Posted by Steve Dietz on December 30, 2004 12:05 PM
Happy holidays
Gluttony
James le Palmer, Omne Bonum (1360-1375), (Detail) Historiated initial 'G' containing a scene representing gluttony, with man vomiting into a cup, flanked by two companions. British Library.
(From Lat. gluttire, to swallow, to gulp down), the excessive indulgence in food and drink. The moral deformity discernible in this vice lies in its defiance of the order postulated by reason, which prescribes necessity as the measure of indulgence in eating and drinking. This deordination, according to the teaching of the Angelic Doctor [St. Thomas Aquinas], may happen in five ways which are set forth in the scholastic verse: "Prae-propere, laute, nimis, ardenter, studiose" or, according to the apt rendering of Father Joseph Rickably: too soon, too expensively, too much, too eagerly, too daintily. The Catholic Encyclopedia
Most dictionaries define "gluttony" primarily as excess in eating or drinking, but it is its moral dimension as one of the Seven Deadly Sins that propels it into the popular imagination as something more than over indulging. As Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote in his Summa Theologica:
Gluttony denotes, not any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire. Now desire is said to be inordinate through leaving the order of reason, wherein the good of moral virtue consists: and a thing is said to be a sin through being contrary to virtue. Wherefore it is evident that gluttony is a sin.
(Right) Terrace of Gluttony. Vellutello: Dante con l'espositioni di Christoforo Landino, et d'Alessandro Vellutello; unknown artist. Venice: Gio. Battista, & Gio. Bernardo Sessa, fratelli, 1596. Reproduction and use courtesy of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
*The sin Tristia was later replaced by Accidia, or Sloth (Wenzel (1967), 38).
The numbering of the sins appears to be based on Dante Alighieri's, Purgatorio (1265-1321), in which each sin is on a different level with gluttony on Terrace 6.
The Art of Gluttony
And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,
Deformed creature, on a filthie swyne,
His belly was up-blowne with luxury,
And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne,
And like a Crane his necke was long and fyne,
With which he swallowed up excessive feast,
For want whereof poore people oft did pyne;
And all the way, most like a brutish beast,
He spued up his gorge, that all did him deteast. Edmund Spenser, Fairie Queen
Numerous artists have portrayed gluttony, often as a suite of "seven deadly sins" images.
James le Palmer Omne Bonum (1360-1375), (Detail) Historiated initial 'G' containing a scene representing gluttony, with man vomiting into a cup, flanked by two companions
At the greatest banquet of antiquity, a king of Babylon served 70,000 guests with 14,000 sheep, 1,000 lambs, 1,000 fat oxen, hundreds of deer, 20,000 pigeons, 10,000 fish, 10,000 eggs and 10,000 desert rats.
And finally the backlash. What's wrong with gluttony anyway?
But then who can quibble about