A brief history of the seven deadly sins

"Seven sins. Seven ways to die." This is the way the 1995 movie Seven, starring Brad Pitt, was advertised to audiences everywhere. The murder mystery revolved around a concept of "seven deadly sins" -- also known as anger, envy, vanity, gluttony, greed, lust and sloth.

In the Hollywood blockbuster, each of the seven deadly sins turned out to be, in fact, quite deadly. However, the Catholic church originally listed the seven deadly sins as sources of death of the immortal soul, as opposed to a physical death.

In the fourth century, Egyptian monks came up with eight principle "evil thoughts" that prevented a person from seeking God. That idea was modified by St. Gregory the Great in the sixth century. He narrowed the list down to seven "capital vices," and declared that vanity (also called pride) was the root of all other sinfulness.

St. Gregory's list was expanded upon by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Aquinis wrote the Summa Theologica, featuring philosophies on sin and contrition. The book emphasized that the seven vices were not sins in of themselves, but merely habits that inevitably led to sinful actions.

These sinful actions are said to be punished in hell. In Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, he addressed the sins and their punishments. He considered all seven sins to be offenses against love, and ranked them in levels. He considered vanity, envy and anger to be "perverted" love; sloth was "insufficient" love; greed, gluttony and lust were called "excessive" love of earthly goods.

While the seven vices have been categorized and defined throughout history, their significance has changed. But the list of seven has not disappeared. Anger, envy, vanity, gluttony, greed, lust and sloth still exist in the world today.

The Daily has collected stories about each of the seven vices in order to shed light how people today deal with them, cause them and recover from them. In the next week, prepare to open your eyes to seven vices that have not been left in medieval times. Seven deadly sins are closer than you may realize.