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Of the roote of thise sevene synnes is Pride the general roote of alle harmes.
For of this roote spryngen certein braunches, as Ire, Envye, Accidie or Slewth, Avarice or Coveitise, Glotonye, and Lecherye.
And everich of thise chief synnes hath his braunches and his twigges, as shal be declared in hire chapitres folwynge.
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Geoffrey Chaucer, writing The Canterbury Tales in the 1390s, satirised his Parson by making him wordy and windy, but also provides a nice example of a14th-century sermon. The paintings on our church walls were essentially visual aids to sermons - and here at Hessett in Suffolk, dating from about 1370, is possibly the finest surviving example of the braunches and twigges making up the tree of the sevene synnes.
At its head (not its roote) stands, as usual, the sin of Pride - the sin which caused Lucifer to fall from heaven, and from which all the other sins were said to flow.
A great deal of the iconography of the middle ages and many of the familiar moral tales derive from non-Biblical Catholic tradition. The Deadly Sins are apparently traceable to the work of a fourth-century follower of St Basil, Evagrius of Pontus, who catalogued eight fundamental sins, centered upon the self-obsession of Pride. The list took on the mystical figure seven at the late-sixth-century hands of Pope Gregory the Great, who ranked them (top-down) as pride, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony, and lust. Later tradition largely ditched the hierarchy, though retaining Pride in pride of place, and restored Evagrius's accedia in place of sadness.
Accedia - Accidie or Slewth in Chaucer's parson's catalogue - is in some ways the most interesting, if only because it is the most commonly misunderstood by modern observers. Deriving from the Greek akedia, meaning "not to care", it was essentially the sin of spiritual or religious indolence, not the mere laziness with which sloth is generally associated in the modern mind.
For this reason I am slightly doubtful about the explanation of the depiction of Sloth in the image above - second sin down on the left - given by Anne Marshall in her highly informative and generally excellent Painted Church website. I see in that backward-bending figure a suggestion of dancing (perhaps revelling when s/he should be doing religious observance?), rather than sleepy lassitude. I am indebted to Anne, though, for positive identification of all the figures, including the most difficult to depict, Envy, shown by green clothing and a cadaverous face indicating the self-consuming nature of the sin.
The seven deadlies depicted above, then are (clockwise from top): Pride, Anger, Envy, Gluttony, Avarice, Sloth and Lust. Two winged demons guard the foot of the tree, while each sin is shown beaten either swallowed or vomited by a demonic mouth.
For other images and descriptions of each sin, click the thumbnail pics above or the links below:
Pride, Anger, Envy, Gluttony, Avarice, Sloth, Lust.