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

The anguished paralytic is, of course, the will, who has heard the complaints of
her bodily servants and soon takes the stage to rebuke reason as a faithless husband. In a
vivid, if predictably misogynistic, scene, the “furious old hag” fumes that by reason’s
neglect, she has been paralyzed by the triple illness of concupiscence, curiosity, and
ambition (1 Jn 2:16): her palate and body are addicted to lust for sensual pleasure, her
eyes to the curious search for pleasant sights, and her mouth and ears to the ceaseless
pursuit of human praise. Even if she wished to deliver herself from this enslavement to
sin, she declares, she finds herself powerless to do so. Though she must admit that she
finds little rest in the satisfaction of these fleshly cravings, she chastises reason for
presuming to take from her even these few, remaining consolations in her illness. “Is this
how you keep faith with your spouse? Is this how you show compassion for me in my
suffering?” will demands. 277
In the face of his wife’s rebuke, reason is consumed with distress. His initial
effort to master his bodily senses has failed, and he now realizes that it is through his own
neglect that his spouse lies helpless beneath Augustine’s triplex malignitas. Yet, for
Bernard, reason’s distress will be the occasion for a new and deeper moment of self-
understanding, for, in those words of Isaiah which Bernard is so fond of quoting, vexatio
dat intellectum, this distress will bring understanding (Is 28:19). In his distress, reason
now grasps the totality of the soul’s inner disease and the soul’s paralysis beneath it.
Under its triplex malignitas, the soul’s Trinitarian image of reason, will, and memory is
Facile iubes ut libet. Sed invenietur qui novis decretis obviet, qui novis legibus contradicat>> inquit. Et illa: ”
patienti?>>”
277 Conv 10 (IV, 82): “, inquit,