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

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monk at last succumbs to self-deception as he embraces as true the false self- understanding his amor propriae excellentiae has proposed for his belief. Indeed from the perspective of Bernard’s doctrine of self-knowledge, this sixth and central step is the most crucial, for it is here that the monk who has labored so long and diligently to win the praises of his brothers now accepts their perceptions of him as the truth about himself. 209 Bernard writes: “As the simpler brethren praise the miserable man, they only confirm his delusion. He believes what he hears, he praises what he does, he pays no attention to his intentions.” 210 It is, moreover, here in the sixth step of pride that pride’s paradox becomes most evident. The monk who has managed to persuade everyone else, and finally himself, that he is wiser and holier than all now depends on his brothers’ mistaken praise to squelch any faint, lingering protests of his own conscience: “As he embraces their opinion of him, he grows oblivious to his own intentions. In every other matter, he believes himself wiser than others, but on this matter alone, he believes others wiser than himself.” 211 For Benedict, the seventh step of humility is that a monk “not only confess with his tongue, 209 Here we cannot agree with Denis Farkasfalvy when he claims that “only three of [Bernard’s] 12 steps appear to have have real importance: the first (curiositas), the 5 th (singularitas), and the 10 th (rebellio).” If, as Farkasfalvy rightly observes, Bernard’s treatise displays “a coherent system with deep inner logic and tight connections between the steps,” then each step should be regarded as of “real importance” as it leads to the next. From the perspective of Bernard’s doctrine of self-knowledge, however, the sixth step should be regarded as particularly important for it is here that the monk at last subscribes to the false self-understanding he has so diligently cultivated in the steps preceding. Farkasfalvy, “St. Bernard’s Spirituality and the Benedictine Rule in The Steps of Humility,” 256, 252. 210 Hum 42-43 (III, 49): “dum miserum beatificant, in errorem inducunt. Credit quod audit, laudat quod agit, et quid intendat non attendit.” 211 Hum 43 (III, 49-50): “Obliviscitur intentionem, dum amplectitur opinionem. Quique de omni alia re plus sibi credit quam aliis, de se solo plus aliis credit quam sibi.” 137
ut believe in his inmost heart that he is inferior to and viler than all.” 212 By contrast, in Bernard’s sixth step of pride, the monk inflated with the praise that trips from his brothers’ tongues, “now not only displays his piety with affected words and works, but believes in his inmost heart that he is holier than all.” 213 Convinced in his heart that he is what he so wants to be, the holiest of monks, he cannot even imagine that his brothers’ acclaim might spring from their ignorance or their deception at his own hands. On the contrary, their praises are his due. In the preceding steps of pride, the proud monk has managed to deceive his brothers into praising him as the holiest of monks. Now in the sixth step, he has deceived himself into believing, against the witness of his own conscience, that their deceived estimation of himself is true and their mistaken admiration his due. Having refused to accept the humbling truth about himself in the undeceived eyes of God, and having fashioned a new and far more pleasant identity for himself in the deceived eyes of his fellow monks, he now embraces that new identity with a vigor and relish born of his swollen self-love. If in the preceding steps he preferred appearances to reality and the perceptions of his brothers to the truth about himself, he now accepts appearances as reality, and takes the perceptions of his brothers as the truth about himself. He is who he so desires to be, he is what his brothers see him to be, he is superior to everyone else. Less like the humble Publican of Benedict’s twelfth step who confesses his sinfulness and weakness before God, the proud monk now more resembles the Pharisee of the same 212 RB 7.51: “Septimus humilitatis gradus est si omnibus se inferiorem et viliorem non solum sua lingua pronuntiet, sed etiam intimo cordis credat affectu.” 213 Hum 43 (III, 50): “iam non verbotenus aut sola operum ostentatione suam praeferat religionem, sed intimo cordis credat affectu se omnibus sanctiorem.” 138
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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
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Through this unflinching self-exami
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soon tempers my bitter vision of my
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edeem him, sanctify him, and offer
Page 95 and 96: As observed above, in the second ha
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Page 99 and 100: Ignorance of self breeds pride when
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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 139 and 140: descending these early steps of pri
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Page 145: Here abbot Bernard figures the prou
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 161 and 162: their hearts. Hence Bernard’s fre
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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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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
Page 191 and 192: In this vision, reason is permitted
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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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