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Virtues

Chastity

Contrary Virtues

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Origin 400 to 1400 CE

Chastity is the contrary virtue set against Lust, the right ordering and moderation of sexual desire according to one's state of life. It is one of the seven remedial virtues paired against the capital sins. In the esoteric scheme used here it shares with the vice it heals the attribution of Venus and of the archangel Anael, also called Haniel.

Facts
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Not celibacy and not abstinence. Aquinas treats chastity as the part of temperance that orders sexual desire according to reason and one's state of life, so a married person is chaste in the exercise of that state and a celibate in abstaining from it 2Tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Pudicitia is the combatant that overthrows Sodomita Libido. This is one of the seven combats of the poem, and it is the closest the poem comes to the later pairing of chastity against lust 3Tradition: Prudentius, Psychomachia
Meaning in the Attesting SourceSourced to the subject's own account
The Catechism describes chastity as the successful integration of sexuality within the person, and states that it is required of everyone according to their state of life, not only of the celibate 4Tradition: Roman Catholicism
Origins
Origin Period
400 to 1400 CE 1Tradition: The medieval scheme of seven contrary virtues
Place of Origin
The Latin west: the scheme's literary ancestor is the Psychomachia of Prudentius, written in Roman Spain around the year 400, and the pairings were fixed in later medieval catechesis 1
Origin of the Name
Latin castitas, from castus, pure or morally clean. 2
Attributed Author / Compiler
Prudentius (348-c. 413) for the Psychomachia, the literary ancestor of the scheme. The pairings themselves are the work of later medieval catechesis and have no single author 1
Language
Latin 3
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 1
Doctrinal Status Detail
Aquinas classifies chastity as a potential part of the cardinal virtue of temperance, moderating sexual desire the way temperance itself moderates appetite generally; the church has never issued a formal dogmatic definition of this scholastic rank, so its classification remains standard teaching rather than defined doctrine. 2Tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
Disputed
Origin Period
Chastity's literary ancestor is the Psychomachia of Prudentius, written around 400 CE, where Pudicitia defeats Sodomita Libido, the poem's nearest approach to chastity opposing lust. The formal pairing of chastity against lust as one of the seven contrary virtues was fixed only later, in medieval catechetical teaching with no single author or date. 1
Learn More
Chastity

Chastity, castitas, is set against lust in the scheme of contrary virtues. In the tradition it is not equivalent to celibacy or to abstinence: Aquinas treats chastity as the part of temperance that orders sexual desire according to reason and one's state of life, so that a married person is chaste in the exercise of that state and a celibate in abstaining from it, and the Catechism states this explicitly, describing chastity as the successful integration of sexuality within the person and as required of everyone according to their condition. The distinction is regularly lost in popular usage, where chastity is taken simply to mean not having sex. The related but distinct virtue of continence concerns the restraint of desire against resistance, which Aristotle and Aquinas both place below full virtue, since the fully virtuous person's desires are already ordered.

Augustine's treatise De Bono Coniugali, the good of marriage, supplied much of the later tradition's vocabulary for married chastity, identifying three goods, offspring, fidelity, and sacramental permanence, that make the sexual relationship of spouses good rather than merely tolerated; this framework let medieval theologians hold married intercourse compatible with virtue while still ranking consecrated celibacy, following Paul's preference at 1 Corinthians 7, as the more excellent state, a ranking the Second Vatican Council's later teaching softened without abandoning, by insisting more strongly on the genuine goodness and dignity of married chastity in its own right.

Chastity and the Instability of the Remedial List

The seven contrary virtues are not a fixed set, and chastity is a good place to see how loosely the scheme actually held. The list is a teaching device built by inversion: take the seven capital vices, which were themselves stabilised only gradually from the eight thoughts of Evagrius through Cassian to Gregory the Great, and name an opposite for each. Because it was built that way, it inherited every wobble in the list it was built from, and it added some of its own.

Chastity in the scheme answers lust, and it is one of the more stable entries, but the Latin behind it varies. Prudentius calls the figure Pudicitia, modesty or shame, which is a wider thing than sexual continence. Later lists give castitas. Some give sobrietas, which elsewhere answers gluttony. A preacher working from one manual and a painter working from another could easily produce different sevens.

Chastity acquired attributes in Renaissance art without ever settling on one. The lily and the unicorn belong to her, and so does the sieve, from the legend of the Vestal Tuccia who proved her innocence by carrying water in one. The sieve is the reason Elizabeth I is painted holding it.

The atlas draws no emblem for chastity for that reason. Three candidate attributes with no clear winner is a case for skipping rather than choosing, and an invented emblem would be worse than none.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions
Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account

Rejected Here

Oneida Community, Denominations

The Oneida Community set aside exclusive marriage in favour of what it called complex marriage, holding that the restraint the churches called chastity was in practice a form of possession.

Source The Oxford Handbook of New Religious MovementsJames R. Lewis (ed.)

Element Of

Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Chastity in Roman teaching is the successful integration of sexuality within the person, required of every baptised person in the form proper to their state of life.

Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account

Held Differently

Shakers, Denominations

The Shakers held chastity as mandatory celibacy for every member without exception, so the community could grow only by conversion and by the adoption of children.

Source The Oxford Handbook of New Religious MovementsJames R. Lewis (ed.)
Skoptsy, Denominations

The Skoptsy held that chastity was secure only when the body could not offend, and practised physical castration to that end, a reading no other Christian body has taken.

Source The Oxford Handbook of New Religious MovementsJames R. Lewis (ed.)

Opposes

Lust (Luxuria), Vices

Chastity is the classical contrary virtue paired against Lust, one of the seven remedial virtues the medieval tradition, following Prudentius's Psychomachia, set one against one with the seven capital sins.

Source The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English LiteratureMorton W. Bloomfield

Originates in Language

Latin, Languages
Source PsychomachiaPrudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens)

Related To

The Medieval Chastity Belt, Artifacts & Relics

The device is attached in popular memory to the virtue of chastity, which is the whole of the connection: the belt is a story about chastity rather than an instrument of it.

Sources
1. The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature
Morton W. Bloomfield, Michigan State College Press, 1952ch. 3, the vices and virtues in medieval teachingView the Source
2. Summa Theologiae
Thomas Aquinas, 1274II-II q.151, on chastityView the Source
3. Psychomachia
Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens)Psychomachia, the combats of the virtues and vices
4. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition
Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997paragraphs 2337-2350, on chastity according to state of lifethe holders' own accountView the Source
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