On Gluttony

St Augustine, Aquinas, Elvis Presley and the Great Feast of Modernity

Gluttony, also referred to by its other name, intemperance, is the cardinal sin of overindulgence or excessive greed not only but mostly with regards to food and drink. Gluttony can be seen as worship of idolised food. 

Gluttonous behaviour is not limited to quantity. One can also be gluttonous with regards to the quality of, for example, food and drink. If one only ever eats the most lavish food or food of the highest standards, even if tempered in terms of quantity, this behaviour would still count as gluttonous. Also the desire or demand always to have one’s favourite dish prepared in just the right way counts as gluttony, for this behaviour makes us childish. 

Gluttony is perhaps the most paradoxical of all the deadly sins because food and drink are absolutely fundamental to one’s survival and at the same time one is tempted by just that which can both harm and nurture us. 

There is a difference between eating and shoving food in one’s face. Essen und Fressen as the German vernacular says, where Fressen already sounds more brutal and awful than Essen.  

If one is not careful, a simple and fundamentally necessary act such as eating can turn into a deadly sin and in fact the deadly sins are gateways to Hell. Beelzebub, the lord of the flies, symbolises gluttony. 

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Evagrius Ponticus, a monk in Egypt in the late 4th century AD, was the first to write down all sorts of temptations that can befall man, and ultimately reduced the list to 8 main temptations. Evagrius considered gluttony to be dangerous, for it harms the spirit and makes prayer impossible. In 590 AD Pope Gregory the Great reduced the list to 7, combining despondency and sorrow in the sin of sloth. It was Pope Gregory who called the temptations sins and indeed deadly sins. Gluttony, he thought, destroys the soul.