Martin of Braga (1950) Formula vitae honestae, ed. Macrobius (1963) Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. Lombard Peter (1971–1981) Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 2 vols, 3rd edn, ed. Brill, Leiden/Desclée de Brouwer, Brussels Commissio leonina, RomeĪristotle (1972–1974) Ethica nicomachea, ed. In addition, the moral psychology underlying medieval virtue theory is essentially Christian in character, as it rests on the notion of fallen human nature.Īquinas Thomas (1888–1906) Summa theologiae, Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII edita, vols 4–12. Many moral philosophers shared religious concerns with theologians. The extent to which a philosophical virtue theory was able to detach itself in the Middle Ages from theology is disputed in scholarship. Typically, the scheme of the deadly sins appears in monastic, spiritual, and pastoral literature rather than in learned theology, which usually takes its point of departure in the seven principal virtues and contrasts each of them with a variety of vices. The most frequently employed catalogue of vices is the scheme of the capital vices or deadly sins, which originated as an octad in ancient monasticism and was transformed to a septenary by Gregory the Great. Vice was mostly defined in theology as the absence of virtue, while philosophers followed Aristotle in locating virtue as a mean between two opposite “vices,” one representing an excess, the other a lack of the virtuous quality in question. Different classifications (“contrary” or “remedial” virtues the fourfold hierarchy of Macrobius monastic, economical, political virtues) existed as well. In theology, the cardinal virtues figured next to virtues of a biblical origin from the twelfth century, the three theological and the four cardinal virtues were combined as the seven principal virtues of Christendom. The most widespread catalogue of moral virtues was the Platonic quartet of the four cardinal virtues, which medieval authors sought to reconcile with Aristotle’s scheme of five intellectuals and 11 moral virtues. From the twelfth century, a philosophical notion of virtue as a humanly acquired habitus coexisted in medieval moral thought with a religious notion of virtue as a divine gift.

Virtue and Vice by Kimberly Brody