SELF-HELP FROM THE MIDDLE AGES

A historian works to make the late Middle Ages’ preoccupation with vice relevant in our modern world.

In an attempt to wrest pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust from the shrines of religion and even ridicule, Jones turns to medieval art, early medical practices, widely recognized writers and thinkers (like St. Francis of Assisi, Dante, and St. Thomas Aquinas), and lesser-known characters of niche study. Of particular interest to the author is the blurred space, the temptations and traps where lauded behavior and modern-day virtues reach into nefarious and disorienting territory. How do self-confidence and ambition become narcissistic, domineering pride and backstabbing envy, for example, or when does grief tilt into the paralyzing “inertia” of sloth? For others among the “Seven,” the challenge is to position them as consequential at all, given the ways our world has fallen captive, desensitized to materialistic consumer culture, social media trolling, pornography, and discriminating tastes. Despite methodical research and enthusiasm for his subject, this proves difficult. Jones’ march through antiquated texts is at times hollow and convoluted, further muddied by the effortful endeavor to tie them to his own experiences as a professor in the Siberian tundra. Over-wrung anecdotes often end up defanging the sin they are meant to illustrate. But perhaps this tempering is part of the point. Jones insists that the sins are a way of “mapping the mind,” less about hand-wringing morality and more about avoiding alienation from one’s self and one’s community. Thus the key to understanding the Seven and the disconnection and disruption they can cause is rooted in a combination of moderation, clear-sighted self-awareness, and recognition for how our habits, even questionable ones, reinforce or undermine our relationships with others—all digestible within modern sensibilities.

A scholarly and forgiving rethinking of problematic behavior for a world sketched by psychology and secularism.