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

contempt not only for herself and her Maker, but also for her fellow human beings, for in
this act she condemns them as well as herself to the twin misery of voluntary
enslavement to sin and the certainty of bodily death.
In his analysis of Eve’s curiosity, then, Bernard reveals how her curious gaze
evoked in her heart a particular desire, namely her amor propriae excellentiae or the
desire for her own excellence, which in turn proposed for her intellect’s assent the
delusion that she was superior to God in the sense of being superior to or exempt from his
law. In the case of his final exemplum of curiosity, that of Satan, Bernard pursues this
same theme while adding that Lucifer’s original curiosity entailed not only his false
knowledge of himself and God, but also of his fellow rational creatures. If Bernard
introduced Eve as a living witness to her Creator’s generosity and care, the abbot
introduces Lucifer as the supreme such sign of God’s creative love. Like the monk atop
Benedict’s ladder of humility, the prelapsarian Lucifer stands radiant atop of the ladder of
creatures. Sealed with the divine likeness and resplendent with beauty and wisdom, he is
the most perfect created image of the only-begotten Son of God. Had he but fixed his
gaze on his created beauty and wisdom, he would have perpetually acknowledged the
splendorous gift of his own being, and offered his Creator eternal praise and
thanksgiving, sharing an eternity of delight with his Maker.
Yet, Satan too allowed his self-knowing gaze to wander into what was not his
proper concern, to pass from himself to another, to the only other who excelled him, the
Son of God whom he most perfectly resembled. Pondering the Son’s dominion over all
his Father’s works, the highest angel conceived in his heart the supreme form of amor
propriae excellentiae, the desire to seize for himself some share in the Son’s divine right
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