Title: Self-Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living
Author: Peter Jones
Genre: nonfiction/history
I read it as a(n): hardback
Length: 360 pp 
Her Grace’s rating: 4 stars

First, let me clarify that I really enjoyed this book, even though I fully reject the idea of sin. And religion. And gods of any variety. Peter Jones did a great job making relevant, modern connections to the seven deadlies and ways to view them. Also, there was at no time even a whiff of a religious agenda or proselytizing of any kind. So big kudos for that as well.

Reading this was a surprisingly fun exercise. Also, I am absolutely guilty of Pride, Sloth, and a fair amount of Gluttony as well. 

Most of the things in this book are familiar to me as a medievalist. Some I had forgotten but a couple things I hadn’t known before, so that was fun to learn. For example, the Parisian theologian Jean de la Rochelle believed that each of the seven deadlies was “a form of distorted love” and that when we feel a desire for something too strongly, that is when it becomes sinful (Jones 24). Later, Thomas Aquinas said that “‘every hatred arises from some love’ and because it was ‘impossible for an effect to be stronger than its cause,’ then it would always be ‘impossible for hatred to be stronger than love’” (qtd. in Jones 206). That’s a nice sentiment which I will take with a huge grain of salt, considering Aquinas’s views on homosexuality. Sloth is the only one that is separate from the other seven deadlies in that it isn’t grounded in a form of distorted love. 

This is long, so click to read the rest