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

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apprehended his curiosity, and therefore come to judge him less holy than they once supposed, they are guilty of the very vice they have seen and scorned in their brother. So, by a sudden reversion to the second-person, Bernard returns the charge against his readers: If you, my man, would attend more diligently to yourself, I would be surprised if you found time to ponder anyone else! Listen, O curious one, to Solomon! Hearken, you fool, to the words of Wisdom: “Guard your heart,” he says, “with all your care” (Prv 4:23) that you may direct all your senses to protecting the source of your life! Where do you wander away from yourself, O curious one? To whom will you entrust yourself in the meanwhile? Do you dare to lift your eyes to heaven, you who have sinned against heaven? Look to the earth that you may know yourself! The earth will show you who you are, for you are earth and to earth you will return. 179 Plainly, Bernard regards even the slightest relaxation of the bodily discipline Benedict enjoins as a matter worthy of the severest rebuke. Yet why should this be? What could possibly be so dangerous about an occasional, fleeting glance at one’s brothers? Bernard’s answer is to be found in his three biblical exempla of curiosity. It is not always wrong, the abbot allows, for the monk to raise his eyes from the earth, provided he recalls the true knowledge of his own sinful misery. If he raises his eyes humbly to heaven to seek God’s aid in his own sinfulness and weakness, he does well. If, again, he lifts his eyes to see in his brother’s heart the same misery he sees in his own, and therefore learns to help his brother in their shared weakness, he is to be commended, not the very first step.” Astell, “‘Hidden Manna’: Bernard of Clairvaux, Getrude of Helfta, and the Monastic Art of Humility,” 69 179 Hum 28 (III, 38): “Et vere si te vigilanter, homo, attendas, mirum est si ad aliud umquam intendas. Audi, curiose, Salomonem; audi, stulte, Sapientem: OMNI CUSTODIA, inquit, CUSTODI COR TUUM, ut omnes videlicet sensus tui vigilent ad id, unde vita procedit, custodiendum Quo enim a te, o curiose, recedis? Cui te interim committis? Ut quid audes oculos levare ad caelum, qui peccasti in caelum? Terram intuere, ut cognoscas te ipsum. Ipsa te tibi repraesentabit, quia terra es et in terram ibis.” 117
condemned. Lifting his eyes in humility or mercy, the monk will not descend the first step of pride but rather ascend the first two steps of truth: “If, after considering the time, the place, and the reason, you lift your eyes to your own needs or those of your brother, not only do I not blame you, but I praise you highly!” 180 After all, David lifted his eyes with humility to the mountains to seek God’s help (Ps 120:1), and Christ lifted his eyes with compassion over the crowds to see if there was anyone he might help (Jn 6:5). Yet if the monk raises his eyes for any other purpose, Bernard warns, if his lifts his eyes out of any motive other than humility or compassion, then “you imitate neither the Prophet nor the Lord, but Dinah, or Eve, or even Satan himself!” 181 Bernard’s ordering of these three exempla is not without significance. By arranging his figures of curiosity in reverse historical order, from Dinah to Eve to Lucifer, he implies that the monk’s own inclination to curiosity is rooted in and patterned upon the primordial curiosity of his first parents, which lead to humanity’s fall, and that of Lucifer, which led to the first and paradigmatic sin of proud disobedience against God. Again, Bernard’s selection of these three examples of curiosity and in his treatment of them in this particular sequence enables him to show how even the slightest curious glance ultimately entails ever more serious and harmful consequences. In the case of Dinah, her curious interest in the sight of some foreign women ultimately entails her false knowledge and contempt of herself. In the case of Eve, her curious desire to know, and therefore to determine, good and evil ultimately results in her false knowledge and 180 Hum 29 (III, 39): “Tu quoque si locum, tempus et causam considerans, tua vel fratris necessitate oculos levas, non solum non culpo, sed et plurimum laudo.” 181 Hum 29 (III, 39): “Sin alias, non Prophetae, non Domini, sed Dinae aut Evae, immo ipsius Satanae imitatorem te dixerim.” 118
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MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SE
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MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SE
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To my Father, James U. DeFrancis, S
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Christ as the Model of Self-Knowled
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esearch: John Cavadini, Cyril O’R
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self-knowledge is the indispensible
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For Bernard, then, humble self-know
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likeness of charity. Within the Cis
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When Gilson asserted that by self-k
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Bernard, Sommerfeldt continues, hum
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a “false image” of himself. 26
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some newfound and joyous moment of
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ecognize that same sinfulness in hi
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foundations of man’s return to Go
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the descent of humility begins the
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saving work of Jesus Christ in the
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the humility, obedience, and love C
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Of particular importance to Bernard
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and second, “what it is like in i
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In his ground-breaking study of med
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direct links between the two. 52 It
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swells in one’s heart that it mov
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pride as “the desire for a perver
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The knowledge of self and God in th
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mercy until you renew all that is i
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CHAPTER 1: THE SCOPE OF BERNARD’S
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Prior to its first conversion, Bern
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Origen, Bernard here and elsewhere
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of God, they will grow ever more un
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and love as she is loved, and the B
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In the interim or “meanwhile” o
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Why do you judge yourself worthy to
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For Bernard, the lesson to be drawn
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warning and why should it compel he
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worldly things her flesh and senses
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aspired to seize a kind of parody o
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thousands of evils upon our entire
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Page 81 and 82: Thus the abbot resolves his spiritu
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Page 89 and 90: Through this unflinching self-exami
Page 91 and 92: soon tempers my bitter vision of my
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Page 95 and 96: As observed above, in the second ha
Page 97 and 98: modeled and effected by the Word-ma
Page 99 and 100: Ignorance of self breeds pride when
Page 101 and 102: consideration of others and their a
Page 103 and 104: consideration of his treatise as a
Page 105 and 106: symmetry between these two parts an
Page 107 and 108: Though this discrepancy at first ap
Page 109 and 110: self, God, and neighbor. Since it i
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Page 121 and 122: Finally, we should note that Bernar
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Page 135 and 136: his rule over the reprobate he woul
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Page 143 and 144: knows.” 201 Should the topic of c
Page 145 and 146: Here abbot Bernard figures the prou
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Page 149 and 150: Asserting Self-Will Against Superio
Page 151 and 152: As so often in his narrative of the
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Page 165 and 166: In recognizing the two distinct mom
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Page 169 and 170: inward movement in the soul. In any
Page 171 and 172: share with them in that divine merc
Page 173 and 174: Operating inwardly within this judg
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arguing from both allusions in text
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upon the “stage” of the soul an
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(Is 46:8). For Bernard, this first
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desperate need for the healing grac
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consolations afforded it by the lif
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thoroughly diseased: reason now see
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Reason’s rebuke is powerful, and
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In this vision, reason is permitted
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conscience she enjoys through the m
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Word of God, “that living and eff
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knowledge and contempt of himself,
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The Self-Awareness of the Bride in
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When the brightness of this beauty
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For Bernard, then, the soul that ha
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figure of this Ecclesia-Sponsa. On
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Conclusion Having considered three
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self-awareness as his own Bride, ra
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CHAPTER 4: SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND THE M
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Christ’s incarnate, crucified, an
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indeed to the entirety of his theol
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significant individual expressions
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The foregoing elements of Bernard
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descended and ascended and showed u
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self, neighbor, and God. He has sho
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own, and from your own experience l
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excursus has been labeled a “digr
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“learned” (didicit) is being pr
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To resolve this question, Bernard r
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You see, therefore, that Christ is
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to the Spirit, by contemplation in
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worse, misguided view of the abbot
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Christ’s Ascension culminates in
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conformed to him. Then, through the
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Modeling this laudabilis curiositas
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The theme of Word’s example of vo
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equally deadly, extreme of despair.
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and humbled by God, so that there w
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as essential elements of the Word I
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led astray. Their amor carnalis Chr
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delivered us from sin and enabled u
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miseria and fires it with the confi
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death to bring about a real, inward
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sins,” “justification,” and
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these life-giving virtues, we must
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precisely through, a careful approp
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perhaps she means, “My Beloved in
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To such a soul, the abbot continues
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gradually assuming the figure of Ch
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to judge themselves in Truth, and s
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ejoice with those who rejoice and w
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love of himself in the glory of div
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I. Works of Bernard of Clairvaux BI
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------. Sermo 29A. Edited by C. Lam
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Courcelle, Pierre. Connais-toi toi-
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------. “Le premier traité authe
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