Virtues and Vices: fruits and diseases of character and spirit - from Giotto's frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy

The Scrovegni Chapel, also known as the Arena Chapel, is located in the city of Padua, Italy, and has internal measurements of approximately 29 meters long, 13 meters wide and 8 meters high. Painted between 1303 and 1305, before the destruction that modernism caused in the arts, architecture, politics and religion, its pictorial decoration elevates this chapel to one of the greatest masterpieces of classical art. Its approximately 900 square meters contain frescoes of immeasurable educational, historical, artistic, theological and salvific value.

The central theme of the chapel is human salvation. Its frescoes, arranged from top to bottom in a spiral, depict the main scenes of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from her conception to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The most prominent image is that of the Last Judgment, which occupies an entire wall. The representation of the Virtues and Vices, which is at eye level for visitors, is striking. It is with regard to the latter that I will discuss in the following articles, the virtues and vices, which are, respectively, fruits and illnesses of character and spirit. Of character, because they depend on human habit. Of spirit, because they depend on divine grace.

To see the images of the frescoes in high definition, go to https://bit.ly/ArenaHD.

The theological virtues are those that have as their origin, motive and object God himself: faith, charity and hope; They exist as a complement to the four cardinal virtues, which are habitual and stable perfections of human intelligence and will, which regulate our actions, order our passions and guide our conduct according to reason and based on faith.

The fresco of the Last Judgment occupies the wall where the main door of the chapel is located. Looking at the altar, on the left-hand wall, the frescoes of the vices are arranged. On the right-hand side, there are frescoes of the virtues that are the opposite of these vices. The vices and virtues are represented by human figures with characteristics and postures that describe the respective vice or virtue. In the following articles, we describe the representative images of each Virtue x Vice pair and provide tips on how to develop the virtues and eliminate the vices.

The order in which the pairs of virtue and vice are arranged on the walls, from the altar to the wall of the main door, which depicts the scene of the Last Judgment, also has a pedagogical meaning of a journey from temporal life towards eternal life, of salvation or condemnation. During our temporal life, through our actions and grace, we can follow the path of virtues and find the grace of salvation. Or we can despise salvation and follow the path of vices and find the disgrace of eternal damnation.

From the altar, towards the main door, the pairs Virtues x Vices are:

1 - Prudence and Foolishness: pair of virtues and vices associated with intelligence, with reflection on daily actions and with choices about what is important. Intelligence is developed through study. The dignity one gives or the judgment one makes regarding the object of worship determines one's perception of oneself and one's surroundings. Therefore, the prudent person, guided by faith and reason, seeks eternal goods as a priority. He seeks to know himself, love God and imitate Christ, and has an appreciation for salvation. The fool, in turn, allows himself to be carried away by his desires and emotions. He develops an exaggerated love for himself and seeks only temporal goods. He seeks earthly pleasures, becoming a slave to them, disregarding salvation.

2 - Fortitude and Inconstancy: pair of virtues and vices associated with the will, which is crucial for facing life's setbacks in the search for the greater good. The will can lose control based on what one sees and hears. Through lust, reason and will become disordered. Since the most important thing in human action is the end, prudence is needed to avoid exchanging greater goods, which lead to salvation, for lesser goods, such as pleasures and riches; and constancy is needed to avoid giving up the search for salvation, the greater good.

3 - Temperance and Anger: pair of virtue and vice associated with emotion, the ability to govern the passion of anger that affects the spirit and is reflected in the body. Excessive love for oneself leads to emotional loss of control. The passions of the soul are ethically neutral; they are neither good nor bad. The bad angers, which cloud the intelligence, are sharp, bitter, and difficult. Sharp anger is the anger of the person who gets angry for minor reasons, petty quibbles. Bitter anger is the resentment stored in the memory for a long time. Difficult anger is the anger that seeks revenge on the person who practiced or propagated the evil. Good anger is indignation motivated by evil, the absence of which means a lack of moral sense, prevarication, lack of affection and solidarity with the wronged and defenseless.

4 - Justice and Injustice: pair of virtue and vice associated with the other, with the brother, with public affairs, which affects the ability to lead and govern. The study of human goods leads to a sense of justice. The Aristotelian “just” is “giving each one what is due to him”. The ruler must be just so that his subjects can carry out their work and seek happiness for themselves and their loved ones. The ruler must reward the just and punish the evildoer, with a clear separation between the just ruler and the governed. A ruler without this virtue produces crime and violence against the people and against himself. In an unjust government there is no clear separation between the ruler and the governed, and evil feeds on itself and grows, in a vicious cycle.

5 - Faith and infidelity: pair of virtues and vices associated with the direction of the intellect towards divine justice and the prioritization that one has between the celestial and eternal and the earthly and temporary. Having faith is being aware that the world is more than matter; and that the invisible and spiritual are more abundant and sustain the material. Romanticized ideals of plenitude that man yearns for, such as success, eternal health, uninterrupted happiness, limitless power and pleasure, universal brotherhood, angelic understanding, universal certainties, perfect love and indefectible religion, blind man and can make a spiritual illness chronic.

6 - Charity and Envy: pair of virtues and vices associated with the direction of the intellect, senses and will towards others and towards God. Contemplating beauty and exercising gratitude are remedies to cultivate charity and combat envy. Charity is a foretaste of Heaven, in the joy of loving God through serving one's brother. Envy, in turn, is the experience of an earthly hell, a sadness due to not seeing merits and goods in others or in oneself.

7 - Hope and Despair: pair of virtue and vice associated with the inclination of the human spirit to the promise of salvation given in baptism in Christ. Assimilating the concrete reality of divine action in humanity and in our personal lives, through great miracles and daily graces, is useful for developing hope. Viewing life from the perspective of eternity is useful for properly assessing life's accidents and avoiding despair. He who has a reason to live, endures almost everything (Nietzsche). Despair and hope are two extremes that depend both on human habits, fruits of character, and on divine grace, fruits of the spirit. Walking under vices or virtues are paths to condemnation or salvation.

Modernism is the mother-mentality of many of humanity's mistakes, and the Church denounced these errors in the encyclicals "Singulari Nos" of 1834 and "Pascendi Dominici Gregis" of 1907. The cure for modernism is described in the encyclical "Aeterni Patris" of 1879.

In short, modernism originates from an excessive love of novelties and pride in (i) not submitting to the truth by correcting oneself; (ii) imposing these novelties on others; and (ii) insisting on errors.

To write these article we used the structure and content of the book "Ecce Homo - Os vícios à luz dos afrescos de Giotto" https://bit.ly/LivroVicios, by Robson Oliveira, as a model and inspiration. We complemented it with information about the virtues from internet research. The chapel's frescoes can be seen in high definition through the link https://bit.ly/ArenaHD.