The Seven Deadly Sins
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath! You might be surprised to learn the true history of the Seven Deadly Sins doesn't start in the bible. Rather, they were first thought up by a Greek monk in the 4th century who'd fled to the desert after becoming embroiled in a scandal with a married woman…
Dan is joined by historian and author Peter Jones to trace the true history of the Seven Deadly Sins, why they took the Middle Ages by storm, and how they have shaped European society for centuries.
You can learn more in Peter's new book, ' Self Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living'
Produced by Mariana Des Forges, McKenna Fernandez and James Hickmann. Edited by Matthew Wilson
We need your help! Let us know what you want from Dan Snow's History Hit by filling in our anonymous survey here: https://forms.gle/PvgayWLkWGjYT4St6
Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast
Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.
You can also email the podcast directly at ds.hh@historyhit.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? |
| 0:03.0 | Sign up's history and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like How William Conquered England. |
| 0:09.0 | What it was like to live in the Georgian era. |
| 0:11.0 | And you can even hear the voice of Richard III. |
| 0:14.0 | We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, |
| 0:18.0 | and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in |
| 0:22.4 | historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history.com slash subscribe. |
| 0:30.5 | Lust, gluttony, wrath, tried, envy, sloth, greed. Seven deadly sins. The root of human evil. At least according to |
| 0:43.6 | medieval Christianity. Now don't worry, this isn't going to be a religious sermon. I'm certainly not |
| 0:47.7 | qualified to administer that. But instead, I might be able to soothe your anxiety, |
| 0:52.8 | soothe your soul with a bit of a history lesson. |
| 0:56.0 | You will be surprised to learn that the seven deadly sins aren't in the Bible. |
| 1:01.0 | They were thought up by a Greek monk, really, in the fourth century who fled to the Egyptian desert |
| 1:08.0 | after becoming embroiled in a scandal with a married woman. |
| 1:12.2 | There, isolated, doing some mindfulness, the monk Evagrius Ponticus began to map the darkest |
| 1:19.8 | patterns of the human mind. And he came up with what would become the seven deadly sins. |
| 1:26.3 | By the Middle Ages, people were obsessed with them. |
| 1:30.0 | They were painted into murals. |
| 1:32.1 | They appeared in sermons, in popular literature. |
| 1:34.6 | It was believed that of those seven deadly sins, |
| 1:39.7 | everyone had one in particular that they had to work on, |
| 1:47.9 | a weakness that revealed who they truly were. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 7 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.