They settled on seven deadly sins to parallel the seven virtues.
I believe it was the other way around, the seven virtues were created to parallel the seven deadly sins. In any case seven was a number with religious significance, e.g., seven days of the week.
There’s a couple different lists of seven virtues floating around in Christian tradition. One was created to parallel the seven deadly sins, and works well in that role but less well as a typology of virtue. The other’s a slightly clunky melding of the New Testament virtues of faith, hope, and love (or charity) and the much older cardinal virtues (originally Platonic) of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage (or fortitude). That works fairly well as a typology of Christian virtue despite some overlap, but does a much worse job of paralleling the deadly sins.
I believe it was the other way around, the seven virtues were created to parallel the seven deadly sins. In any case seven was a number with religious significance, e.g., seven days of the week.
There’s a couple different lists of seven virtues floating around in Christian tradition. One was created to parallel the seven deadly sins, and works well in that role but less well as a typology of virtue. The other’s a slightly clunky melding of the New Testament virtues of faith, hope, and love (or charity) and the much older cardinal virtues (originally Platonic) of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage (or fortitude). That works fairly well as a typology of Christian virtue despite some overlap, but does a much worse job of paralleling the deadly sins.