It was a key part of the emotional vocabulary of the Byzantine Empire, and can be found in all sorts of lists of “passions” (or emotions) in medical literature and lexicons, as well as theological treatises and sermons.
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In this list, acedia was subsumed into “sloth,” a word we now associate with laziness.Īcedia appears throughout monastic and other literature of the Middle Ages. A later 6th century Latin edit gave us the seven deadly sins. It attacked only after monks had conquered the sins of gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, anger, vainglory, and pride.Ĭassian, a student of Evagrius, translated the list of sins into Latin. Among these, acedia was considered the most insidious. Together these make up the paradoxical emotion of acedia.Įvagrius of Pontus included acedia among the eight trains of thought that needed to be overcome by devout Christians. These conditions generate a strange combination of listlessness, undirected anxiety, and inability to concentrate. Rather, acedia arose directly out the spatial and social constrictions that a solitary monastic life necessitates. Noonday demonĮtymologically, acedia joins the negative prefix a- to the Greek noun kēdos, which means “care, concern, or grief.” It sounds like apathy, but Cassian’s description shows that acedia is much more daunting and complex than that.Ĭassian and other early Christians called acedia “the noonday demon,” and sometimes described it as a “train of thought.” But they did not think it affected city dwellers or even monks in communities. Yet, the name that so aptly describes our current state was lost to time and translation. Constantly in and out of his cell, he looks at the sun as if it were too slow in setting. Next he glances about and sighs that no one is coming to see him. Such bodily listlessness and yawning hunger as though he were worn by a long journey or a prolonged fast. It does not allow him to stay still in his cell or to devote any effort to reading.” He feels: A mind “seized” by this emotion is “horrified at where he is, disgusted with his room. John Cassian, a monk and theologian, wrote in the early 5th century about an ancient Greek emotion called acedia. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.
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