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

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.
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