Seven deadly sins who identified seven or eight evil thoughts or spirits that one needed to overcome. Evagrius' pupil John Cassian, with his book "The Institutes," brought the classification to Europe, where it became fundamental to Catholic confessional practices as evident in penitential manuals, sermons like "The Parson's Tale" from Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," and artworks like Dante's "Purgatory" (where the penitents of Mount Purgatory are depicted as being grouped and penanced according to the worst capital sin they committed). The Catholic Church used the concept of the deadly sins in order to help people curb their inclination towards evil before dire consequences and
Seven deadly sins disordered love for individuals, thus possessing at least the redeeming feature of mutuality, unlike the graver sins, which constitute an increasingly agonised focusing upon the solitary self (a process begun with the more serious sin of gluttony). It is generally thought to be the least serious capital sin as it is an abuse of a faculty that humans share with animals, and sins of the flesh are less grievous than spiritual sins (love excessive, not love turning ever further awry toward hatred of man and God). In Dante's "Purgatorio", the penitents walk deliberately through the purifying flames of the uppermost