VIRTUES & VICES: Lost … and Found?

John Skillen (2023)

This essay is an expanded version of a lecture delivered to the
Jerusalem & Athens Forum honors program at Gordon College,
at the invitation of Dr. Jennifer Hevelone-Harper.

The glazed terracotta sculpture in the photograph (adjacent) is the work of the Florentine ceramic artist Andrea della Robbia around 1475. Andrea was a nephew of Luca della Robbia, who, in the 1450s, perfected the recipe for the shiny, colorful, durable glazed terracotta that became the trademark medium of several generations of the Della Robbia family.

Just over five feet in diameter, this circular rondel holds a commanding presence. A leafy wreath of fruit (among them, grapes, pinecones, cucumbers) frames the figure of a young woman who holds a mirror in her right hand while grasping a snake in her left hand. The back of her head is in fact the face of a mature man. A lock of the young woman’s hair merges into the man’s long beard. What are we to make of this two-faced figure, surely enigmatic, even disconcerting, to most of us nowadays?

This strange figure represents the virtue of Prudence. The consensus of my students was that the virtue of prudence is largely absent from the ordinary discourse of contemporary society. Nor does it have a natural place in their own conversation, public or private, in church or at home or on campus. Even the word “virtue” is inactive in quotidian social conversation. All the more unlikely would a contemporary artwork treating Prudence be displayed in a public place.

We could say that prudence has little if any societal presence in our contemporary visual landscape.

In 2016 Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts hosted a remarkable exhibit of dozens of works by the Della Robbia family. (The exhibit then moved to the National Gallery in Washington D.C. in 2017.) Andrea della Robbia’s Prudence held a prominent place. [#1, bracketed numbers refer to the Endnotes at the end of the essay] The comments I overheard during my visit were appreciative, but concerned the technique and beauty of the work, not its subject. I suspect that this iconographic depiction of prudence is unlikely to carry personalized resonance for most of the visitors, or to prompt conversation about the place of this virtue in the visitors’ own lives, or about its relevance or irrelevance for a life well lived.

In the beautiful book accompanying the exhibition, the directors of the exhibit expressed greater optimism about the effect on visitors of these “enduring works with profound artistic and spiritual meaning”:

In their own time, these works played roles in civic, religious, and domestic spheres, expressing ideas, aspirations, and sentiments of their patrons, owners, and viewers. … In our time, the joyous surfaces, with their bright color and vivid contours, seem remarkably contemporary, speaking with a freshness that brings the act of devotion alive. These works’ color and surface … have allowed—even encouraged—the celebratory, festive side of devotion in a manner that has enlivened spiritual reflection. [#2]

Will “joyous surfaces, bright color and vivid contours” be sufficient to prompt an “act of devotion” when the virtue of prudence has little or no currency in the thought, language, desires and emotions of most people nowadays?

The question behind this essay—not a new question—is whether morally-freighted works of public art actually have any efficacy in shaping the moral life of individuals and communities. (By “moral life,” I mean our process of decision-making, our habitualized practices, our sets of assumptions and convictions, that are recognized as fostering a good or bad life, that characterize our character.) Can works of art not only “express” the existing “ideas, aspirations, and sentiments of their patrons, owners, and viewers,” but also play a role in cultivating long-term traits of character?

This essay will stop short of giving confident answers to such questions. But I will poke around in one long stretch of European civilization—from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries—when the visual arts were supposed to have a significant influence on character formation and on the tenor of a society’s moral life. I draw on artworks from Italy simply because I have encountered these artworks often over several decades, almost always in the company of students and friends, whose questions and observations peer between the lines of this essay.

First, to provide context, I give the merest sketch of the history and vocabulary, the intellectual and cultural presence, of particular sets of virtues and vices.

I begin with the virtue featured in Andrea della Robbia’s Prudence.

Prudence is the virtue by which, learning from past experience and extrapolating likely futures, we can make wise decisions in present circumstances.  The common phrase nowadays of “making a judgment call” carries a whiff of the old term. A medieval proverb puts it succinctly: Ex praeterito—praesens prudenter agit—ni futura actione deturbet (“from past experience the present acts prudently less future action be vitiated”). [#3] Medieval manuscripts often visualized the virtues (and vices) as the branches of a tree, as in the twelfth-century Speculum Virginum. The leaves on the branch of Prudence include memoria (memory), providentia (foresight), deliberatio (deliberation), intelligentia (intelligence), along with counsel, promptness, and the fear of God (see adjacent photograph). [#4]

The visualization of Prudence in Andrea della Robbia’s terracotta sculpture may be enigmatic to most of us, but was readily decipherable for centuries. Two-faced Lady Prudence is equipped for deliberation and astute decision-making. With her mirror, she knows herself; she can look ahead and behind. With the backward-looking visage of a wise and experienced old man, Prudence can learn from the past, drawing on the experience of tradition. And the snake? Likely in reference to Jesus’s injunction in Matthew’s gospel: “Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (10:16).

PART 1: Framing the virtues by the early philosophers and theologians

Prudence is not the only virtue that has been largely erased from mind and tongue. Prudence never operated as a singleton, but always in a matrix.

For two millennia of Western classical-plus-Christian culture, character assessment and moral perception (phrases sometimes used nowadays) were seen through the lenses of seven virtues, along with their opposites, and an independent list of seven other vices, and their opposing virtues.

The traditional list of the Seven Virtues comprises a foursome—prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude (the English words are drawn directly from the Latin words prudentia, temperantia, iustizia, fortitudo)—and the threesome of faith, hope, and love, for which the touchstone is the passage in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. … And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The four “cardinal” virtues are salient as early as Plato’s Dialogues. In the Republic, Socrates is the central figure of a group of men engaged in imagining, defining and organizing the features of character necessary for the welfare of the body politic, the polis, and likewise in the character of individual citizens. They agree that “justice” is key, but a city can only be just when three other virtues are at work:

“But now the city was thought to be just because three natural kinds existing in it performed each its own function, and again it was sober, brave, and wise [that is, temperate, courageous, prudent] because of certain other affections and habits of these three kinds.” “True,” he said. “Then, my friend, we shall thus expect the individual also to have these same forms,” admitting that it would be impious for you not to come to the aid of justice by every means in your power. … I expect then,” said I, “that we shall find it in this way. I think our city, if it has been rightly founded is good in the full sense of the word.” “Necessarily,” he said. “Clearly, then, it will be wise, brave, sober, and just” [that is, prudent, courageous, temperate, and just]. “Clearly.”  [#5]

Aristotle discusses the “forms of Virtue” essential in the character of the eloquent, and good, civic leader in his treatise on Rhetoric: “The forms of Virtue are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence, wisdom.” [#6] But the classical world’s systematic analysis of the virtues occurs in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. As for the four virtues, bravery (courage) and temperance are treated in Book 2, justice in Book 4, and prudence, implicitly, in the extensive consideration in Book 6 of the virtues of thought, intelligence, wisdom, and the practical wisdom required in good deliberation. A key additional virtue—magnanimity, public generosity—underlines Aristotle’s guiding concern for the larger society: “for the magnificent man spends not on himself but on public objects …” [#7] The practical wisdom of the generous citizen—his prudence—is evident in how he “will both give and spend [to the right people], the right amounts and on the right objects, alike in small things and in great, and that with pleasure; he will also take the right amounts and from the right sources.”

The Roman statesman-philosopher Cicero (106-43 B.C.) adapts the Greek vocabulary to the language and culture of Latinity, particularly in his treatise On Duties. One paragraph in particular supplies a compact summary of the four key virtues, in the sequence of prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance:

… all that is morally right rises from some one of four sources:
it is concerned either with [1] the full perception and intelligent development of the true [prudence]; or [2] with the conservation of organized society, with rendering to every man his due, and with the faithful discharge of obligations assumed [justice]; or [3] with the greatness and strength of a noble and invincible spirit [fortitude]; or [4] with the orderliness and moderation of everything that is said and done, wherein consist temperance and self-control. Although these four are connected and interwoven, still it is in each one considered singly that certain definite kinds of moral duties have their origin: in that category, for instance, which was designated first in our division and in which we place wisdom and prudence, belong the search after truth and its discovery; and this is the peculiar province of that virtue. … [#8]

The fourth-century churchman Ambrose is credited with naming these four as the “cardinal” virtues, in its meaning of cardus, “hinge.”  All other virtues turn on these four. [#9]

This list of seven virtues—four embedded in the best of classical Greco-Roman ethical teaching, and the three with the authority of New Testament teaching—was codified over several centuries, and woven into the fabric of Christian scholarly and public discourse.

Thomas Aquinas—the magisterial synthesizer of classical and Christian thought among the medieval philosophers and theologians, writing in the mid-1200’s—wove the cardinal virtues thoroughly into the sections on Ethics in his Summa Theologica. Here’s a couple of tidbits:

… so that, for instance, any virtue that causes good in reason's act of consideration, may be called prudence; every virtue that causes the good of right and due in operation, be called justice; every virtue that curbs and represses the passions, be called temperance; and every virtue that strengthens the mind against any passions whatever, be called fortitude. [Part 2 of Section 2, question 61 "Whether the four cardinal virtues differ from one another?”]

...prudence is merely a certain rectitude of discretion in any actions or matters whatever; justice, a certain rectitude of the mind, whereby a man does what he ought in any matters; temperance, a disposition of the mind, moderating any passions or operations, so as to keep them within bounds; and fortitude, a disposition whereby the soul is strengthened for that which is in accord with reason, against any assaults of the passions, or the toil involved by any operations.

Regarding the connective tissue among the four cardinal virtues, Aquinas goes on to say:

To distinguish these four virtues in this way does not imply that justice, temperance and fortitude are distinct virtuous habits: because it is fitting that every moral virtue, from the fact that it is a "habit," should be accompanied by a certain firmness so as not to be moved by its contrary: and this, we have said, belongs to fortitude. Moreover, inasmuch as it is a "virtue," it is directed to good which involves the notion of right and due; and this, we have said, belongs to justice. Again, owing to the fact that it is a "moral virtue" partaking of reason, it observes the mode of reason in all things, and does not exceed its bounds, which has been stated to belong to temperance. It is only in the point of having discretion, which we ascribed to prudence, that there seems to be a distinction from the other three, inasmuch as discretion belongs essentially to reason; whereas the other three imply a certain share of reason by way of a kind of application (of reason) to passions or operations. [#10]

One of St. Thomas’s personal prayers serves as a reminder that the virtues (and their countering vices) were not just the stuff of heady philosophizing:

To Acquire the Virtues

O God, all-powerful and all-knowing, without beginning and without end,
You Who are the source, the sustainer, and the rewarder of all virtues.

Grant that I may
abide on the firm ground of faith,
be sheltered by an impregnable shield of hope
and be adorned in the bridal garment of charity.

Grant that I may
through justice, be subject to You,
through prudence, avoid the beguilements of the devil,
through temperance, exercise restraint and
through fortitude, endure adversity with patience. … [#11

PART 2: Virtues and Vices: down-to-earth teaching for ordinary people

Treatises such as those of Aristotle or Aquinas exercised enormous influence in Western philosophical ethics and the history of ideas. But these were not the texts placed in the hands and set before the eyes and ears of ordinary folk. Then (as now), popular literature, including theater, and the visual arts served as the vehicles for informing the language and inner sensibility of the wider swathe of society.

Here, too, I offer a sampler.

I spoke of Cicero’s On Duties as a treatise. In fact, it was given the form of a personal letter to his son, full of practical advice for real life, then made public. (In a letter to his friend Atticus, Cicero writes “I am addressing the book to Marcus. From father to son what better theme?”) [#12]

Similarly, Alcuin—the English monk and scholar brought over to Charlemagne’s court as a sort of minister of education for the emperor—couches his Book on the Virtues and Vices  (De Virtutibus et Vitiis Liber), written probably in 800, as a practical handbook (manualis libellus) at the request of the soldier Count Guy (Wido), “busily absorbed in bellicis rebus … to tell him what to do and what to avoid in his daily life … in moral conflicts that might occur in the everyday affairs of a military man and royal judge” (in one scholar’s summary). [#13]

Suiting his metaphors to the military life, Alcuin personifies the four cardinal virtues as the “four very glorious leaders … whom we oppose to the warriors of diabolical impiety.” However, he also enlists another set of “holy virtues”—"warriors of Christ”—who will “easily conquer” a concomitant set of vices: “First pride through humility, greed through abstinence, fornication through chastity, avarice through wisdom, anger through patience, weariness through constancy of good works, bad sadness through spiritual joy, vain glory through the charity of God.”

Alcuin’s list of eight vices had its origin in the eight “evil thoughts” listed by the monk Evagrius in the 4th Century for those following the ascetic life in the desert. (His student John Cassian brought the list into the wider Western church.) In the late 6th Century, Pope Gregory the Great, in his commentary on the book of Job, adjusted the earlier eight to the seven vices: adding gluttony; combining weariness and bad sadness as sloth; and incorporating vain glory into pride.

This list of Seven Deadly Sins became authoritative: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust. The order is not random, but follows a 3 + 1 + 3 arrangement, for which Love is the key. Pride, envy, and wrath are forms of perverted Love: love of the wrong things. Love casts out envy (for example); there’s no wholesome or holy form of envy. Sloth is the condition of weak or lethargic love. Greed, gluttony, and lust represent distorted forms of loves that are part of our God-created human being. (To speak of the Deadly Sins can be misleading, since these are not actions of sin as such, but are the habits of the heart, mind, body and soul that lead us into vicious deeds.)

I turn to popular literature as the medium through which these groups of virtues and vices settled into the minds and on the tongues of all classes of society.

For Italians, the beloved poet first to write in the local vernacular of central Italy was a Franciscan friar from the town of Todi. Jacopone da Todi (1228-1306) was a near contemporary of Thomas Aquinas (who lived for several years in the Dominican monastery in nearby Orvieto). Jacopone’s Laude includes one in praise of the four virtues “called cardinal” (De le quattro virtute son cardinal chiamate [Laude #LXX]). The longish poem begins:

Alte quattro virtute     son cardinal chiamate
O nostra humanitate     perfece lo suo stato.

Como l’uscio posase      nel suo cardinile,
cusì la vita humana      è ’n questo quadrato stile;
anima ch’amantase      questo nobel mantile,
puòse chiamar gentile,  d’omne gioia adornato.

La prima è la prudenza,  lume dell’intellecto;
la seconda è iustitia,     che exercita l’affecto;
la terza è fortituda     contra l’averso aspecto,
la quarta è temperanza   contra van delectato.
… [#14]

Only one generation after Aquinas and Jacopone, the poet Dante takes the reader along with character Dante as he makes what becomes a pilgrimage through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory, and Paradise. The Divine Comedy provides the preeminent example of a narrative with a clear and ever-present thematic framework of the vices and virtues.

In Inferno the unrepentant souls are gathered according to the besetting vices that most generated their wickedness, stuck in the prison-house of their own making. First are the vices of the appetites: lust, gluttony, greed, and sloth. Then the moral mapping shifts to the sins based in the intellect, involving rational connivery. Then, in the deeper reaches of the pit of hell, the impenitent—with pride and envy still at work—express the full perversion of the will as well as the intellect, with no remorse.

Pilgrim Dante emerges from Hell to the shore of the mountain of Purgatory, where he encounters those who are saved, who have called on God’s mercy, even if in their dying breath. With contrite hearts, they confess openly the drives and inclinations that have led them away from God. Now zealous in converting the polluted desires of their hearts into virtues, these souls willingly undergo the spiritual exercises—not arbitrary punishments—that undo and re-order their desires, perfecting their free will, coming to full sanctification, each recovering the real person of God’s making.

Their ascent up Mount Purgatory follows its seven ledges or cornices, aligned exactly with the seven deadly Sins in traditional order. Tailored precisely to the inner conditions of each saved sinner, pride is changed to humility; envy to generosity of spirit, wrath to peace; sloth to zeal; gluttony to temperance, and so forth, to complete their sanctification. Together they sing the Seven Beatitudes as markers of the restoration of the virtuous habits of humility, mercy, peace-making, zeal, and so forth. They sing together the hymns of the liturgies of the church. One of the repeated verbs among these penitents is “smile.” When someone realizes for himself that he is free from ungodly desire, the mountain itself claps, joining the shared rejoicing of the compatriots of grace.

The seven personified Virtues make a ceremonial entry towards the end of Purgatorio in the stupendous procession of the Church Triumphant through the restored Garden of Paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory. Accompanying two splendid wagons

… came three ladies dancing in a round
near the right wheel, one so flaming red [love]
she hardly would be noticed in a fire.

Another seemed as though her flesh and bones
were made of emerald [hope], while the third
seemed white [faith] as is new-fallen snow.
…
Four other ladies, dressed in purple,
were dancing at the left, keeping to the cadence
the three-eyed one [prudence] among them set [justice, temperance, fortitude].
-    Canto 29: ll. 121-132 (translation by John and Jean Hollander; Anchor Books, 2004 edition)

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), writing a generation after Dante (and before Chaucer) frames his Decameron as the gathering of ten young upper-crust Florentines sitting out the Black Plague in one family’s country villa. To pass the time enjoyably (while the dead corpses are piled and burned), they play story-telling: each person tells a story each day for the ten days of their pleasant retreat—hence the 100 tales of Decameron.

With sharp irony on Boccaccio’s part, the speaker of the first story on the first day recounts the utterly false confession of a disgustingly-evil and unrepentant man on his deathbed. The priestly friar turns to the traditional chief sins to guide Ser Ciappelletto’s confession, beginning with lust, gluttony, greed, through the seven vices. The friar, alas, has no discernment to see through the smoke-screen of the confessee’s self-serving narration.  

A brief passage will give the gist:

On reaching the room where Ser Ciappelletto was lying, he sat down at his bedside, and first he began to comfort him with kindly words, then he asked him how long it was since he had last been to confession. Whereupon Ser Ciappelletto, who had never been to confession in his life, replied: “Father, it has always been my custom to go to confession at least once every week …” These words were greatly pleasing to the holy friar … Having warmly commended Ser Ciappelletto for this practice of his, he began by asking him whether he had ever committed the sin of lust with any woman. To which, heaving a sigh, Ser Ciappelletto replied: “Father, I am loath to tell you the truth on this matter, in case I should sin by way of vainglory. … I am a virgin as pure as on the day I came forth from my mother’s womb.” “Oh, may God give you His blessing!” said the friar. “How nobly you have lived! And your restraint is all the more deserving of praise in that, had you wished, you would have had greater liberty to do the opposite than those who, like ourselves, are expressly forbidden by rule.”
    Next he asked him whether he had displeased God by committing the sin of gluttony … [#15]

And so it goes, moving up the ladder of vice with a priest so gullible that he promotes Ciappelletto—who dies impenitent shortly after his “confession”—as a candidate for sainthood. How Boccaccio’s readers react—laughing at the witty joke (as do the others in the group of story-tellers), or rolling eyes at a priest so devoid of discernment, or feeling righteous disgust about Ciappelletto, or wincing at the cynicism of the tale-teller, or of his audience—serve as a moral litmus test for the reader.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (composed in the late 1300’s, after Chaucer’s long visit to Italy where he likely met Boccaccio) imagines a collection of erstwhile pilgrims taking a Lenten pilgrimage to Canterbury. (Or is it a spring vacation for many of them?) They pass the time on the road by taking turns telling stories, rather like Boccaccio’s ten young people.

The concluding tale of the collection is not a tale but a very long and earnest sermon delivered by the humble country parson on the seven chief sins and all of their branches, and the virtues that provide the remedies. His purpose is to exhort his fellow pilgrims to make a good and self-discerning confession—the proper purpose for taking a pilgrimage to England’s mother church. For Chaucer’s readers, the sermon provides the thematic framework for understanding the motivations of the pilgrims in telling their tales. After an initial discourse on contrition and confession, the Parson continues:

Now it is necessary to tell of the Seven Deadly Sins, that is, the capital sins. They all run on one leash but in different ways. They are called capital because they are the chief ones, the sources of all other sins. The root of these seven sins is Pride, the general root of all sins, for from this root spring certain branches, as Wrath, Envy, Accidie or Sloth, Avarice or (to common understanding) Covetousness, Gluttony, and Lechery. And each of these capital sins has its branches and twigs, as shall be told in the following sections. [#16]

Here’s a just a small part of the Parson’s exhaustive analysis of Pride, and its remedy:

Though no man can fully count the number of twigs and sins that come from Pride, I'll show part of them as you will see. There is Disobedience, Boasting, Hypocrisy, Disdain, Arrogance, Impudence, Haughtiness, Insolence, Contemptuousness, Impatience, Strife, Contumacy, Presumption, Irreverence, Perverse Obstinancy, Vainglory, and many another twig I cannot set down.

Disobedient is he who disobeys the commandments of God, his sovereigns, and his spiritual father. A boaster is he who boasts of the evil or the good he has done. Hypocrite is he who doesn't show himself as he is and shows what he is not. Disdainful is he who disdains his neighbor, that is, his fellow Christian, or who disdains to do what he should. Arrogant is he who thinks that he has the good things in him that he doesn't, or believes that he deserves to have them, or who judges himself to be what he isn't. Impudent is he who for pride has no shame for his sins. Haughtiness is when a man rejoices in evil he has done. Insolent is he who despises all others in comparison with his own worth and his knowledge, speech, and bearing. … Presumption is when a man undertakes an enterprise that he should not or may not do, and this is called audacity. Irreverence is when men do not honor those whom they should, but in turn wait with expectant desire to be reverenced. Perverse obstinancy is when a man defends his folly and trusts too much in his own intellect. Vainglory is to have pomp and delight in his temporal rank and to glorify himself in this worldly estate.

…  there is a private sort of Pride that expects to be greeted first before greeting another though the latter may be worthier. He also expects or desires to sit in a higher place at table, to precede another in walking, kissing pax after mass, or being censed, or to precede his neighbor to the offering, or to do similar things contrary to propriety, all because he aims in the proud desire of his heart to be magnified and honored before the people.

Sixteen twigs, all defined and illustrated, acute in discrimination, and presented forthrightly to people from every social stratum. Eventually, the Parson gets to the Remedium contra peccatum Superbie (the remedy for the sin of Pride):

Since you understand what Pride is, what its parts are, and where it comes from, you shall now understand Pride's remedy, which is humility and meekness. That is the virtue through which a man has true self-knowledge, not esteeming nor respecting himself with regard to his just deserts but being always aware of his moral weakness.

Now there are three kinds of humility: of heart, of mouth, and of deed. … Humility of heart is of four types. …

… and so forth, over many pages!

And that’s just the first of the seven vices, in a sermon that would have taken several hours in the telling. For most of us nowadays, the Parson’s sermon provides a taxonomy of vices and virtues too taxing to digest! But this is no high-level theology for an audience of scholars. This down-to-earth sermon follows normal everyday speech, with examples drawn from the everyday life of ‘everyman’—and is intended by Chaucer to be the concluding “tale.”

I’ve drawn on only a small set of the treatment of virtues and vices in popular literature. The groups of Sevens provided a shared thematic framework in the medieval-Renaissance period, written for and appreciated by a wide swathe of society. I think of it as a moral lingua franca, or as a shared network of moral synapses in thoughts and words, and images.

That said, neither Dante, Boccaccio, nor Chaucer assume that societal familiarity with the vocabulary will translate into a morally virtuous people, desiring the virtues and eschewing the vices. (Hence the Parson begins his sermon on the vices with the call for sincere contrition of the heart.)

With this background, I turn to the particular concern of this essay; namely, to show that this same thematic of the virtues and vices provides the moral scaffolding of the visual narratives of the age. 

PART 3: Virtues and Vices in the visual decoration of buildings and towns

I return to the question posed at the beginning: Can visual images be efficacious—perhaps even more efficacious than words—in drawing people towards the virtues and away from the vices?

Dante’s position on the question is explicit in Purgatorio.

As pilgrim-Dante passes through the gate into Purgatory proper and onto the first terrace where pride is purged and humility is fostered, the first thing he beholds is a series of scenes sculpted in bas-relief on the very wall of the cliff “of white marble carved with so much art / that Polycletus and Nature’s very self / would there be put to shame.” Dante is bowled over by the life-like power of the scene of the Annunciation. The angel Gabriel

appeared before us so vividly engraved,
in gracious attitude
it did not seem an image, carved and silent.
…
One would have sworn he said: ‘Ave,’ [“Hail”]
for she as well was pictured there
who turned the key to love on high.

And in her attitude imprinted were
the words: “Ecce Ancilla Dei” [Behold the handmaid of the Lord]
as clearly as a figure stamped in wax.
- Canto 10, lines 31-33, 40-45 (Hollander translation)

The beauty of the carving prompts not an aesthetic gaze alone, but draws the penitent souls deeply into the narrative, even hearing the voices. Clearly, the pilgrim-Dante is moved. He is also drawn onward to two more episodes of exemplary humility, one from the Old Testament (David dancing before the ark, scorned by the prideful Michal, 2 Samuel 6), and another from classical history (the legendary scene of Emperor Trajan pausing to respond to the plea of a poor widow). Dante himself has become one of the penitent souls for whom the bas-reliefs strengthen their zeal for humility. In addition, carved on the pathway underfoot are scenes of gross pride which in turn foster godly antipathy to the vice.

Throughout Purgatorio, visual depictions—always taken from Scripture and classical literature—inspire and encourage the exercises that bring to completion the sanctification of these penitent souls.

The paintings and sculptures in the “gallery” that follows were created in fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Italy, for a wide variety of buildings, in-doors and out, marking the visual landscape of social life, always with attention to the fittingness of the virtues in their particular settings. All were commissioned to benefit communities or families or civic entities; they were understood to remind and enhance and inspire the work of the people gathered in these places.

Scrovegni family Chapel
In the first decade of the 1300’s, the already-renowned painter Giotto was commissioned by the wealthy Scrovegni family in Padua to fresco the walls of the family chapel with a series of 39 episodes from the lives of Mary and Jesus, spiraling around the walls of the chapel, from top to bottom.

Below the narrative scenes, at eye level, are depictions of virtues and vices: the three theological and four cardinal virtues on the right side, with their opposites on the left. Differing from the Seven Deadly Sins, the vices are Foolishness, opposite Prudence; Inconstancy opposite Fortitude; Wrath [uncontrolled Ira] opposite Temperance; Injustice to Justice; Infidelity to Faith; Envy to Love; Desperation to Hope. In the borders of the painted niches, painted labels identify the virtue or vice.

Below are three of these opposing pairs (photos thanks to the Web Gallery of Art):

The pairs, however, are not placed adjacent to each other, but rather face each other on opposite sides of the chapel. The arrangement creates a sense for the worshippers—the family and friends and acquaintances invited to attend a mass in the Scrovegni’s private chapel—as being framed, or sandwiched, in a sort of decision space for identifying and assessing one’s character.

The Belltower in Florence
Immediately adjacent to the stupendous Duomo in Florence is the great Campanile, built in the mid-1300’s under the design and supervision of three master builders, including Giotto. Decorating all four sides of the Belltower is an encyclopedic series of framed reliefs honoring every aspect of Florentine society, governance, education, worthy labors, and its religious and moral underpinnings. A program of hexagonal panels includes a wide array of vocational “arts” including navigation, agriculture, building, architecture, hunting, wool-working (a major element of Florence’s economy), medicine; painting, music, poetry, even the “art” of festivals. Lozenge-shaped panels in groups of “sevens” depict the sacraments, liberal arts, planets—and the Seven Virtues.

Every Florentine, from every level of society, would have reason to pass under the Campanile frequently. One can imagine the families, and the youngsters, looking up and seeing mother’s work of weaving Florence’s prized fabrics and father’s work as a stone mason, along with the godly pastimes and the festive holy-days of the church year, along with their own learning of the “liberal arts” in school, and the 3+4 virtues that make for a life well lived.

The Baptistry in Florence
Facing the façade of the Duomo is the octagonal-shaped Baptistry, with three sets of magnificent bronze-cast doors with series of panels depicting scenes from the Bible. The earliest-made doors, the work of Andrea Pisano in the 1300’s, presented key episodes from the life of John the Baptist, fittingly for a baptistry. The eight panels at the bottom of the doors—two layers with four scenes each—depict figures of the four cardinal virtues on the lower row, and the three theological virtues in the upper row.  (Uh oh!) What virtue was chosen for the fourth panel to accompany the threesome of faith, hope, and love (Fides, Speranza, Caritas)? Humility, the virtue of John the Baptist who declares, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me. … the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie” (John 1:15, 27 RSV).

Pictured below are the original panels, now displayed in the Museum of the Works of the Cathedral after a meticulous restoration (photos by the author).

Interestingly, the same program of the Seven Virtues is put to work in the hexagonal baptismal font in the Baptistry of the Duomo in Siena. The bronze bas-relief panels depict six scenes from the life of John the Baptist. Between the panels are elegant statues of six female figures representing six of the seven cardinal and theological virtues. Which virtue was left out? Temperance: the lean and wild Baptizer, getting by on wild honey and locusts while preaching in the wilderness, was no exemplar of the classical sense of temperance as ‘neither too much or too little’; healthy is the middle way.

Loggia dei Lanzi
Adjacent to the imposing town hall in Florence—the Palazzo del Popolo in the Piazza della Signoria—is the elegant Loggia dei Lanzi. (This name given later in the 16th century by the Medici duke has stuck). Built in the 1380’s, the loggia was accoustically designed for official ceremonies, public speeches, and formal declarations by the town council.

Set between the three arches are four ceramic medallions (work of Agnolo Gaddi), representing the four cardinal virtues, exhibiting their traditional accoutrements, such as Prudence’s mirror and snake, and Temperance diluting her wine with water. The absence of the three companion virtues of faith, hope, and love all the more brings into relief the classical virtues as the foundation of healthy civic life and good governance of the polis.

The Sala dei Nove in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
At the heart of the Town Hall of Siena is the committee room where nine “good and lawful merchants” served two-month terms as a sort of central executive committee, distilled from the large council of three hundred that met in the adjacent great hall. Every square inch of the Hall of Nine is frescoed (by local artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti) with the contrasting landscapes and town-scapes of a city well or badly governed, highlighted by figures representing the virtues and vices of “good and bad government,” all with painted labels.

The largest figure on the wall of good governance represents the comune of Siena. Winged figures over this male’s head represent the three scriptural virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love, with Caritas in highest position. Seated by threes on either side of the main figure are female representations of the four cardinal virtues of Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence (who points to the abbrviated caption, PRAETERITIM PRAESENS FUTURUM—past, present, future) along with the additional two of Peace and Magnanimity (the latter emphasized in the tradition deriving from Aristotle’s Ethics as a generosity for the public good). The second-largest figure commands the left side of the wall, representing Justice, with the winged figure of Wisdom over her head. From balanced scales of distributive and commutative justice come two ropes twisted together in the hand of the personage of Concord; she in turn entrusts the rope into the hands of twenty-four leading citizens who attach it to the rod of governance.

The inverse rule of bad government, when the common good is despised as each individual looks out for his own interests, is treated on the opposite side wall. The same elements unfold in mirrored contrast to the scenes of Good Government. Around the head of the Tyrant are the figures of Pride (Superbia), at the top, Greed (Avaritia) on the left, and Vainglory (Vanagloria) on the right. The six virtues—the four cardinals plus Peace and Magnanimity—are displaced by Deceit, Cruelty, Fraud, Furor (public rage), Division (sawing herself in half), and War. Here the figure of Justice is bound at the feet of the Tyrant. Shocking for most visitors is the present timeliness of these frescoes for our own social and political circumstances!

Fonte Gaia in Siena
The Palazzo Pubblico is situated exactly at the bottom-center of Siena’s gently-sloping, fan-shaped main piazza. At the top of this Piazza del Campo is the public fountain, completed for operation in 1342 after engineering a series of pipes that brought the town’s water from 15 miles away in the countryside. Sculpted around three sides of the large rectangular basin is a series of female figures in bas-relief marble, the work of hometown sculptor Jacopo della Quercia, completed in 1419. These elegant figures represent the Seven Virtues, book-ended with the episodes of Adam and Eve’s Fall and Expulsion from the Garden.

The Fonte Gaia—the Joyous Fountain—was the daily gathering place for filling jars, gossiping and sharing the news.  The fountain is still a watering hole, but used only by the tourists who line up to fill their water bottles, seldom showing curiosity, in my witness, about the female figures of the virtues, even of the woman representing Charity, nursing not one but two babies at her breasts—an apt figure of outpouring, never-ending love.

The Chapter House of the monastery of Santa Maria Novella, Florence
In the late 1360’s, the Dominican friars of Santa Maria Novella monastery in Florence commissioned the respected Florentine painter Andrea Bonaiuto (or Andrea da Firenze) to fresco all four walls and the ceiling of the meeting room of the community—the “chapter house,” found in every monastery. Taken together, the assigned scenes present every aspect of the order’s mission of preaching and teaching. An entire wall is given to the educational program of the scholarly “order of Preachers.” Seven figures on one side represent the foundational liberal arts of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and the quadrivium subjects of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Seated below each “art” is an historical exemplar. On the other side are representations of the advanced studies essential for what we might call a rigorous seminary training. Presiding over this gathering, is the order’s greatest philosopher-theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas. Seated beside St. Thomas are ten exemplars from Old and New Testaments, including Job, Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah; the gospel writers and the apostle Paul. In the sky above and around the “angelic doctor’s” cathedra is a set of angels, four below and three above. The Seven Virtues, with Charity at the pinnacle, mark the concerns and character of St. Thomas, and the foundation and goal of sound learning.

The Seven Virtues in the Merchants’ Court in Florence
(now displayed in the Uffizi Gallery)
This beautiful set of the Seven Virtues was commissioned (in 1469) as the decoration of the Audience Chamber of the Tribunal di Mercanzia: the court in Florence that adjudicated business disputes and cases of malpractice among the seven guilds engaged in commercial activities. Piero del Pollaiolo completed six of the figures; Sandro Botticelli the seventh (the figure of Fortitude). The implication is that to guide and fulfill the work of Justice, the judges must draw on other virtues such as prudence, temperance, love, and so forth. The paintings are now displayed in the Uffizi Gallery art museum in Florence. Yet again, I have never heard any natural conversation about the subject matter among the visitors; the prevalent topic is the stylistic differences between the two artists.

Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino
Earlier I cited the description near the conclusion of Dante’s Purgatorio of the allegorical procession through the Edenic Garden at the summit of Mount Purgatory (canto 29). Seated on two splendid wagons are three ladies in one, dressed in the colors of faith, hope, and love, and four in the other wagon, signaling the cardinal virtues.

Interestingly, on the reverse side of the portraits by Piero della Francesca (1450s) of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino—Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza—each is seated on a fancy wagon. Accompanying the Duchess are three ladies in the colors of the “theological” virtues (plus a fourth figure representing the Duchess’s chastity). Seated comfortably at the front of the Duke’s wagon are four female figures, each with a conventional item associated with the cardinal virtues, the mirror of prudence, the sword and scales of justice, and so forth.

Why this arrangement? The cardinal four, legacy of the classical world, were more distinctly important to the political life in which powerful men like Federico operated, all the more since he was a mercenary general of his private army. The virtues of faith, hope, and charity would have had more immediate relevance in the Duchess’s roles tending to the welfare of their people in small and independent Duchy in the mountainous region of the Marches. The portraits were almost certainly intended for the ducal palazzo (although they are now among the masterworks housed in the Uffizi museum in Florence).

Francesco Pesellino’s painting of the Seven Virtues
Most of my examples of the virtues and vices in art were intended for public settings, but depictions of vices and virtues were featured in familial and other more private settings. I include in our gallery this beautiful depiction of the Seven Virtues—with exemplars of the Seven Liberal Arts seated at their feet—painted around 1450 by a lesser-known Renaissance artist (now in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama). In fact, this was part of the decoration on a bridal chest commissioned by a wealthy family for their daughter’s trousseau. Such heirloom cassoni were commonly decorated, not surprisingly, with morally-freighted scenes from classical literature, medieval legends, or episodes from Scriptural literature.

Raphael’s frescoes in the library of Pope Julius in the papal apartment of the Vatican
While making their way with the crowds to the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museum, most visitors pause to snap a photograph of another famous fresco of the Renaissance: Raphael’s so-called “School of Athens” in a room now called the Stanza della Segnatura.

In fact, this gathering of classical philosophers, Plato and Aristotle at the center, is just one of four wall-frescoes commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 (completed in 1511). The frescoes, populated with the famous practitioners of these scholarly “arts,” serve as a sort of visual catalogue of the books kept in cabinets below the frescoes. Each wall signals one of the four main collections of the Pope’s notable library: Philosophy (The “School of Athens”), Theology (misleadingly refered to as the “Disputà”), Poetry (of classical poets, plus Dante, gathered on “Mount Parnassus”), and Jurisprudence (the concerns of Justice).

The “Justice” depicted in the lower sections of the wall distinguishes the purpose of the civil and ecclesiastical courts. In the lunette at the top are female figures personifying the virtues of Fortitude, Prudence, and Temperance, with their attributes clearly depicted. Lady Temperance holds a set of reins, “reining” in and curbing the passions. Courage wears a breastplate, helmet, and boots, and holds a sapling of a sturdy oak tree. In the center of the three, Prudence shows her double-faced head, and gazes in the mirror held up by a winged cherub. Thus Justice-as-jurisprudence also takes its place as one of the four cardinal virtues. Implied is that the exercise of wise and un-prejudiced justice “hinges” on the guiding practice of all the virtues. Three of the five cherubs, or putti, in the lunette perhaps represent the theological virtues.

Our tour concludes.

Note the wide variety of settings in which the virtues and vices were depicted in medieval and Renaissance towns: town halls and meeting rooms, monasteries, church doors, baptistries and bell towers, public fountains, libraries, private palazzi. Many were in the reach of every strata of the populace. Some would be seen only by families or private communities or closed-door committees. Images of the virtues and vices were commissioned for places of high priority for architectural and decorative beauty. They surely played a significant role in shaping an entire community’s common understanding and shared discourse. But did these shared lenses of good and bad character actually shape the character of individuals and town citizenry? And if so, can the visual arts again take up something of their pre-modern role in learning, remembering, and inspiring the virtues?

PART 4: “Backing into the Future” [#17]

During the brief time of only two or three generations, these centuries-old inventories of virtues and vices of character have largely disappeared from ordinary discourse as the ‘go to’ means of assessing our own moral health and that of others. [#18]

I see features of contemporary society that blur the lenses of virtues and vices.

We privilege personality over character. For self-understanding we turn to Myers-Briggs or Strength-Finder or the zodiac, and the like, rather than to our habits of character. Our society’s cult of “celebrity” keeps character at the margins.

We understand identity as fluid. We “curate” (a trending word) our FaceBook “profile,” creating a persona, an avatar, rather than tending to our character.

We live in the present; we act on the moment, with weakened capacity or interest in projecting future consequences. Our transient society weakens an active sense of the past from which one can learn.

We assume that emotions may trump duties and responsibilities.

We willingly succumb to the puppeteers of our pervasive consumer culture as they subvert the virtues of temperance, prudence, courage in favor of unrestrained sexual desire (lust), of gluttony, envy, and so forth. Vices bring in more money than the virtues.

Ours is a pluralistic society, and a multi-culture—not a bad thing!—but we are reticent to impose our own “values” on others. Indeed, our resort to the language of “values” allows us to sidestep moral examination of our character.

Is the old language of virtues and vices (and the notion of character that they reflect) worth recovering? Can they feasibly be recovered?  How?

It takes a village to retrieve and reactivate a lost vocabulary. If young people learn the lists of vices and virtues (perhaps students in a classical-Christian school), but seldom hear them applied often and appropriately in daily conversation with parents, siblings, neighbors, pastors, peers, then the vocabulary remains stilted, artificial. We will need to make a conscious effort to use the words when the circumstances are relevant. “What is the prudent approach to deal with the lousy conditions of your job?” Can we spot situations that call for “summoning our fortitude”? Which of our society’s addictions (say, to our addiction to our smart-phones) call for temperance? Amidst planet-changing environmental upheavals and untold numbers of political refugees, religious, refugees, climate refugees, how can we exercise an astute justice? How much in student loans should I take out to fund my college education? “Wow, we’ll need to exercise prudence to make that decision. Let’s talk with a variety of people about their experience.”

Wendell Berry’s most recent book, The Need to be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice is apt throughout; most directly for our theme is the opening paragraph of Chapter II, Equality, Justice, Love:

Among the necessary and the least dispensable words in our language are those by which we name our values. Here is a list (surely not complete) of such words: Truth, Justice, Mercy, Forgiveness, Peace, Equality, Trust, Hospitality, Generosity, Freedom, Love, Neighborliness, Home, Reverence, Beauty, Care, Courtesy, Goodness, Faith, Kindness, Health, Wholeness, Holiness. It is obvious, first of all, how unhappily these words and the thoughts they name must associate with the materialism, the several determinisms, the ideal of mechanical efficiency, and the rule of profit and war, which now intrude so powerfully into their company. And so we need more than ever the words on my list. We need them as abstractions commonly understood, as they appear often in the Bible, in the founding documents of the United States, and in various classics of literature. We need them, that is, as the names of familiar ideals by which to rectify our thoughts and our lives. But we need them also in the particularity of effort as we practice them, or as we try to fail to practice them.

Such virtues as we have highlighted are absent from the visual landscape of our culture, seldom making an appearance in the visual arts, in contemporary media, in signage—except in modes of flipping vices into virtues, or vice versa. (I had to appreciate the succinct subtlety of an ad campaign in Italy a couple years ago of a major supplier of ice cream treats. An attractive woman, but ‘realistic’ in her body shape, holds a Magnum chocolate bar, still making her decision. The caption was a simple “Perché non?” “Why not?”)

I was heartened by the sculptor Lorenzo Quinn’s gigantic sculptural installation on the occasion of the Venice Art Biennale in 2019. Six enormous pairs of clasped hands arch over the entrance to the Arsenal, representing Friendship, Wisdom, Help, Faith, Hope, Love—“Building Bridges.” The sculptor’s comment: “Venice is a world heritage city and it is the city of bridges. It is the perfect location to spread a message of world unity and peace so that more of us around the world build bridges with others rather than walls and barriers.”

May my friend and colleague Thomas Albert Howard be right when, towards the end of his fine essay on Prudence, he writes:

I am persuaded that such visual encounters with the virtues help students think about appropriating them in their own lives. Images have a different, more palpable power than words. When images and words about prudence are combined for the student, not only does an interesting pedagogical environment result, but the larger “life questions” of vocation come more easily to the discussion. (italics added)

ENDNOTES

#1: The text of the wall-placard for Prudence in the MFA Boston exhibition:
“This monumental roundel with a splendid garland composed of a variety of citrus fruits, pinecones, and grapes makes a powerful statement. An allegory of the virtue of Prudence, the figure has a double-faced head that looks both forward and back: a young woman looking down into the mirror in her hand, while an elderly man looks up in the opposite direction, his beard merging with her hair. She also holds a snake, a biblical symbol of wisdom. These attributes encourage the viewer to learn from the past as well as to look into oneself. Prudence was a virtue vital to both civic and religious life, and such large roundels often decorated ceilings, grouped with the other Cardinal Virtues of Temperance, Justice and Fortitude.”

The general consensus is that Andrea della Robbia’s Prudence is very likely to have been part of a series of the Seven Virtues. Along with three other plaques (held in other collections) they give us 3 of the 4 cardinal virtues and 1 of the 3 theological virtues (although the Faith plaque, because of differences in design, may belong to another series).

Della Robbia’s Prudence is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  Website: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/194838 (photographs in the public domain, and permitted for reproduction). The description includes these comments:
”This piece formed part of a decorative program, along with three other tondi with virtues. Two (Temperance and Justice) are in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, and one (Faith) is in the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. They are related to the Cardinal Virtues by Luca della Robbia (1461-62) on the ceiling of the Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal in San Miniato, Florence (photo adjacent), but they show the style of Luca's nephew, Andrea, who was the dominant force in the family business after ca. 1470.”

#2: Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence, editor and chief writer Marietta Cambareri, with contributions by Abigail Hykin and Curtney Leigh Harris (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Publications, 2016), 7.

#3: Cited by Thomas Albert Howard, in his essay “Seeing with All Three Eyes: The Virtue of Prudence and Undergraduate Education,” in At This Time and In This Place: Vocation and Higher Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 217, footnote 3.

#4: Attributed to Conrad of Hirsau, the Speculum Virginum was written in the first half of the twelfth century as a guide for nuns, offering them theological lessons in the form of a hypothetical conversation between a teacher, Peregrinus, and his student, Theodora. Facsimile and information is found in this website: https://www.thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/html/W72/description.html
Tree diagram of the virtues in Speculum Virginum is reproduced in this website:
 https://catholicgnosis.wordpress.com/2019/11/30/virtues-subvirtues/

#5: I follow the authoritative edition of Plato’s works: Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6, translated by Paul Shorey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), available on the internet at this address:
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D4%3Asection%3D427e
I have placed the passage 435b before passage 427e to clarifying the overall sequence of Plato’s developing argument.

#6: Rhetoric, book 1, chapter 9 1366b1; available at: https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/stasis/2017/honeycutt/aristotle/rhet1-9.html

#7: Book 4, chapter 2:
 “Magnificence is an attribute of expenditures of the kind which we call honourable, e.g. those connected with the gods-votive offerings, buildings, and sacrifices-and similarly with any form of religious worship, and all those that are proper objects of public-spirited ambition, as when people think they ought to equip a chorus [in the theater] or a trireme [equipping a ship], or entertain the city, in a brilliant way. … or anything that interests the whole city or the people of position in it, and also the receiving of foreign guests and the sending of them on their way, and gifts and counter-gifts; for the magnificent man spends not on himself but on public objects …” https://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/wphil/readings/wphil_rdg09_nichomacheanethics_entire.htm
(For another translation, see pp. 94-95, in the edition of the Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1999).

#8: Book I, section 15: see The Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/47001/pg47001-images.html
Cicero, On Duties, edited by M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 7-9.

#9: Commentary of Saint Ambrose on the Gospel According to Luke, trans. Ide M. Ni Riain (Dublin: Halcyon Press, 2001), 138; cited in Thomas Albert Howard, “Seeing with All Three Eyes: The Virtue of Prudence and Undergraduate Education,” in At This Time and In This Place: Vocation and Higher Education, 222, footnote 17.

#10: From the section “Of the Cardinal Virtues,” addressing the question “Whether the four cardinal virtues differ from one another?” Accessible on-line in the version of the entire Summa Teologica, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1947]) https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/aquinas/summa/index.htm ; quotation in this section: https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/aquinas/summa/sum198.htm

#11: St. Thomas Aquinas, The Aquinas Prayer Book: The Prayers and Hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1993), 32-35.

#12: Cicero, On Duties, edited by M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), xvi.

#13: Luitpold Wallach, “Alcuin on Virtues and Vices: A Manual for a Carolingian Soldier,” in The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 48, No. 3, (July 1955) 177.
Rachel Stone’s translation of Alcuin’s De Virtutibus et Vitiis Liber (Book about the Virtues and Vices) was first published in The Heroic Age: a journal of early Medieval Northwestern Europe, Issue 16 (2015), now available on-line https://www.heroicage.org/issues/16/stone.php with permission to quote “for educational and personal purposes.” Stone writes: “There are more than 140 manuscript copies of part or the whole treatise known, but there is no modern edition. This translation is therefore largely based on the edition in Migne's Patrologia Latina, supplemented by two more recent partial editions and transcriptions.”

#14: Jacopone’s poem can be found on-line here: https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Laude_(1910)/Laude/Lauda_LXX

#15: Boccaccio, The Decameron (London: Penguin Books, 1972), pp. 73-74, translated G. H. McWilliam (also available on-line by the Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23700/23700-h/23700-h.htm )

#16: Ronald L. Ecker prepared this modernization of Chaucer’s medieval English for the edition of the Canterbury Tales, prepared for the most part by Eugene J. Crook (Hodge & Braddock Publishers, 1993). The on-line edition is “published with the permission of Hodge & Braddock”:
 https://english3.fsu.edu/canterbury/parson.html
For a taste of the Middle English of the passage that I quoted, beginning with “Now it is necessary …”, see http://www.librarius.com/canttran/parstrfs.htm (“Now is it bihovely thyng to telle whiche been the sevene deedly synnes, this is to seyn, chieftaynes of synnes. Alle they renne in o lees, but in diverse manneres. Now been they cleped chieftaynes, for as muche as they been chief and spryng of alle othere synnes. Of the roote of thise sevene synnes, thanne, is Pride the general roote of alle harmes. For of this roote spryngen certein braunches, as Ire, Envye, Accidie or Slewthe, Avarice or Coveitise (to commune understondynge), Glotonye, and Lecherye. And everich of thise chief synnes hath his braunches and his twigges, as shal be declared in hire chapitres folwynge.

#17: The title for this final section refers appreciatively to Bernard Knox’s influential book: Backing into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1994).

#18: Two of the cardinal virtues have not been completely erased from common usage, but their fields of meaning have been significantly narrowed.  To be “prudent” is more often used as a pejorative word indicating excessive caution mainly in sexual matters – “you’re such a prude!”  “Temperance” was narrowed to a matter of principled eschewing of alcoholic beverages as early as the late 19th century, signaled by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, organized in 1873. (My mother was a loyal WCTU-er until the 1960s, but the local chapter seemed slowly to dissolve.) But even that usage has faded; few people would say, “be temperate in your drinking with your friends this evening.” “Don’t drink too much, okay?” is the likelier phrase. “Courage” is regularly used in reference to actions of bravery, but its sense of “fortitude” as a virtue of character exercised in many circumstances is less used. And “pride” or “proud” seems to be in good health, but in the narrowed positive sense of having proper self-esteem; a virtue, no longer a vice.