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

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spiritual life of the monastic community, but only as competitors, rival claimants to the title of superior holiness he now so covets for himself alone. Bernard’s teaching on this instability of mind is best understood in light of his doctrine of the three steps of Truth presented earlier in his treatise. As was noted above, for Bernard, the monk who has come to recognize and accept the bitter truth of his own miseria by humble self-judgment will swiftly recognize that same miseria in his brothers and so learn to love them with genuine compassion. Observing Paul’s command to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15), he will rejoice in his brother’s spiritual growth and weep over his brother’s spiritual struggles as if these were likewise his own. When this monk raises his eyes to contemplate his brothers, his true knowledge of his own sinful weakness will afford him that empathetic access to his brother’s heart which will enable him first to commiserate with and then mercifully to help his brother monk. He will be able, in other words, to regard his brother not as a rival or a competitor, but as a true brother in the common joys and sorrows of the spiritual life. In the case of the monk subject to curiosity, however, this affective identification is sadly inverted. Devoid of that true self-knowledge which might enable him to commiserate with his brother, and able only to see his brother only in terms of his own desire for moral and spiritual superiority, he instead rejoices when he sees his brother struggle and weeps when he sees his brother succeed. His brother’s loss is his gain, his brother’s gain his loss. The monk who has descended so far as levitas animae will, Bernard continues, natually seek some reflief from his vicissitudes of joyous vanity and embittered envy which attend his restless curiosity. Yet the proud, the abbot explains, “always seek what 131
pleases them and avoid what makes them sad.” 196 The thoughts of superiority the monk enjoys when he contemplates his supposed inferiors are of course far more pleasant those thoughts of jealousy and self-contempt that come with considering his supposed superiors. So, in the third step of pride, inepta laetitia or false joy, the curious and emotionally unstable monk restrains his curious gaze so that he might see only what he wants to see, only those sights and sounds that gratify his ever-growing love of his own superiority: “He restrains his curiosity from everything that reveals his own vileness or another’s excellence that he might instead curiously note everything in which he seems to excel others and always hide from his gaze everything in which he is excelled by another.” 197 By this selective, self-serving manipulation of curiosity, the monk enters a delusional but pleasant world of his own imagining in which all that he sees and hears around him serves only to boost his growing sense of his own moral and spiritual superiority. In the two steps that follow this inepta laetitiae, namely iactantia and singularitas, the monk who has manipulated his curiosity to gratify his self-conceit now in turn manipulates his brethren through his misuse of his words and deeds. Though Bernard does not explicitly say so, it seems that, at this stage, the monk is not yet entirely convinced of the truth of the new and far more gratifying self-image he has fashioned for himself. The new self-understanding his amor propriae excellentiae has proposed for his belief is indeed appealing, but is it in fact true? Faced with this dilemma, the monk now 196 Hum 40 (III, 46): “Proprium est superborum, laeta semper appetere et tristia devitare.” 197 Hum 40 (III, 46-47): “Ex illa denique parte, qua sua sibi vilitas et aliena excellentia monstratur, restringit curiositatem, ut totum se transferat in contrariam partem, quatenus in quo ipse videtur praecellere, curiosius notet, in quo alter praecellit, semper dissimulet.” 132
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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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edemptive work is suitably adapted
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emains forever, this grass too rema
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graciously condescending to assume
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Thus the abbot resolves his spiritu
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of self-knowledge enabled self-dece
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humbles himself will be exalted”
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Church, enabling scholars to instru
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
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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 127 and 128: condemned. Lifting his eyes in humi
Page 129 and 130: will contrary to both the law of Go
Page 131 and 132: in him by her obedience to his will
Page 133 and 134: contempt not only for herself and h
Page 135 and 136: his rule over the reprobate he woul
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Page 139: descending these early steps of pri
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 159 and 160: Consumed by this self-centered love
Page 161 and 162: their hearts. Hence Bernard’s fre
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Page 165 and 166: In recognizing the two distinct mom
Page 167 and 168: experience, lamenting how he has ma
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
Page 175 and 176: the Truth in his own nature? Matter
Page 177 and 178: arguing from both allusions in text
Page 179 and 180: upon the “stage” of the soul an
Page 181 and 182: (Is 46:8). For Bernard, this first
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Page 185 and 186: consolations afforded it by the lif
Page 187 and 188: thoroughly diseased: reason now see
Page 189 and 190: 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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