Epistola 'De Octo Vitiis'

The letter of Saint Eutropius, abbot and bishop, to Pope Peter. On the eight vices. (From the Library of the Fathers, vol. VIII.) There are eight principal vices which afflict the human race. The first is gastrimargia, which means gluttony of the belly; the second, fornication; the third, philargyria, that is, avarice, or love of money; the fourth, anger; the fifth, sadness; the sixth, acedia, that is, anxiety or weariness of heart; the seventh, cenodoxia, that is, boasting or vainglory; the eighth, pride. These eight vices, although they have different origins and difficult effects, yet the first six, that is, gastrimargia, fornication, philargyria, anger, sadness, acedia, are connected by a certain kinship and, as it were, concatenation, so that the excess of the former becomes the beginning of the latter. For from the abundance of gastrimargia, fornication necessarily springs forth; from fornication, philargyria; from philargyria, anger; from anger, sadness; from sadness, acedia. Therefore, we must fight against these in a similar manner and with the same reasoning, and we must always wage war against the following ones by means of the preceding ones. For this reason, in order that acedia be overcome, sadness must be conquered; in order that sadness be driven away, anger must be extinguished; in order that anger be extinguished, philargyria must be trampled; in order that philargyria be overthrown, fornication must be restrained; in order that fornication be undermined, the vice of gastrimargia must be chastised.

The remaining two, however, that is, vainglory and pride, are joined to each other in a manner similar to that which we have described concerning the former, so that the increase of the former becomes the origin of the latter. The excess of vainglory produces the fuel of pride. For when those six are uprooted, these two bear fruit more vehemently, and when those are dead, these sprout and grow more vigorously. Hence we are assailed by these two in a different way. We fall into each of those six vices when we have been cast down by those that precede them. But in these two we are endangered even as victors after triumphs. Now these eight vices which we have mentioned are divided into four conjugations and unions. For gastrimargia and fornication are bound by a special partnership, and in a similar way philargyria with anger. Likewise, sadness and acedia are joined in the same union. And vainglory and pride are also familiarly joined to each other. You have heard the unions; now hear the kinds of vices.

There are three kinds of gluttony. The first is that which urges a Christian to eat before the canonical hour: in this Jonathan, the son of Saul, sinned, breaking his father's oath, whence the people did not merit to have victory over their enemies; the second, from an excess of any foods or drink, in which the people of Israel sinned when they fashioned the golden calf, as it is written (Exod. 32): The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play; the third, which desires more elaborate and most delicate foods. In this the sons of Eli sinned, who refused to accept cooked meat from the people, but raw, so that they might prepare it more carefully for themselves (1 Sam. 2). From these three kinds, diverse and very evil sicknesses of the soul are produced. For from the first, anger arises toward the one who was to prepare the food; from the second, the goads of luxury and lust are stirred up; the third, however, weaves the inextricable snares of avarice around the necks of the captive.

There are three kinds of fornication. The first is thought, concerning which the Lord says thus in the Gospel (Matthew 5): "Whoever looks at a woman to desire her," and so forth; the second, which is accomplished through the union of both sexes; the third, without the act of a woman, which the Apostle calls uncleanness (Galatians 4). These three are to be avoided by us with such careful observance, lest any one of them frighten us away from the kingdom of Christ and exclude us from it. There are three kinds of avarice: the first, which does not permit a man to be stripped of superfluous possessions; in this Ananias and Sapphira sinned (Acts 5); the second, which persuades us to take back with greater greed what we have distributed to the needy; Judas, who sold the Lord, fell into this fault; the third, which compels us to desire or acquire immoderately what we did not previously possess. In this Gehazi sinned. There are three kinds of anger: one, which blazes up inwardly and cannot speak because of indignation; another, which bursts forth into word and deed and effect; the third, which is stored up over days.

There are two kinds of sadness: one which is generated, when it ceases, from a loss inflicted or a desire hindered; another which descends from a rational anxiety of the mind or from despair. There are two kinds of acedia: one which hurls the agitated down to the Abyss; another by which it pleases neither to do good nor to hear it. This one casts the monk out of his cell. Cenodoxia, although it is manifold and multiform and is divided into various species, yet its kinds are two: the first, which is exalted for carnal and manifest things; the second, which is inflated for spiritual and hidden desires of vainglory. There are two kinds of pride: the first, carnal; the second, spiritual, which is even more pernicious. For it attacks more especially those whom it finds to have advanced in certain virtues. You have heard the kinds and the conjunction and concatenation; hear now what daughters they have which are born from them.

From gluttony, indeed, are born feasts and drunkennesses; from fornication, foul speech, buffooneries, playfulness and foolish talk; from avarice, lying, fraud, perjuries, appetite for base gain, false testimonies, violence, inhumanity, and rapacity; from anger, homicides, bitterness, and indignation; from sadness, rancor, faint-heartedness, bitterness, despair; from acedia, atrocity, sleepiness, importunity, restlessness, wandering, instability of mind and body, talkativeness and curiosity; from vainglory, contentions, heresies, boasting and presumption of novelties; from pride, contempt, envy, disobedience, blasphemy, murmuring and detraction. These, therefore, are the eight vices; although they assail the human race, they do not attack all in the same way. For in one, the spirit of fornication holds the principal place; in another, anger rides supreme; in another, vainglory claims tyranny; and in another, pride holds the citadel. And although it is established that all are assailed by all, yet each of us labors in a different way and order.

Therefore, we must undertake battles against these vices in such a way that each person examines by which vice he is most severely attacked and takes up the principal struggle against that one. For the lawgiver (Deut. VII) teaches us that we ought to conduct a single order of battles and not trust in our own virtue, in these words: "You shall not fear them, because the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and terrible God. He Himself will consume these nations before your eyes little by little and in parts. You will not be able to destroy them all at once, lest the beasts of the earth multiply against you, and the Lord your God will give them into your sight until they are utterly destroyed." But likewise (Deut. VIII) he warns that we should not be puffed up in their victory: "Do not, after you have eaten and been satisfied, and have built beautiful houses and dwelt in them, and have possessed herds and flocks of sheep, and an abundance of silver and gold and all things, let your heart be lifted up, and do not forget the Lord your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of servitude, and was your guide in the great and terrible wilderness." Solomon also says in Proverbs (Prov. XXIV): "If your enemy falls, do not rejoice. Do not be puffed up at his downfall. Lest his Lord see and turn away his anger from him"; that is, lest you disperse the elation of your heart, he will depart from attacking you, and you, about to be abandoned by him, will begin again to be troubled by that passion which you had overcome through the grace of God.

Therefore, it is fitting that we be certain, taught both by the things themselves and by the countless testimonies of the Scriptures, that we cannot overcome such great enemies by our own strength unless we are supported by the help of God alone, and that we ought daily to refer the sum of our victory to Him. On this matter, moreover, through Moses (Deut. IX), the Lord warns: "Do not say in your heart, when the Lord your God has destroyed them before your eyes: 'It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,' when these nations have been destroyed because of their impieties. For it is not because of your righteousnesses and the uprightness of your heart that you will enter to possess their land, but because they acted impiously, they were destroyed as you entered." I ask, what could be said more plainly or more cautiously? With how great caution must we act! These are the seven nations whose lands the Lord promises to give to the sons of Israel when they depart from Egypt. All of which, according to the Apostle, since they happened to them as a figure, we ought to take as written for our admonition (Deut. VII).

For thus it is said: When the Lord God has led you into the land which you are to enter and possess, and has destroyed many nations before you—the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Hivite, seven nations far greater in number than you are and stronger than you—and the Lord has delivered them to you, you shall strike them down to utter destruction. That they are said to be of far greater number has this reason: because vices are more numerous than virtues. And therefore in the catalogue indeed seven nations are enumerated, but in the account of their conquest they are set down without any number being assigned. For thus it is said: "And he has destroyed many nations before you." For the people of carnal passions, which proceeds from this sevenfold tinder and root of vices, is more numerous than Israel; and there is also the eighth, which is more notorious than all, the queen, so to speak, and mother of all vices. For from these eight sprout and are born both the daughters—that is, feasting, drunkenness, foul speech, and so forth, described above, which it would be too long to recount. And since these are judged by us to be trivial, let us hear what the Apostle thought about them (2 Cor. 10), or what sentence he pronounced concerning them: "Do not murmur," he says, "as some of them murmured, and they perished at the hands of the destroyer." And concerning temptation: "Let us not tempt Christ, as some of them tempted and perished by serpents.

On Detraction: Do not love to detract, lest you be uprooted; and many other things similar to these. Although these are far greater in number than the virtues, yet when those eight principal vices, from whose nature it is certain that they all emanate, have been conquered, they all immediately subside and are destroyed together with them in perpetual annihilation. For, as ancient tradition teaches, these same lands of the Canaanites, into which the children of Israel are led, had once been allotted to Shem, the son of Noah, in the division of the world; afterwards, the posterity of Ham, through the iniquity of persuasion, possessed them by force and power, in which the most righteous judgment of God is also confirmed. He both expelled those who had wrongfully occupied foreign places, and restored to these the ancient possession of their fathers, which had been assigned to their lineage in the division of the world. This figure is most certainly understood by reason to apply also to us. For the will of the Lord naturally assigned the possession of our heart not to vices, but to virtues. After the transgression of Adam, when the vices, that is, the Canaanite peoples, grew insolent, the virtues were driven from their own region; when they are restored again through the grace of God, by our diligence and labor, they are believed to have received not so much foreign lands as their own.

Concerning this sevenfold tinder of vices, Solomon describes it thus in Proverbs (Prov. 26): If an enemy should call to you with a loud voice, do not consent, for there are seven iniquities in his soul; that is, if gluttony persuades you to relax the body, which you had decreed for the sake of continence, do not dissolve its subjection, because immediately the seven spirits of vices will be present to you, sharper than that passion which had been overcome in its beginnings, and they will soon drag you to worse kinds of vices. Therefore the Lord is to be entreated in all things, so that what our own strength does not have, His mercy may supply.