the.com/piety
virtue's costume, worn loudly enough that everyone notices you're wearing it.
means Devout religious or moral reverence, often shown through dutiful observance and outward acts of faith.
from From Latin pietas, meaning dutiful conduct — the reverence owed to gods, parents, and country alike. It traveled into English through Old French piete in the medieval period. Curiously, piety and pity share this same root: pietas could mean both 'devotion' and 'compassion,' and the two senses only split into separate English words later, leaving piety to keep the holiness and pity to keep the heartache.
- latin root
- pietas meant duty to family and state first
- roman virtue
- Aeneas was called pius for obedience, not faith
- socrates trap
- Plato's Euthyphro never defines it, on purpose
- filial version
- Confucian xiao demands devotion to living parents
- weaponized word
- often praised loudest by the least sincere
mother teresa — albanian nun who worked with the poor in calcutta for 45 years, canonized in 2016
padre pio — italian capuchin friar with stigmata, beatified in 1999, pilgrims visited his monastery
saint francis of assisi — 13th-century italian mystic who renounced wealth and founded the franciscan order