Vices
Pride (Superbia)
Lucifer
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Origin 375 to 425 CE
Pride, in Latin superbia, is the inordinate love of one's own excellence and the desire to be more than one truly is. In the Christian moral tradition it is counted the first and gravest of the seven capital or 'deadly' sins catalogued by Evagrius Ponticus and Gregory the Great, and the root from which the others grow, for it was pride that cast down Lucifer. Its contrary virtue is Humility. In Peter Binsfeld's sixteenth-century pairing of the sins with demons it is assigned to Lucifer, and in the esoteric scheme used here to the Sun, though the planetary attributions of the sins vary from author to author. It is presented here academically, as a shadow entry.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period375 to 425 CE 1Tradition: Christian monasticism: the eight tempting thoughts of Evagrius and Cassian Origin Period590 2Tradition: Gregory the Great's seven capital vices Place of OriginThe monastic settlements of Nitria, Kellia and Scetis in the Egyptian desert, where the eight tempting thoughts were set out; the sevenfold Latin form is Gregory the Great's, at Rome 3 Origin of the NameLatin superbia. Gregory the Great's name for it is regina vitiorum, the queen of the vices, which is why it heads the list without being one of the seven he actually enumerates 2 Origin of the NameThe demon this vice carries as its subtitle, Lucifer, comes from the classification of demons published by Peter Binsfeld, suffragan bishop of Trier, in 1589 in a treatise arguing that confessions extracted under torture should be believed. The pairing belongs to the witch trials and has no basis in the patristic or scholastic treatment of the capital vices 4 Attributed Author / CompilerEvagrius Ponticus (c. 345-399), who set out the eight tempting thoughts, and John Cassian, who carried them west; Gregory the Great (c. 540-604), whose Moralia in Job produced the sevenfold scheme 3 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceGreek hyperephania, and the last of the eight. Evagrius places it at the end of the sequence because it is the temptation of the monk who has already overcome the others, not the first sin of the beginner 1Tradition: Christian monasticism: the eight tempting thoughts of Evagrius and Cassian Meaning in the Attesting SourceNOT one of Gregory's seven. In the Moralia in Job he treats pride as the root and queen of the vices, from which the seven proceed; the list he actually enumerates begins with vainglory. Pride takes its place among the seven only in the later form of the scheme 2Tradition: Gregory the Great's seven capital vices Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe inordinate desire for one's own excellence, distinguished from vainglory, which desires its recognition. Aquinas treats it as the beginning of every sin, because every sin prefers one's own will to God's 6Tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 5Tradition: Roman Catholicism Sourced to the subject's own accountOne of the seven capital sins as the Catechism enumerates them. The list in this form, with pride among the seven and acedia in place of tristitia, is the Catechism's; neither Gregory nor Aquinas gives it in exactly this shape Doctrinal Status DetailTraditionally held the root from which the other six sins grow, and the sin behind Lucifer's fall; the schema is Gregory the Great's own (Moralia in Job), not a conciliar or magisterial definition. 2 Disputed
Origin PeriodRooted in Evagrius Ponticus's eight tempting thoughts, set out from the Egyptian desert monastic settlements of Nitria, Kellia and Scetis around the late fourth century CE, and carried west by John Cassian. Gregory the Great reduced the eight to the familiar seven, keeping pride as the root and queen of the vices, in his Moralia in Job around 590 CE. 3 Learn More
Pride at the Head of the List
Pride, superbia, holds the first place in the western list of capital vices and, in the dominant strand of the tradition, a place above the list altogether. Gregory the Great, whose reorganisation in the Moralia in Job around the year 590 produced the sevenfold scheme that later became standard, treats pride not as one of the seven but as their root and queen, from which the others proceed; the seven he enumerates are vainglory, envy, anger, melancholy or sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust, with pride presiding. Thomas Aquinas follows the same logic in the Summa Theologiae, distinguishing pride as the inordinate desire for one's own excellence from vainglory as the desire for its recognition, and treating it as the beginning of every sin because every sin prefers one's own will to God's. The fall of the angels and the fall in Eden are both read in this tradition as acts of pride.
A Word on the List Itself, and on the Demons
The list is older than Gregory. Evagrius Ponticus, a fourth-century monk of the Egyptian desert, set out eight logismoi, tempting thoughts, as an analysis of what disturbs the mind in solitude, and his pupil John Cassian carried the eight into the Latin west in his Institutes, where they became a monastic diagnostic tool rather than a catalogue of sins. Gregory reduced them to seven by merging vainglory into pride and tristitia into acedia, and added envy. The point often lost is that this began as spiritual medicine for monks, not as a penal code.
The pairing of each sin with a named demon, which appears in the atlas alongside the vices, is a much later and quite separate development: it is chiefly the classification published by the German bishop Peter Binsfeld in 1589, in a treatise arguing for the prosecution of witches, and it should be dated to the era of the witch trials rather than to the patristic tradition.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Contrasts With
A capital sin, not a mortal one. Pride is called capital because other sins spring from it. Whether any particular act of pride is mortal is settled by grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent, as for any other act.
Pride renders hyperephania, the last of the eight thoughts Evagrius Ponticus catalogued and, in his account, the gravest. In that setting it is a thought to be recognised and treated, not an offence to be confessed.
Held Differently
The Eastern ascetic tradition counts eight thoughts rather than seven capital sins, and it separates pride from vainglory, which the Western list folded together, so the diagnosis of the passions runs on a different frame.
Element Of
Pride heads the capital sins in the Roman enumeration, called capital because they engender other sins and other vices.
Opposed By
Pride is the direct, plainly named contrary of humility across the rabbinic sources; Pride, already catalogued among the seven deadly sins, is the atlas's existing entry for that disposition.
Humility is the classical contrary virtue paired against Pride, one of the seven remedial virtues the medieval tradition, following Prudentius's Psychomachia, set one against one with the seven capital sins.
Kuntinkantan warns that boastful, arrogant display collapses under its own weight, a direct caution against pride.
The atlas holds no dedicated entry for impietas, neglect of due reverence toward gods, family and country; the nearest existing contrary in the vocabulary is Pride, since classical sources repeatedly describe impious acts as compounded by an inflated sense of one's own standing over what is owed to gods and elders. Named here as an approximation, not an equivalence.
Originates in Language
Sources
1. The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer
Evagrius Ponticus; John Eudes Bamberger (trans.), Cistercian Publications, 1972Praktikos, ch. 6 and the chapters on the eight thoughtsView the Source 2. Moralia in Job
Gregory the GreatBook XXXI, pride as the queen of the vices and the sevenfold list
3. The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature
Morton W. Bloomfield, Michigan State College Press, 1952ch. 2, from Evagrius and Cassian to GregoryView the Source 4. Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum
Peter Binsfeld, Trier, 1589the classification of demons by the capital vicesView the Source 5. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition
Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997paragraph 1866, the seven capital sinsthe holders' own accountView the Source 6. Summa Theologiae
The Institutes (De Institutis Coenobiorum)
John CassianBooks V-XII, the eight principal faults
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