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

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herself the transforming missions of Son and Spirit, effecting Christ’s own humility and love within her reason and her will. Once more seeing the Truth in herself and seeing herself in the Truth, she knows herself to be a divinely beautiful recreation of God, to whom she owes and to whom she ascribes all her beauty with love, thanksgiving, and delight. The Ascent of Self-Knowledge in On Conversion In his sermon-treatise Ad clericos de conversione of 1140, Bernard resumes the itinerary of ascent he first charted in the Steps, but now spells out in finer detail the steps the soul ascends along its journey from the humbling self-knowledge acquired at conversion to the joyous self-awareness of soul reformed as Christ’s Bride. During a stay at Paris sometime between Christmas of 1139 and early 1140, Bernard delivered a sermon to the students of that city on the subject of “conversion.” His sermon-treatise On Conversion represents a revised, elaborated version of that original sermon. 255 In the Introduction to his critical edition of the work, Jean Leclercq characterizes the sermon- treatise as “an exposition of the psychology of that conversion which leads to a garden of delights which seems to be the paradisus claustri.” 256 For Leclercq, then, Bernard means by “conversion” the act of entering the monastic life, the paradise of the cloister. In the Introduction to her own English translation of the work, Marie-Bernard Saïd concurs, 255 On Bernard’s sermon, subsequent sermon-treatise, and its textual history, see Jean Leclercq, “Introduction,” in Sancti Bernardi Opera IV, 61-67; Marie-Bernard Saïd, “Introduction,” in Bernard of Clairvaux: Sermons on Conversion, Cistercian Fathers 25 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 11- 28 256 “un exposé de ce qu’on pourrait appeler la psychologie de la conversion, celle-ci conduisant à un jardin de délices spirituelles qui paraît être le paradisus claustri.” Jean Leclercq, “Introduction,” Sancti Bernardi Opera IV, 64. 167
arguing from both allusions in text itself and from Geoffrey of Auxerre’s account of the sermon in the Vita Prima that Bernard’s intention in preaching to the students at Paris was to call them to conversion, and that conversion here “must be taken in its traditional sense of ‘becoming a monk.’” 257 Yet, as Denis Farkasfalvy has argued, for Bernard, “conversion” has in addition to its “technical sense of the external act of joining the monastic life” two further and related meanings. First, conversion refers to “the first step in the spiritual life” and means most basically “turning away from a life of sin to a life of seeking God.” Second, conversion refers to a continuing spiritual conversatio, “a beginning which persists by constantly producing new beginnings of a similar kind and thus permanently marks the whole spiritual enterprise.” 258 As the following exegesis of the text will show, all three of these related meanings of “conversion” are operative in Bernard’s text. For in his On Conversion, the abbot not only exhorts the students of Paris to join the monastic life, but also traces in unsurpassed detail how the soul which has descended the twelve steps of pride now inverts that descent to ascend the twelve steps of humility and the three steps of Truth. In the previous chapter, we saw how Bernard groups his twelve descending steps of pride according to the triad of 1 John 2:16: the concupiscence of the eyes, the lust for domination, and the concupiscence of the flesh. In On Conversion, accordingly, Bernard describes the inverse ascending way of the spiritual life as a progressive healing of this 257 Marie-Bernard Saïd, “Introduction,” Bernard of Clairvaux: Sermons on Conversion, 13. 258 Denis Farkasfalvy, “The First Step in the Spiritual Life: Conversion,” 65. 168
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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
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As observed above, in the second ha
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modeled and effected by the Word-ma
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Ignorance of self breeds pride when
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consideration of others and their a
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consideration of his treatise as a
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symmetry between these two parts an
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Though this discrepancy at first ap
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self, God, and neighbor. Since it i
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estored in this divine likeness as
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eturn to his suffering brothers and
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much more should the monk not exalt
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for your brother’s misery and not
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sinful weakness and nothing of thei
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Finally, we should note that Bernar
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journey to which the monk will comm
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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 173 and 174: Operating inwardly within this judg
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Page 181 and 182: (Is 46:8). For Bernard, this first
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Page 189 and 190: Reason’s rebuke is powerful, and
Page 191 and 192: In this vision, reason is permitted
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Page 199 and 200: The Self-Awareness of the Bride in
Page 201 and 202: When the brightness of this beauty
Page 203 and 204: For Bernard, then, the soul that ha
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Page 207 and 208: Conclusion Having considered three
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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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