To understand the seven traditional vices and virtues, people in the Middle Ages often used the illustration of two trees: The Tree of Vices, and the Tree of Virtues.

All the vices/virtues would be on the branches of the tree, and the fruit hanging off these branches would be the results of such traits.

At the root of each tree would lie the key vice/virtue, from which all the others sprang. 

But these weren’t categories that you might expect.

At the root of the Tree of Vice lies pride. And at the root of the Tree of Virtue lies humility. 

It’s a fascinating insight into how medieval people thought about the human soul. Here’s how Pope Gregory I – Gregory the Great – put it in his famed Moralia in the sixth century, regarding the vice of pride:

For Pride is the root of all evil, of which it is said, as Scripture bears witness; Pride is the beginning of all sin. But seven principal vices, as its first progeny, spring doubtless from this poisonous root, namely, vain glory, envy, anger, melancholy, avarice, gluttony, lust. 

A depiction of a Tree of Virtue, from the 13th century text ‘Speculum Virginum’

Medieval scholar Grace Hamman noted on Undeceptions that this understanding of pride – as the root of all that is bad – can be challenging in a modern context. After all, there’s nothing wrong with taking pride in some things, like work or appearance.

It’s the kind of pride that really matters here.

“Bad pride is really at its core, a rejection of creatureliness,” Grace said.

“We’re all created, and we’re not God. We are not in control because we are not the ones who made the universe, so when we reject our littleness and our limitedness and our human limitations, this becomes the vice of pride.

“It’s a self-centring at the cost of everything else and everyone else around us. Christians saw in the fall of humans in Genesis this narrative of pride and rejection of human limits, usurping the place of God.”

The counter to this? The root of all virtue: humility.

This begs the question, though: Why is love not the root virtue?

Grace points out that for people in the Middle Ages, they understood that to truly love, they first had to be realistic about their existence – and this required a healthy dose of humility.

“St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great medieval monastic theologian, defines humility as true self-knowledge, especially regarding our weaknesses,” she said. 

“It’s the category of all self-knowledge, but in particular, of knowing our limitations, and knowing that we are created and not in fact the centre of the universe.

“You have to start (with humility) because you can’t learn anything if you’re not willing to acknowledge your need, and you can’t receive love if you’re not willing to acknowledge your need.”

This was something Augustine – and later Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century – understood.

Quoting Augustine, Aquinas writes that:

“Are you thinking of raising the great fabric of spirituality? Attend first of all to the foundation of humility.” Now this would seem to imply that humility is the foundation of all virtue. Therefore, apparently, it is greater than the other virtues. 

Humility is not necessarily the most important virtue – that honour is given to love (or ‘charity’) –  but it is the beginning of virtue. 

Of course, to some modern audiences, this idea of bowing humbly to an ultimate creator can sound repressive.

However, Grace points out that to understand the goodness of this way of thinking, we have to be honest with ourselves about our needs, which medieval thinkers tried to do.

“You have to lean into the idea that ‘I am nothing but a bottomless pit of need in the best way possible, but I am created to need and to be able to love others in their need’. 

“Because of this, we can then turn into the depths of love itself (God) and let Him transform us.”

People in the Middle Ages understood something that’s actually attested to in modern Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – that thinking and habits shape each other.

Change the way you think, and your behaviour often follows. Change your behaviour, and – over time – your patterns of thinking begin to shift as well. 

It’s a feedback loop. Tell yourself truer, healthier things, and you may find yourself acting in truer, healthier ways. Practise truer, healthier actions, and you may discover your inner dialogue slowly catching up. 

This can be especially true when it comes to cultivating humility. 

Here’s what John wrote in his own book on the subject, Humilitas:

Just force yourself on occasion to act humbly. I am not talking about ‘pretending’. I am recommending that you develop the humility muscle by exercising it. Obviously, thoughts powerfully affect actions. At the same time, actions also influence thoughts. One of the simplest examples is the advice to ‘face your fears’ … ‘Systematic desensitisation’ basically involves forcing yourself in a controlled way into a situation you (irrationally) find frightening so that the fear is slowly minimised. Anger management can sometimes involve the same approach: force yourself to count to ten instead of exploding, and over time, new habits—usually allied to new thoughts—can develop. 

The point is: Think virtue. Practise virtue. And slowly—almost without noticing—you may find yourself caught up in a virtuous cycle.

Adapted by Alasdair Belling from Undeceptions episode 168, ‘ Virtue / Vice’. You can listen to the full episode here.

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