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

contempt of herself and God. Finally, in the case of Satan, his curious desire to rival
Christ’s dominion and kingship ultimately leads to his false knowledge and contempt of
himself, God, and his fellow rational creatures both angelic and human. Curiosity is for
Bernard so dangerous because even the most fleeting glance can finally lead the monk
down each of the three steps of Truth. This will become clear through a closer
consideration of each of his three exempla and the common pattern that underlies their
curiosity.
In his account of each of his three biblical figures of curiositas, Bernard can be
seen to be describing a common trajectory or dynamic to the vice. According to this
dynamic, the exemplum first allows his or her sensitive or mental gaze to wander from his
or her proper concern, true self-knowledge before God, to what is not his or her proper
concern. This seemingly benign relaxation of their bodily and mental discipline
immediately entails two rather more serious consequences. First, as they allow their
regard to pass away from themselves, they gradually succumb to the spiritual disease of
incuria sui or self-neglect; that is, they gradually cease to consider, and therefore to
know, themselves in truth. Second, as they allow their regard to pass over to something
else, their mental cura or concern likewise shifts from themselves to some new object.
This newfound curious concern soon arouses in their heart some new, and illicit, desire,
which in turn proposes to the intellect for its belief some new, and false, self-
understanding. Since their self-neglect has led them to cease seeking that genuine self-
knowledge which would ordinarily expose such a new self-understanding as false, their
intellect swiftly embraces as true this new, and far more gratifying, self-conception. Thus
self-deceived, they soon aspire to attain their new, curious desire through an act of self-
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