in a situation is a classic kind of superbia pride problem. For example, in modern terms, SatNav is saying, turn left. I don't know. SatNav's wrong. This is classic superbia. There's good advice out there with loads of data and statistics behind it, but I know better.
16:12Peter Jones:SatNav's fine. That's fine. Maybe you do. but superbia gets into a darker place where i ask for your advice and then i just do the other thing than what you said and so i think all of these sins function this way it's about uh recognizing a behavior pattern and these treatises will have long long detail and they'll subdivide it too so pride can be subdivided in arrogance and insolence and you know all these other kinds of selfishness and all these other kinds of they call them the grandsons or the sons or whatever of the sins and there's huge lists of them and people like to collect them. They love nothing more than a listicle in the Middle Ages.
16:48Peter Jones:So you're supposed to sort of, using these texts or your priest using these texts will work through all the subdivisions and you'll kind of think about what constitutes pride in all these different ways. And your confessor might ask you, how have you been in your family? Are you listening to the advice? What's been going on? If you've got a good one, if you've got a bad one, it's just, did I do something really terrible this year? No, we're not. So the point of that is you're recognising, you're learning. If I think about it now, do I listen to the sat-nav? I don't drive, actually, but I'm the sort of person who wouldn't listen to the sat-nav.
Read the full transcript
17:17Peter Jones:So I'm becoming conscious in that moment. One manual on the sins describes it as, pride is you dream to float above everyone else you know. You dream to float above them in capacities and abilities and everything else. So, you know, you'll be asking yourself, have I done that? Have I been treated? Are my ambitions like that? Have I got this kind of ruthless above everyone else ambition? So it's a mode of self-examination and it goes through for all of the seven deadly sins where you're kind of confronting yourself. It's interesting actually on, if I may carry on just on pride for a second. The essence of pride, and it's interesting, I've been thinking a lot, especially because I'm writing a book here.
17:57Peter Jones:I've written a book here which is about medieval advice for modern people in similar situations today. why is it any different from modern advice? One thing I find really interesting, the medieval advice on the ego is fascinating. A big ego, I assume someone who's got a big ego is self-obsessed and that they must look at themselves in the mirror and just be obsessed with their own image or whatever. But the medieval idea is that the problem with the ego is you actually don't recognize yourself for what you are. You lack your self-obsession. You're obsessed with a version of yourself that you've invented rather than the real self that's there.
18:32Peter Jones:John Gower in his Confessio Romantis has this. He has Narcissus and the story of Narcissus as an exemplar of pride, the sin. The Confessio Romantis works through all the seven sins. Narcissus is there for pride. In the medieval John Gower myth of Narcissus, what happens is Narcissus looks in the pool and he sees that face, but he thinks it's someone else. He's not falling in love with himself. His pride is that he's looked at himself in the pool and thought it was someone else. he's got such an ego that he's invented this other version of himself that's so terrific that when he actually sees his own face he doesn't recognize it so what i learned from that which i think is a little bit different from modern advice about the ego is yeah actually ego is when you don't understand who you really are ego is when you you get so self-obsessed that you can create this fake image of yourself that's so puffed up and so perfect that you actually don't see the kind of fragile, ordinary, vulnerable, sometimes not that likable person you are underneath.
19:27Peter Jones:So it's a great tool. And I think that's why great that pride is number one. Self-examination means really looking in the mirror, you know, not looking in the mirror and just seeing the things you want to see or whatever, really looking in the mirror and seeing the kind of fragile, flawed self and learning to cope with it.
19:44Dave Musgrove:There's a lot there. So to summarize, So you've got this quite, the pride is, it's failing to see yourself for who you really are. That's your definition, right? Based on what the medieval people were saying.
19:56Peter Jones:Exactly. The logic of the medieval text suggests that definition, yeah.
19:58Dave Musgrove:Yeah. And sorry, and to be super clear, so when I ignored my sat-nav the other day. You didn't. I did, because I knew it was wrong. You know, it was definitely taken the wrong way. I was committing a deadly sin.
20:10Peter Jones:Yeah, but you know, look, remember, they were originally generic thoughts, not deadly sins. And we should be quite compassionate about it. Yes, yes you were, but don't we all, all the time? Also, I mean, look, no, I think it's important to say though as well, moderation is the key with the deadly sins, right? If you always just listen to the sat-nav and you go, oh, because I'm a bit, I don't really know the roads, you know, even though you do, you know, you're going too far the other way. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way, right? You have pride, but the other end you have pusillanimity, right? Weakness of spirit.
20:39Peter Jones:And that's where you don't have enough self-respect and self-knowledge to know what you know and back that up and stand up for it. you know so no i think when you you definitely didn't you were for thomas quines you're probably in the right because you probably knew that this isn't the quickest way because you had a knowledge of the road so sometimes we have to stand up for what we know but those moments where i'm just ignoring the advice because i i assume i know better but i don't really i'm lacking self-knowledge
21:03Dave Musgrove:there you know okay cool the perfect lunch combo that first bite of your favorite sub followed by ice-cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. The Viore Core Short moves with you. With everyday versatility and classic athletic fit. It's the one short for everything your day brings. Invest in your happiness and get 20 % off your first purchase at viore.com slash core20.
21:49Dave Musgrove:That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash K-O-R-E-2-0. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home.
22:21Peter Jones:This is sick!
22:25Dave Musgrove:Avatar Fire and Ash, now streaming on Disney +, rated PG-13. Look, we're not going to go through all seven sins. we haven't got time and that would mean that readers wouldn't read your book as well because you go through them all indeed but I do want to do one more if we can how about sloth I think sloth's quite interesting tell me a bit about medieval attitudes to sloth well I say that this
22:46Peter Jones:book begins with myself in a period of sloth in my life right the book is set in Siberia where I was teaching a long long winter in Siberia teaching and you know I felt myself feeling this thing sloth. What is sloth? It's not laziness, right? That's the first thing we should know. In fact, this word, it was never translated in the Middle Ages, right? They left the Greek alone. The Greek word was akadia, which really means something like lack of care. Sloth is when you withdraw your heart from something, right? It's somewhere between, I think, what we would call now depression, boredom, listlessness, burnout.
23:20Peter Jones:It's somewhere in that pocket. It's really well described by William Peraldas, who wrote the Summer of Vices in the 1230s. He says, it's like you're standing in a freezing cold river that's rushing, the water's rushing at your legs, but you don't have the energy to move. In other words, sloth is, you know what you should be doing. Get out of the freezing cold water. Move on with your life. Carry on teaching in Siberia and embrace it. Don't just feel glum and look out the window and wish you were anywhere else, but you can't do it. Sloth is when you know what you should be doing, but you can't do it.
23:50Peter Jones:It's not boredom without a direction, it's boredom in spite of a direction. And that's what makes it, I think, so difficult to live with.
23:57Dave Musgrove:Yeah. Okay. That's really interesting and really nuanced. And I should just say, anyone who wants to check out the History Extra website, you've done a fascinating article about your experience of teaching in Siberia. So a whole different sphere of interest there, but it's well worth a read. And I should also say you've written an article for History Extra magazine as well, sort of talking about the sins that you've outlined. So check that out as well uh listeners there's there's loads of good stuff so look this is so interesting and there's a lot of stuff here that you're you've describing which sounds sort of medical type terms like you know depression and and things like that and you've talked about therapy and you've talked about you know confessions being akin to therapy in a way i've never been to confession i'm not a practicing catholic i i've never done it and i don't know how far it's akin to a form of therapy today for people but are you essentially just saying people should have therapy i mean look
24:48Peter Jones:I don't know. I think therapy works, right, for a lot of people in all kinds of wonderful ways, right? And I'm certainly not saying that they should do medieval history instead of therapy. I mean, let's do both. I think, look, you know, what I'm saying is that there's something about self-examination and being honest with yourself and recognizing and forgiving yourself that is essential for all of us. I think, you know, the point I'm making here is that there was a self-help system, right, in the Middle Ages for a long time. You know, for hundreds of years, this stuff was really central to people's lives.
25:15Peter Jones:and at the basis of it there was a forgiveness built in that we all go through these problems and we all have to work on them all of the time confession is once a year you don't have one therapy session and it's done you know we don't have a sense this is not a model of humanity which is like you know we can fix these we can be perfect and i think we put ourselves under a lot of pressure when we think gosh i shouldn't feel like this i should feel another way there's something wrong with me like let's just suppose someone had a terrible ego problem and they're constantly dreaming or envy problem they're constantly dreaming of you know crushing their friends dreams and you know and you know and achieving some glorious ambition like okay that does sound pretty bad the way i framed it there but there's a forgiveness built into this it's like okay well everyone's working on their envy we're all making confession about that we recognize that this is a pattern of human thought and we know it's pretty poisonous and pretty toxic but we're not demonizing people for it necessarily unless they're irredeemable sinners you know we're accepting that there's a manual to deal with it, and to cope with it, and to live with it, and to move it in a better direction.
26:20Peter Jones:Now, you know, I should be clear, some medieval writers did say, you know, you're all damned if you do this. Dante has an inferno full of people with irredeemable envy, for example. But Dante also has a purgatory, right? And the great thing about that, in Dante's purgatory, where the souls work through all seven sins, one by one, pride all the way up to lust. Everyone's there, right? Nobody goes straight to paradise other than the saints and the extreme examples. But even Dante's heroes are in purgatory. The point being, everyone, no matter how good they are, has to work with and work on all seven of these things constantly.
26:55Peter Jones:So what I find is that it's a very forgiving culture, surprisingly, surprisingly for the culture that invented the seven deadly sins. They were mislabeled all along. It's a pretty forgiving system, a system of recognizing we all feel these things, working through them, and, you know, trying to push them in a better direction.
27:12Dave Musgrove:To finish up, let's try and give some practical application here. So you're living today and you're just trying to get your head around life. What can we take from what you've just been talking about? How can people use this to live better, healthier, happier lives today? And further to that, do you yourself employ any of the stuff that you've just been talking about in your day-to-day?
27:34Peter Jones:Okay, I absolutely do. I absolutely do. I cannot see a news story without thinking of one of the seven deadly sins. And I cannot, no, I move through life in my very flawed, very sort of idiosyncratic, like all of us way, making these mistakes all the time. You know, yes, and I think about them all the time. What can we do? Number one, we can forgive ourselves, right? Because this is a wonderful tool that recognizes that we're all flawed in these ways, and that accepts that the only way to deal with these things is to sort of be conscious of them and to work on them, and not to eradicate them or pretend they're not happening.
28:05Peter Jones:So the first thing is to say, the seven deadly sins as a system reminds us that to be human is to make mistakes, is to do terrible things sometimes, and to accept that we're all in the same boat. At a practical level, a more advanced level, this system had two things at its core. One was self-knowledge, right? To become a better person, you've got to be honest with yourself. You've got to be brutally honest. What am I doing that's a little bit off? You know, when am I being excessive? When am I boring people? When am I kind of taking up too much of the limelight or whatever it is? The seven deadly sins is a great way to do that.
28:37Peter Jones:It's being total honesty with yourself. You know, those little flickers where my ego has just got in the way of this or my envy has got in the way of that or my gluttony, my obsession with whatever, croissants or whatever, has just got in the way of a better life. The core of the seven deadly sins is we have to be honest and compassionate and look at our lives and accept our lives for what they are, flaws and warts and all. But, you know, it's also to see that these things all come from a place of love. The theory of the seven-day sins, Dante has this, and also a theologian called Jean de la Rochelle, who I talk about in the book.
29:09Peter Jones:He says that all the sins are actually love gone wrong. Right? Pride is, you know, self-love is a normal thing. You've got to love yourself. Otherwise, how are you getting out of bed in the morning? But it's just gone too far. Envy, you love success because it feels good. And it's doing something good in the world, usually. But it's curdled so that your love of success means you don't want other people to have success. And so on. You know, gluttony is obvious. Lust is obvious. Avarice is obvious. You love those objects so much. And anger, interestingly, the love of being right. You know, being right is a good thing a lot of the time.
29:39Peter Jones:You know, if someone's insulted my friends and they've done it horribly and they've made mistakes in their insult, you know, whatever, it's great to put them right. No, no, you're wrong about that. You know, and I'm standing up for someone. But it does feel good, doesn't it? When you know you're right about something. But, you know, anger as a deadly sin is when you push that too far. you're putting yourself in situations where you get angry because you like the feeling of being right so to accept that all these things come from a place of love and that they're just love gone wrong it's kind of another way to be compassionate but what i love about this system is at its core it's about being social being a social being right all of the deadly sins are the way they police the boundaries in the middle ages was when you start being anti-social when your obsession takes you to a place where you cut other people off or you isolate yourself example gluttony, right?
30:26Peter Jones:It's not eating too much. It is eating too much, but it's not just that. Gluttony is when you fixate and fuss about food to an extent that starts to bore people. Did I tell you about my love of craft beer? Well, no, you've had some burner, but try a different Belgian beer. Oh no, this is the best brewery. That can be okay in small doses. But when I start to just obsess and dominate a conversation with it, you are bored. And I am doing something in that moment. My obsession is cutting me off from you. I'm not recognizing what you're responding to what you're interested in my obsession is dominating and it's true for all of the sins you know my love of being right throws me into strife you know constant quarrels if i've got deadly anger if you like and that that is obviously i'm becoming argumentative i'm becoming a boring guy to be with at the pub with because i'm always starting the arguments because i just love it i just i love proving you wrong or whatever it's a social system you've gone too far with any of these things when you've got into a space where you're cutting off or isolating yourself from other people and that's what i love about it it's a system that at its core is about sociability
31:25Dave Musgrove:and social awareness if you did start talking about craft beer i wouldn't be bored i'd be very interested in that but uh but you know um so that's that is that is so interesting and i like just a really nuanced and surprising take on these on these deadly sins and and as you said a very interesting lesson to learn before i let you go you mentioned before we started that you're also an expert in 12th century humour. And you also said that it's impossible to do this. So I'm putting you on the spot. But tell me a 12th century joke.
31:53Peter Jones:No, you've said it. Okay. Okay, the Duke of Marlborough walks into a bar. And no, no, not that one. Okay, what I will say, I'm not going to tell a 12th century joke. Why? A lot of them are Latin puns. A lot of them are people of high status falling over. Not banana skins. You know, you historians know, no banana skins yet. But, you know, okay, a lot of them are sort of we're a little bit disappointed when we see some of these jokes i do like the jokes that are kind of quite personal look okay classic is like all right i'm going to tell one okay you ask for this yeah okay all kinds of warnings before i say this fablio it's a 13th century joke but i hope you'll allow the um okay so this can be horrible oh no i already regret this okay so it's um two knights are in the countryside and they see a patch of grass on a hill overlooking castle and stuff in the distance and they say what a wonderful place for a picnic and we can have wonderful food and drink wine here fantastic and then they walk off two scholars come up okay university scholars new university men and they say what a wonderful place to bring a lover wouldn't be lovely two of us separate you know away from each other rolling around in the grass what a wonderful spot for that and then they walk off.
33:06Peter Jones:And then two peasants come up and they say, look at this. What a wonderful place to take a dump. Is it funny? Is it funny? I don't know. I don't know. I think that is actually quite funny.
33:17Dave Musgrove:It's not bad. Maybe I've got a 13th century mind.
33:20Peter Jones:It's a bit classist, isn't it? It's a bit classist. I would have hoped for better from the 13th century.
33:25Dave Musgrove:That's very good. Thank you, Peter. And thank you for humoring me there at the end. You didn't have a chance to prep that, but that was very good. So your book, self-help from the middle ages a journey into the medieval mind is out now and goes into a lot more detail about how these sins were constructed and what they meant and so if you are interested in trying to use them as a well-being tool you obviously need to understand it so have a read of the book so peter jones thank you very much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you so much i hope you enjoyed this episode do let me know what you think and do check out my sub stack at That's historyextralifelessons.substack.com.
33:59Dave Musgrove:And let me know at lifelessonsathistoryextra.com if you have any comments on this life lesson, whether you employed the advice in your day-to-day, and if you have an idea for a future life lesson from history that I could investigate.
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From the publisher
The Seven Deadly Sins are often dismissed as a list of religious prohibitions, but medieval historian Peter Jones reveals they were originally something much more profound: a practical guide to self-knowledge. Drawing on centuries of medieval thought, he explains how concepts like pride, envy and sloth were understood as recurring patterns of human behaviour rather than moral failings, offering people a structured way to examine themselves with honesty and compassion.
In conversation with Dave Musgrove, Jones explores why confession functioned as a form of psychological reflection, how medieval thinkers anticipated many modern ideas about wellbeing, and why learning to recognise our own blind spots may be one of history's most enduring life lessons.
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