Seven deadly sins. It almost seems like a cliché at this point: lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, pride, and envy. But it wasn't always so in Christian doctrine. Nor is it so for Dante.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, in this interpolated episode of the podcast WALKING WITH DANTE as I begin to explore some of the history of the question of which sins got labeled deadly--and why there are seven of them.

(Don't worry: we'll be back to Canto V and the lustful in the next episode of the podcast.)

Here are the segments of this episode:

[01:02] What are the seven deadly (or mortal) sins? Or more specifically, what is a "sin"? And how does Jesus make a mess out of an otherwise simple definition?

[06:17] Evagrius, one of the church's great ascetics, and his list of eight evil thoughts, developed in the late 300s CE.

[09:07] Pope Gregory I and the notion of "seven deadly sins"--including two new ones in the list: sloth and envy.

[15:07] Dante's INFERNO plays loose and fast with the seven deadly sins.