The nine "treatises" (tractatus) of the Summa de vitiis are subdivided into "parts" (partes) and "chapters" (capitula). Any of these divisions vary considerably in length. The treatises, for example, vary from a little over two pages (Treatise I) to 114 pages (Treatise 4) in the edition of Lyon 1668. The divisions occur in the earliest manuscripts and are also reflected in a table of contents (tabula) that stands before the actual beginning of the work in most manuscripts. To these original divisions, modern editors have added occasional subtitles within certain chapters, especially very long ones; these tend to vary from edition to edition and are not always very consistent logically. The following survey is an attempt to give an idea of the structure of the Summa, following the medieval divisions as indicated above but using modern titles. The Latin titles and subtitles can be found in the sections called "Outline" under the individual sins.

No parts or chapters. The short treatise contains:

• Prologue
• Three reasons why vices must be shunned with the greated care.
• Three reasons why God hates sin greatly.
• What sin deprives humans of.
• Three reasons why a life of vice is hard and irksome.

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• Part i: The order of this treatise, and fourteen things that can help to detest gluttony.
• Part ii: The species of gluttony.
• Part iii: Four satellites which gluttony utilizes.
• Part iv: Eight remedies against gluttony.

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• Part i: What causes us to detest this vice.
• 1: Outline of the following subjects. Six kinds of wretchedness that go with lechery: anxiety, pain, shame, bad odor, ugliness, and infamy.
• 2: Five things that cause us to detest lechery: It gives off a bad odor to the angels; it pleases the demons a good deal; it is abusive before God; it injures our neighbor; and it is harmful to the person who indulges in it.
• 3: Four more things that should make us detest this vice: Lechery is powerful to capture a person, to hold him captive, to place him into great vileness, and to render him a slave. Finally, lechery seems to be a sin that makes even devils blush.
• Part ii: The species of lechery.
• 1: Lechery of heart and of deed.
• 2: The meaning of lechery, and its five species: fornication, deflowering a virgin, adultery, incest, and the sin against nature.
• 3: The sin against nature: eight points that shows its magnitude.
• 4: Incest: four points that show its magnitude.
• 5: Adultery and its two kinds: seven points that show its magnitude.
• 6: Deflowering a virgin: points that show its magnitude.
• 7: Simple fornication: what renders it detestable. On prostitutes, and on rape.
• 8: A third division of lechery, according to the status of the persons who commit it: laypeople, clerics, and religious. Lechery among clerics.
• 9: Lechery among religious (including nuns): six points that show its magnitude.
• Part iii: What furnishes occasion to lechery.
• 1: Leisure and immoderate consumption of food and drink.
• 2: Old women go-betweens.
• 3: Bad example.
• 4. The sight of women.
• 5: Talking with women.
• 6: Listening to love songs, base language, and instrumental music.
• 7: Touching a woman is very dangerous.
• Part iv: Remedies against lechery.
• 1: A triple remedy: treating lechery as if it were a fire.
• 2: Three dangers can easily deceive: a woman's putative sanctity, confidence in one's chastity, and blood kinship.
• 3. The dangers of dancing, as shown by Scripture and reason.
• 4. Further remedies against lechery: prayer, decent busyness, wisdom, almsgiving, and meditating on death.
• Part v: The prohibition of simple fornication.
• 1. Outline of the following topics. Simple fornication has been forbidden by Scripture.
• 2. Eight reasons why God had to forbid simple fornication.
• 3. The folly of questioning why God has forbidden simple fornication.
• 4. God's prohibition of simple fornication was an act of mercy.
• Part vi: On people who claim they cannot abstain from sex.
• 1. Scriptural testimony against such people.
• 2. Reasons that show how foolish such people are.

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• Part i: What makes us detest avarice.
• 1. Outline of this treatise. Nine things make us detest avarice (chaps. 1-9). First, nature: in a certain way, avarice is a vice against nature.
• 2. Scripture pronounces twelve curses on the avaricious.
• 3. Four scriptural passages show how great this vice is. The second implies that an avaricious person is an enemy to God, himself, his neighbor, and lower creatures. The third passage declares that avarice is idolatry. And according to the fourth, avarice is the root of all evils.
• 4. Avarice is a serious spiritual illnes, which can be shown in twelve aspects.
• 5. Avarice is a wretched servitude.
• 6. Avarice is very powerful to catch, to hold, and to submerge souls.
• 7. Avarice is hateful to God, injurious to one's neighbor, and harmful to oneself. How foolish a greedy person is.
• 8. Scripture compares avarice to hell, death, the sea, a dog, a mole, a spider, a mosquito.
• 9. Examples of saints and philosophers make us detest avarice.
• Part ii: The species of avarice.
• 1. Usury.
• 2. Theft
• 3. Unjust taxation and extortion.
• 4. Deceit of merchants.
• 5. Accepting gifts and bribes.
• 6. Avarice of judges.
• 7. Avarice of ministers of the Church: (a) Simony.
• 8. Avarice of ministers of the Church: (b) Nepotism.
• 9. Avarice of ministers of the Church: (c) Giving or receiving a benefice through the force or advocay of lay authorities; which is worse than simony.
• 10. Avarice of ministers of the Church: (d) Hirelings.
• 11. Seven signs of avarice that appear in God's Church: pluralism; celebrating more than one Mass per day; multiplying offices in a Mass; multiplying altars; putting aside or saving from the annual income; admitting children to holy orders; and running to perform services, processions, and the like that carry a stipend.
• 12. Celebrating and receiving the Eucharist unworthily; and on people who do not care to receive communion or who, after communion, commit sin.
• 13. Property among monks.
• 14. The avarice of knowledge.
• 15. The sin of gameplaying.
• Part iii: What gives rise to avarice.
• Part iv: Remedies against avarice.
• Part v: Prodigality, the vice contrary to avarice.
• 1. Outline of the following chapters. How prodigality differs from generosity.
• 2. The evils that follows prodigality.
• 3. How foolish a prodigal person is.
• 4. Prodigality among the clergy.

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• Part i: What can help to detest acedia.
• 1. Outline of the following matter. Exemples that can help to detest acedia.
• 2. Words of Holy Scripture that urge us to work and dissuade us from living in idleness and laziness.
• 3. How much acedia displeases God, pleases the devil, and harms the sinner, by filling him with the evils of pain and guilt and by depriving him of the goods of glory, grace, and nature. On the loss of time, and eight considerations that help us conserve it.
• 4. Six further points to make us detest acedia: it makes the most beautiful part of the Church, the contemplatives, ugly; it captures the sinner more shamefully than other vices do; it holds the sinner captive in a shameful way; it attacks mostly people who are in God's service; it is a grievous illness; and the slothful person is an enemy to God, his neighbor, and himself.
• Part ii: Various kinds of sins that belong to this vice.
• 1. Lukewarmness and its evil effects.
• 2. Softness.
• 3. Too much sleep; and what is necessary for the correct use of sleep.
• 4. Idleness. How foolish it is to love idleness: twelve kinds of such foolishness; and eight "fruits of the mouth." Idleness is particularly reprehensible in the time of grace. Things that need to be considered when choosing some activity.
• 5. Procrastination. (a) Delaying one's conversion: eight reasons that should move us to hasten conversion, and eight good effects of a speedy conversion. Many other aspects of delaying one's conversion. (b) Delaying confession: how foolish it is, what good effects confession has, the ill effects of delaying confession until death or until the end of lent.
• 6. Delay in doing good works.
• 7. Negligence, not caring how well one does one's work. Including three things that hinder making progress in one's studies: haste, idle curiosity, and tiring onself out imprudently.
• 8. Lack of perseverance or not leading a good work to completion.
• 9. Remission or falling off.
• 10. Giving up.
• 11. Not caring.
• 12. Listlessness, or preferring to remain in one's misery rather than exert oneself.
• 13. Lack of devotion.
• 14. Sadness in the divine service.
• 15. Boredom of life.
• 16. Despair.
• 17. Remedies against despair.
• 18. Acedia among the cloistered, with twelve ill effects.
• Part iii: Eight remedies against acedia.
• Part iv: Indiscreet fervor, the opposite to acedia.
• 1. What it is, and what is necessary to serve God discreetly.
• 2. How many evils come from indiscreet fervor.
• 3. Twelve foolish things that people do who suffer from indiscreet fervor.
• 4. What ill effects delicate food has.
• 5. The condescension of spiritual superiors to their brethren.

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  Treatise VI: Pride.

• Part i: The rationale for the seven deadly sins; the roots of the vices; and an outline of the treatise on pride.
• Part ii: What helps to detest pride in general.
• 1. How pride acts toward good things.
• 2. How pride acts toward the other vices.
• 3. How pride acts toward the devil.
• 4. How pride acts toward one's neighbor.
• 5. How pride acts towards God.
• 6. How God acts toward the proud person.
• 7. Pride inflates a man, makes him unhappy and dry, and consumes his goods.
• 8. Pride deceives a man, blinds him, and infatuates him.
• 9. Pride is a very dangerous infirmity.
• 10. Pride is a great deformity and can be compared to the swallow and the wind.
• 11. Other things to which a proud person can be compared.
• 12. The Lord wants diligently to keep his people from pride.

• Internal:
• pride of intellect, four parts (chapters 1-4)
• pride of affect: presumption and desire for personal excellence (5-8)
• External: chapters 9-24 = taking pride in one's
• body
• ornaments
• ornate beds
• horses
• household
• parties and banquets
• buildings
• books
• song

• 1. Preview of the the first division, chaps. 1-24 (see above). The first kind: Believing that one's goods come from one's own.
• 2. Believing that one's good come from God but for one's own merits.
• 3. Believing one has something one does not have.
• 4. Placing oneself before others in one's self-esteem.
• 5. Pride of affect: presumption.
• 6. Desiring one's own excellence (ambition). This may be the desire for power (ch. 6), for intellectual mastery (7), and to be better than some else in some respect (8).
• 7. Intellectual mastery.
• 8. Being better than someone else.
• 9. External pride: preview of its nine species (cf. chapters 9, 10, 18-24). First, taking pride in one's body.
• 10. Taking pride in ornaments.
• 11. Examples that advice against taking pride in ornaments.
• 12. Twelve kinds of foolishness in people who take pride in ornaments.
• 13. Other reasons to dissuade people from taking pride in ornaments.
• 14. Pride in clothing, with a discussion of such things as long trains, fancy shoes, robes and chaplets, cosmetics, wigs; and of other aspects of such pride, particularly in women. Women who display themselves lack shame.
• 15. Three chapters on good and bad shamefulness. First, good shamefulness.
• 16. Evil shamefulness.
• 17. Laughing at others.
• 18. Taking pride in ornate beds.
• 19. Taking pride in horses.
• 20. Taking pride in one's household.
• 21. Taking pride in parties and banquets.
• 22. Taking pride in buildings.
• 23. Taking pride in costly books.
• 24. Taking pride in song.
• 25. The second division of pride: according to the sources of pride: the good of nature, fortune, and grace.
• 26. It is foolish to take pride in one's goods.
• 27. Especially, it is foolish to take pride in the goods of one's body: health, strength, mobility, and beauty.
• 28. It is foolish to take pride in one's physical nobility.
• 29. On the nobility of our soul.
• 30. The reprehensible custom of some churches to admit only noblemen as their canons.
• 31. It is foolish to take pride in the other goods of nature in general.
• 32. The third division of pride, according to the persons who are proud: lay people and ministers of the Church. Here we concentrate on pride among the clergy. First, such pride in general.
• 33. Pride among prelates.
• 34. Pride among monks, which is fourfold.
• 35. The twelve degrees of pride according to St. Bernard.
• 36. Five vices that stem from pride: chaps. 36-40. First, errors in the faith, including divination, sortilege, believing and interpreting dreams, soothsaying, witchcraft, superstitions.
• 37. The sin of irreverence, with respect to bodily and spiritual parents; tithing.
• 38. The sin of disobedience, including failure to observe holy days and Sundays, and to respect excommunication. Also, on giving too many rules and commands, and on excommunicating too readily.
• 39. The sin of vainglory; with arguments to detest it, comparisons, division, and remedies.
• 40. The sin of hypocrisy; with arguments to detest it, comparisons, and three kinds of it.
• Part iv: Eight remedies against pride.

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  Treatise VII: Envy.

• Part i: Outline of this treatise. Nineteen considerations to detest envy.
• Part ii: Species of Envy: joy in our neighbor's adversity, and sadness in his happiness.
• Part iii: Remedies against Envy: four.

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  Treatise VIII: Anger.

• Part i: What helps us detest anger.
• 1. Outline of this treatise. Six kinds of considerations to detest anger. First, words of Holy Scripture against anger.
• 2. Anger displeases God for five reasons; pleases the devil for four reasons; harms our neighbor; and harms ourselves.
• 3. What a foolish person may be compared to.
• 4. How foolish an angry person is: eighteen kinds of foolishness.
• 5. Six iniquities in a person who wants to avenge himself; and examples that help us detest anger (this is the sixth consideration, see above at 1).
• Part ii: Divisions of anger: good and evil anger, the latter embracing sudden, non-deliberate anger and reasoned anger, which is hatred. Another division: sullen anger (which remains hidden) and open anger (which bursts forth into words and deeds).
• Part iii: Sins that arise from anger.
• 1. War; twelve reasons against it.
• 2. Arson; eight arguments that should keep a person from it.
• 3. Homicide; and reasons against it. The four sins that call unto God.
• Part iv: Remedies against one's own and other people's anger.

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  Treatise IX: Sin [or Sins] of the Tongue.
• Part i: Outline of this treatise. Fifteen considerations that should move a person to keep his tongue diligently.
• Part ii: Twenty-four sins of the tongue.
• 1. Outline. Blasphemy.
• 2. Murmuring
• 3. Excusing one's sin.
• 4. Perjury.
• 5. Lying.
• 6. Backbiting (detractio).
• 7. Flattery.
• 8. Cursing.
• 9. Insult.
• 10. Contentiousness.
• 11. Derision.
• 12. Wicked counsel.
• 13. Sowing discord.
• 14. Being double-tongued, hypocrisy.
• 15. Rumor-mongering.
• 16. Boasting.
• 17. Tattling.
• 18. Indiscreet threats.
• 19. Indiscreet promises.
• 20. Idle speech.
• 21. Gabbling (multiloquium).
• 22. Dirty talk (turpiloquium).
• 23. Loose talk and facetiousness (scurrilitas).
• 24. Indiscreet silence, sullenness.
• Part iii: Eight remedies against the sin of the tongue, including the silence of the cloister.

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