MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE ...

symmetry between these two parts and there is much in Bernard’s text to confirm this
reading. Aside from their respective concern for the ascending steps of humility and the
descending steps of pride, the work’s two parts are each marked by a lengthy excursus on
one of the two paradigmatic figures of humility’s ascent and pride’s descent, namely
Christ and Satan. In his work’s second part, Bernard shows how in the proud ascent of
his primordial sin, Satan exalted himself to seize equality with God, but was
consequently humbled by his descent into unending spiritual death and misery.
Conversely, in the work’s first part, Bernard shows how in the humble descent of his
Incarnation, the Word-made-flesh, who did not deem equality with God something to be
grasped, emptied himself to assume human misery that he might bind his fallen human
creatures to himself and lead them by his Ascension to a share in his own divine life and
blessedness. 147
In sketching these two exemplary patterns of ascent and descent, exaltation and
humiliation, Bernard effectively places his reader in the very midst of his book, between
the ways of Christ and Satan, between humility and pride, between his first part and his
second. 148 As in SC 34-38, the reader is confronted with two opposed and inverted ways
of life, the humble way of Christ which leads to divine life and blessedness, and the
147 Though Bernard does not explicitly say so, Paul’s account of Christ’s descent and ascent in the
Christological hymn of Phillipians 2:6-11 serves as the biblical foundation for both Bernard’s teaching in
the Steps and the work’s rhetorical structure.
148 Thus, in response to Basil Pennington’s invitation to find in Bernard’s parallel excurses “some
subtle bit of artistry which we do not readily perceive or appreciate”, Ann Astell proposes that Bernard’s
intention is “to call attention to the contrast between the two descents [of Lucifer and Christ]” and to
propose these two descents as “alternative models for the monks who are about to accomplish an
imaginative descent down the twelve steps of pride.” Pennington, “Introduction,” in The Steps of Humility
and Pride, 14; Ann W. Astell, “‘Hidden Manna’: Bernard of Clairvaux, Getrude of Helfta, and the
Monastic Art of Humility,” chap. 3 in Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle
Ages (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2006), 70-71.
96