Vetera Christianorum

Roberto ALCIATI
56, 2019, 00-00

Akēdia: The Black Beast of the Ascetic

in Evagrius of Pontus, Jerome and Cassian

«Two great lists dominate the closing books of the Moralia In Job, one of sinners,
the other of sins. The latter has become notorious» 1. This second list, which is here
ascribed to Gregory the Great (c. 540-604 CE), is the scheme of the seven capital vices,
that is the ranks of the vices assailing human beings. As has been amply demonstrated,
the scheme presented by Gregory is not at all new, but inherited, via Cassian (c. 360-
435 CE), by Evagrius of Pontus (c. 345-299 CE) 2. However, some significant changes
took place in this passage. In its typical and original form, the scheme of Evagrius lists
eight generic thoughts (genikotatoi logismoi): gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger,
sloth, vainglory and pride. The Latin version of Cassian is exactly the same. Grego-
ry’s interventions, however, are remarkable both with regards to individual sins and to
the system as a whole. He altered the sequence of the list and reduced the number to
seven – vainglory, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony, lust 3. While he added envy,
he also dropped pride from the list, in a sense he set it apart as the root of all the other
sins. Then, he found akēdia/acedia to be sufficiently similar to its neighbour in the vice
schema (tristitia) to warrant their coalescence as one vice.
Until the changes introduced by Gregory the Great, however, the distinction between
sadness and sloth is so clear that it became crucial for the ascetic form of life. The main
purpose of this contribution is therefore to describe what Evagrius and Cassian say about
akēdia/acedia and its effects on the ascetic way of life. Alongside these two authors, we
will also examine what Jerome (347-420 CE) wrote about the same concept. Although
Jerome had never written or commented on, like the other two, a list of sins/thoughts, he
nevertheless considered it important to dwell on this particular condition.
The second point is to show how, despite the fact that scholars who studied the
issue tried to stress the differences between these three writers, all of them – albeit in

1
  C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great, Oxford 2000, 163.
2
  For the history of the capital vice scheme in general see M.W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins: An
Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, Lansing (Mich.) 1952, and C. Casagrande, S. Vecchio,
I sette vizi capitali. Storia dei peccati nel medioevo, Torino 2000.
3
  Greg. M., moral. 31,45,2.