The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature

Morton Bloomfield was a scholar of medieval English literature, and this book, though published in 1952 by a university press, remains a standard reference tracing the history of the seven deadly sins as a religious and literary concept from its patristic origins through medieval English writing such as Chaucer and Langland. Its strength is the specificity of that literary and historical focus, showing how a theological list developed and was used by actual medieval writers, rather than treating the sins as a timeless abstract category. Its limit is its age, scholarship on medieval religious concepts has continued since 1952, and later work may refine or complicate points Bloomfield made, so more recent scholarship should be checked for any claim where currency matters.