What were the nine alien sins and what were the sins of the five senses?

by Really_McNamington

Ran across them referred to in an answer on Dante, hoping for more detail

sunagainstgold

Haha, yeah, I have a habit of dropping the sets of virtues/vices into posts without much detail--late medieval instructional literature gets really really boring and repetitive, and being amused by "these are the Ten Commandments, these are the nine alien sins, these are the eight types of holiness..." lists is sometimes all I have to keep myself awake. ;) That said:

The nine "alien" sins comes from the Latin alienus, which means "other"--so they relate to sins of another person:

  • requiring someone else to commit a sin
  • aiding someone else's sin (giving advice, material help, etc)
  • approving of someone else's sin
  • praising someone else's sin, or being happy about its commission
  • enjoying the material rewards of someone else's sin, especially buying food or drink with the monetary profits
  • failing to prevent someone else's sin when you could have by speaking up
  • failing to prevent someone else's sin when you could have by taking an action
  • aiding and abetting criminals
  • helping to hide fugitives, or at least not telling the authorities what you know

As for the sins of the five senses, this is less a list of generic sins than a reminds that sinning is possible using the different senses. For example: watching sexy dancing on the Sabbath is a violation of the commandment to keep holy the Lord's day (sight). Listening to gossip is a violation of the commandment not to bear false witness (hearing). Kissing can be a violation of the commandment against adultery (taste, because tongue). And so forth.

The lists of sins (and their counterparts, lists of virtues and gifts) were very popular in late medieval religious instruction because, well, they're easy to remember. During the last centuries of the Middle Ages (13-15), the Church placed an increasing emphasis on instruction of the laity at all levels of society. Lists like these were much easier to teach a largely illiterate population, and easy to help less experienced/educated parish priests structure their sermons.