728 Virgin Mary, cult of
See alsoCELIBACY; SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ATTITUDES;
SONG OFSONGS; VIRTUES AND VICES.
Further reading:Peter R. L. Brown, The Body and
Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press,
1988); John Bugge, Virginitas: An Essay in the History of a
Medieval Idea(The Hague: Martinus Hijhoff, 1975); Kate
Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in
Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1996); Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual
Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock(Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1993); Susanna Elm, “Virgins of
God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity(Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1996).
Virgin Mary, cult of SeeMARY, CULT OF.
virtues and vices A virtue in the Middle Ages was an
excellence practiced habitually in a particular aspect of
one’s moral life that was at the same time evaluated and
promoted by a set of religious and philosophical ideas. A
vice was defined as exactly the opposite habitual practice.
The definition, acquisition, and cultivation of virtue and
the eschewing of vice were much considered by Greek
and Roman philosophers and were fundamental aspects
of the Christian and Hebrew Bibles, and the QURANand
HADITH.
MEDIEVAL CHRISTENDOMARISTOTELIANISM, when it entered Christendom in full
force in the 13th century, strengthened these concepts as
central elements in its systematic discourses on the right
practice of human life. Aristotelian virtue or habituswas
defined more explicitly as the fostered or cultivated
capacity to act for good or for ill. Such a quality in
humans grew or was enforced with each act. Any deci-
sion was to be based on good reason, while each accom-
panying movement of the will strengthened a person’s
habitual capacity to act in moral and virtuous ways. So in
that way, human beings could became what they did,
whether good or evil. AUGUSTINEhad earlier added to
this equation the gratuitous, gracious character of virtue
as a gift from GOD. Thomas AQUINASsaid that he consid-
ered virtue the capacity to act and to act well with a free
will. In an attempt to make this a perpetual state, one had
to practice a virtue continuously; otherwise, one would
cease to act virtuously and relinquish REDEMPTIONor Sal-
vation.
The Scholastics classified virtue as the three theologi-
cal virtues of FAITH, HOPE, and charity and the four moral
virtues of prudence, JUSTICE, temperance, and fortitude.
The struggle against vices and for the acquisition of
virtues structured Christian ethics. The list of vices, that
is, capital or deadly sins, might include gluttony, luxury
or sexual indulgence, avarice, anger, sadness or sloth,
envy, and vainglory or pride. These vices all fed on one
another and were interconnected. Vices and virtues were
contrary to each other and in sermons and iconography
were portrayed by using a literary and iconographic tradi-
tion derived from antiquity that personified the vices and
virtues, making them fight against each other.
See also CARDINAL VIRTUES;PENITENTIALS; SERMONS
AND HOMILIES; SEVEN DEADLY OR CAPITAL SINS.
Further reading:Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven
Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious
Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Litera-
ture(East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1952);
Colum Hourihane, ed., Virtue and Vice: The Personifica-
tions in the Index of Christian Art(Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 2000); Adolf Katzenellenbogen,
Allegories of the Virtues and Vices and Mediaeval Art: From
Early Christian Times to the Thirteenth Century, trans.
Alan J. P. Crick (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964); Ruth
Ellis Messenger, Ethical Teachings in the Latin Hymns of
Medieval England, with Special Reference to the Seven
Deadly Sins and the Seven Principal Virtues(New York:
AMS Press, 1967).Visconti family The Visconti were a noble Lombard
family, who can be traced back to the 10th century, but
from the late 13th century held the lordship of
MILANand other cities, with the title of duke from 1395.
They obtained the lordship of Milan in 1277 after the
Ghibelline or proimperial archbishop, Ottone Visconti
(d. 1295), was victorious over a Guelf faction led by the
rival della Torre family. The regimes of Ottone (r. 1277–95)
and his nephew, Matteo (r. 1287–1302 and 1317–22,
d. 1322), were marked by conflicts with political rivals.
In fact they were temporarily expelled from the city in- Their power was recovered in 1311 by Matteo and
expanded and consolidated under his successors,
Galeazzo I (r. 1322–27), Azzone (r. 1328–39), Giovanni
(1349–54), also the archbishop of Milan from 1342),
Luchino (r. 1339–49), Matteo II (r. 1354–55), Galeazzo II
(r. 1354–78), and Bernarbò (r. 1354–85).
During this period the Visconti had expanded their
control over a large part of the Po Valley and LOMBARDY.
They were careful to control the ecclesiastical wealth and
institutions of the city even when they did not occupy
the bishopric themselves. They also carried out impres-
sive building projects to demonstrate the prestige and
power of the family. Milan became one the major states
of the Italian Peninsula. In 1395 the emperor Wenceslas
(r. 1378–1400) granted for a payment of 100,000 florins
a ducal title to Gian Galeazzo (r. 1385–1402). This and
marriages into the royal families of FRANCEand ENGLAND
sanctioned the family’s success by transforming it into a
princely dynasty. But the premature death of Gian
Galeazzo as he was about to attack FLORENCE itself
marked the start of a decade of crises under the weak