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Virtues

Temperance

Cardinal Virtues

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Origin 375 BCE to 390 CE

Temperance is the contrary virtue set against Gluttony, the self-restraint and moderation of appetite and pleasure. In the esoteric scheme used here it shares with the vice it heals the attribution of Jupiter and of the archangel Sachiel. Temperance is also counted one of the four Cardinal Virtues, the classical excellence of measure and self-mastery.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
375 BCE to 390 CE 1Tradition: The four cardinal virtues of Plato's Republic
Origin Period
400 to 1400 CE 2Tradition: The medieval scheme of seven contrary virtues
Place of Origin
Two places at once: Athens, for the four cardinal virtues of Plato's Republic, and the Latin west, for the medieval contrary-virtue scheme in which temperance stands against gluttony 1
Origin of the Name
Called cardinal from the Latin cardo, a hinge, because the moral life is held to turn on these four. The term is first found in Ambrose in the late fourth century; the four virtues themselves are Plato's and are named as a group at Wisdom 8:7 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
Plato, in the Republic, for the four cardinal virtues; Ambrose for the name cardinal; Prudentius and later medieval catechesis for the contrary-virtue scheme 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoicism, and Chrysippus, who systematized Stoic ethics, in the tradition's own reading of sophrosyne, preserved through later doxography since neither founder's ethical writings survive intact. 3Tradition: Stoicism
Language
Latin 4
Language
Ancient Greek 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
In Stoic ethics, sophrosyne is knowledge of what is to be chosen and avoided in matters of desire; the Stoics distinguished it from self-control won through inner conflict, since the sage has no internal struggle to win, only correct judgment about what desire's objects are actually worth. 3Tradition: Stoicism
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Sobrietas is the combatant that overthrows Luxuria. Note what this means for the later scheme: in the poem sobriety fights LUST, not gluttony. The pairing of temperance against gluttony belongs to the medieval lists, not to Prudentius 4Tradition: Prudentius, Psychomachia
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The ordering of the appetites for pleasure, chiefly of touch and taste, and not abstinence. It governs a family of subordinate virtues including chastity, sobriety, abstinence, meekness and modesty 7Tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 5Tradition: Roman Catholicism
Sourced to the subject's own accountOne of the four cardinal virtues as the Catechism enumerates them: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. Taught, and not formally defined
Doctrinal Status Detail
In the Stoic account, phronesis, dikaiosyne, sophrosyne and andreia are not four independent excellences but four expressions of one underlying virtue, right reason applied to different subject matter; the Stoics held the virtues could not be possessed separately, so whoever truly has one has all four. Only the sage, a rare or theoretical ideal, possesses virtue in this full sense; everyone else falls equally short of it on the strict Stoic reckoning. 6Tradition: Stoicism
Disputed
Origin Period
Two dates fold into this entry. The four cardinal virtues are named in Plato's Republic in the fourth century BCE, taken up by Aristotle and the Stoics, and given the name cardinal only later, by Ambrose of Milan in the late fourth century CE. Temperance's place as a contrary virtue against gluttony follows the later Psychomachia of Prudentius, written around 400 CE, though in the poem itself Sobrietas overthrows Luxuria, lust, not gluttony; the gluttony pairing was fixed only in the later medieval lists. 1
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Temperance

Temperance, temperantia, is the one virtue that appears in both virtue schemes treated in this collection, standing against gluttony among the contraries and holding a place among the four cardinal virtues. The cardinal four, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, are not originally Christian: they are the virtues of Plato's Republic, taken up by Aristotle and the Stoics, named as a group at Wisdom 8:7, and absorbed into Christian moral theology by Ambrose, who appears to have coined the term cardinal, from cardo, a hinge. Temperance in this scheme is the ordering of the appetites for pleasure, chiefly of touch and taste, and it governs a family of subordinate virtues including chastity, sobriety, abstinence, meekness and modesty. It is the virtue most concerned with measure, and the classical formula that virtue lies in the mean is nowhere more directly applied.

Plato's Republic, Book IV, is the specific text behind the later Christian scheme: there Plato assigns wisdom to the rulers, courage to the guardians, and identifies sophrosyne, usually translated temperance but carrying a broader sense of soundness of mind and self-mastery, as the virtue proper to the whole city when each part willingly accepts its place, with justice naming the harmony of all three together. Ambrose's fourth-century adoption of this fourfold scheme for Christian moral theology preserved Plato's structure while relocating its object from the ideal city to the individual soul, a shift subsequent Christian ethics, including Aquinas's own systematic treatment, took for granted rather than argued afresh.

Picturing Temperance: The Two Vessels and the Clock

Temperance is identified in Western art by two vessels, one being poured into the other. The gesture is the mixing of water with wine, which is what moderation looked like at a Roman or a medieval table, and it is the single most reliable attribute in the whole virtue repertoire: a figure pouring one jug into another is temperance in almost any programme, from a cathedral portal to a tarot trump.

She acquired a second and stranger attribute in the later Middle Ages. From the fourteenth century onward, painters began to give temperance a mechanical clock, along with spectacles, a bridle and a windmill: objects of regulation and measure. The historian Lynn White drew attention to this, arguing that the clock enters moral iconography at the moment the escapement enters European life, and that a society learning to keep hours reached for the machine as its emblem of self government. The bridle survives in the same logic; Giotto's temperance at Padua is bound and bridled rather than pouring.

The tarot trump named Temperance carries the vessels rather than the clock, which is one of several places where the trump sequence preserves the older layer of the iconography.

Temperance is the virtue that appears in both virtue schemes treated in this collection, standing against gluttony among the contraries and holding a place among the four cardinal virtues, and the vessels serve in either. The atlas draws her emblem accordingly.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions
Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)
Stoicism, Philosophical Schools
Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long

Held Differently

African Methodist Episcopal Church, Denominations

The African Methodist Episcopal Church carries the Methodist Discipline's reading of temperance as abstinence.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Denominations

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church carries the Methodist reading of temperance as abstinence rather than moderation.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Denominations

The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church holds the Methodist reading of temperance as abstinence.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Church of the Nazarene, Denominations

The Church of the Nazarene requires abstinence from alcohol of its members, reading temperance as a complete rather than a moderate restraint.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Free Methodist Church, Denominations

The Free Methodist Church was founded in part on a stricter reading of Wesleyan discipline, abstinence among its marks.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Global Methodist Church, Denominations

The Global Methodist Church carries the Wesleyan reading of temperance as abstinence rather than moderation.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), Denominations

The Word of Wisdom makes abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee a condition of temple recommendation, so temperance in this tradition is a defined prohibition rather than a habit of moderation.

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)
Methodism, Denominations

Methodism came to read temperance as total abstinence from alcohol rather than as moderate use, and carried that reading into the temperance societies that shaped nineteenth century public life on both sides of the Atlantic.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Seventh-day Adventism, Denominations

Adventist teaching extends temperance from alcohol to a whole regimen of health, so the virtue names a way of eating, drinking and resting rather than a moderation of appetite.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
The United Methodist Church, Denominations

The United Methodist Church inherits the Wesleyan reading of temperance as abstinence and its Social Principles continue to commend it.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Wesleyan Church, Denominations

The Wesleyan Church holds temperance as abstinence, a position it has kept from the holiness movement of the nineteenth century.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Stoicism, Philosophical Schools

The Stoics named this virtue sophrosyne, temperance or self-control, one of the four generic virtues Zeno and Chrysippus taught as constituents of the single good, wisdom; the later Christian cardinal-virtue scheme adopted the same fourfold structure under the Latin name temperantia.

Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long

Element Of

Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Temperance in Roman teaching moderates the attraction of pleasure and provides balance in the use of created goods, which admits the moderate use of wine rather than requiring abstinence.

Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account

Opposes

Gluttony (Gula), Vices

Temperance is the classical contrary virtue paired against Gluttony, one of the seven remedial virtues the medieval tradition, following Prudentius's Psychomachia, set one against one with the seven capital sins.

Source The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English LiteratureMorton W. Bloomfield

Originates in Language

Ancient Greek, Languages
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Latin, Languages
Source PsychomachiaPrudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens)

Part Of

Virtue Ethics, Doctrines
Source Summa TheologiaeThomas Aquinas

Related To

Sophrosyne (Temperance), Virtues

Greek term underlying the Latin temperantia and its English descendant temperance.

Source Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, ScepticsA. A. Long
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. Cardinal VirtuesView the Source
2. 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. 3, the vices and virtues in medieval teachingView the Source
3. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics
A. A. Long, University of California Press, 1986View the Source
4. Psychomachia
Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens)Psychomachia, the combats of the virtues and vices
5. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition
Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997paragraphs 1805-1809, the cardinal virtuesthe holders' own accountView the Source
6. Virtue Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry)
Rosalind Hursthouse and Glen Pettigrove, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2003View the Source
7. Summa Theologiae
Thomas Aquinas, 1274II-II q.141, on temperanceView the Source
The Holy Bible
Anonymous (multiple authors), Robert Barker, 1611Wisdom 8:7View the Source
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