Gluttony

An advertisement for indigestion pills but rather
than discouraging the poor soul from over-eating
 these do the opposite - go ahead and make a pig
 of yourself, these pills will fix it all.

Gluttony, the second of the Seven Deadly Sins, is fairly straightforward in concept. Gluttony, as seen with the lens of modernity, would obviously refer to an excess of food and/or drink though some have interpetted it as an excess of anything.

For the purposes of my project I'll be swallowing the food and drink idea. So, to eat too much, to drink too much, those things make a person a glutton! In the middle-ages there were deeply ascetic Christians (such as the famous Italian, now a saint, Thomas Aquinas) who proposed that there were further levels of gluttony to be observed; he went on to outline a whole six ways in

 which gluttony could manifest:

• Praepropere – eating too soon
• Laute – eating too expensively
• Nimis – eating too much
• Ardenter – eating too eagerly
• Studiose – eating too daintily
• Forente – eating wildly

It seems to me that Mr. Aquinas was rather keen to find further ways in a which a person could sin, as if there weren't enough easy pit-falls for a God-fearing citizen to fall into. I also wonder how eating 'too daintily' could be considered gluttonous, as when thinking of a dainty-eater I imagine someone who has the appetite of a small bird...not a gannet!  

Speaking of pigs - here Gluttony is personified
by this amply-figured lady wielding both flagon
and goblet, with her prized porker at her side. Oh yes,
the little demon on her shoulder most likely whispers
'go on, you know you want MORE!'

In 1589 a studious German bishop, by the name of Peter Binsfeld, went so far as to compile a list that associated each of the deadly sins with a specific demon - he firmly believed that the great demon Beelzebub was the prince of Gluttony. As an interesting aside, the same man who died before his sixtieth birthday, also rose to become an authority on demons and one of the most well known witch-hunters of his era (he wrote the treatise De confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum (Of the Confessions of Warlocks and Witches). 

In the next installment I shall be spreading out some of my plans for the next deadly-yarn, for your consumption. Don't get too greedy now...