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

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new way, not now as a self-defaced image of God, but as an image being progressively likened to Christ. The soul now knows itself to be assuming gradually the contours of Christ’s own Bride, radiant with her Bridegroom’s own beauty. Though this soul-as- Bride knows that her beauty remains imperfect in this life, her new self-knowledge inspires her audacious confidence that when her beauty is made perfect in glory, she will at last forget herself entirely and pass over into her Bridegroom for all eternity. Since Bernard wrote no work specifically devoted to the soul’s progress through these diverse stages of self-awareness, from the self-deception intrinsic to pride to the soul’s newfound self-awareness as Christ’s Bride, we will have draw on several of his most significant works to compose a comprehensive account of his teaching on this subject. This will be our task in the chapters which follow. In the present chapter, however, our aim will be to provide a kind of “overture” to Bernard’s comprehensive teaching on self-knowledge, in which we will identify the major themes he elsewhere develops in considerably greater detail. To compose this overture, we will in this chapter undertake a close study of Bernard’s celebrated meditations on self-knowledge and self- ignorance in sermons thirty-four to thirty-eight of his Sermones super Cantica canticorum. 77 In this sermon set, composed sometime between 1139 and 1143, the abbot comments on the Bridegroom’s words to his Bride in Song of Songs 1:7: “If you do not know yourself, most beautiful among women, go forth, and follow after the flocks of your companions, and feed your kids beside the shepherd’s tents.” In the tradition of 77 On the composition and dating of Bernard’s Sermones super Cantica canticorum, see Jean Leclercq, “The Making of a Masterpiece,” trans. Kathleen Waters, in Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs IV, trans. Irene Edmonds, Cistercian Fathers 40 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980), ix-xxiv. 45
Origen, Bernard here and elsewhere associates this verse with the Delphic maxim scito teipsum or “know thyself” and treats the Bridegroom’s words as a rebuke directed to his Bride for her want of self-knowledge. 78 These sermons have often been cited or alluded to by scholars as evidence of the importance Bernard attaches to humbling self-knowledge in the foundational stages of the spiritual life and they provide ample witness to this aspect of the Cistercian’s teaching. 79 For example, in a celebrated passage from Sermon 36, the central of these five sermons, Bernard writes: I wish, therefore, before all else, that the soul should know itself, for this is what both usefulness and order require. Order since what we are is our first concern, and usefulness because such knowledge does not puff us up, but humbles us, and is a certain foundation on which to build. For unless it is founded on the firm foundation of humility, the spiritual building cannot stand. 80 Read in isolation from the broader context of this sermon set as a whole, this and other, similar passages appear to confirm the scholarly finding that, for Bernard, self-knowledge means the soul’s humbling recognition of its disfigurement, and that such self-knowledge is significant to Bernard insofar as it moves the soul to humility and conversion, the 78 On Origen’s interpretation of this verse, see Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-même: de Socrate à saint Bernard, 97-100. On Bernard’s knowledge and use of Origen’s commentary on the Canticle, see Michael Casey, Athirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, 41-46. 79 See for example Dumont, Pathway of Peace: Cistercian Wisdom According to Saint Bernard, 46-49; Casey, Athirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, 153-158. 80 SC 36.5 (II, 6-7): “Volo proinde animam primo omnium scire seipsam, quod id postulet ratio et utilitatis, et ordinis. Et ordinis quidem, quoniam quod nos sumus primum est nobis; utilitatis vero, quia talis scientia non inflat, sed humiliat, et est quaedam praeparatio ad aedificandum Nisi enim super humilitatis stabile fundamentum, spirituale aedificium stare minime potest.” All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. The reader should, however, consult the translation by Kilian Walsh, from which we have benefited. See Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs II, trans. Kilian Walsh, Cistercian Fathers 7 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1979), 160-191. 46
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MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SE
Page 3 and 4: MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SE
Page 5 and 6: To my Father, James U. DeFrancis, S
Page 7 and 8: Christ as the Model of Self-Knowled
Page 9 and 10: esearch: John Cavadini, Cyril O’R
Page 11 and 12: self-knowledge is the indispensible
Page 13 and 14: For Bernard, then, humble self-know
Page 15 and 16: likeness of charity. Within the Cis
Page 17 and 18: When Gilson asserted that by self-k
Page 19 and 20: Bernard, Sommerfeldt continues, hum
Page 21 and 22: a “false image” of himself. 26
Page 23 and 24: some newfound and joyous moment of
Page 25 and 26: ecognize that same sinfulness in hi
Page 27 and 28: foundations of man’s return to Go
Page 29 and 30: the descent of humility begins the
Page 31 and 32: saving work of Jesus Christ in the
Page 33 and 34: the humility, obedience, and love C
Page 35 and 36: Of particular importance to Bernard
Page 37 and 38: and second, “what it is like in i
Page 39 and 40: In his ground-breaking study of med
Page 41 and 42: direct links between the two. 52 It
Page 43 and 44: swells in one’s heart that it mov
Page 45 and 46: pride as “the desire for a perver
Page 47 and 48: The knowledge of self and God in th
Page 49 and 50: mercy until you renew all that is i
Page 51 and 52: CHAPTER 1: THE SCOPE OF BERNARD’S
Page 53: Prior to its first conversion, Bern
Page 57 and 58: of God, they will grow ever more un
Page 59 and 60: and love as she is loved, and the B
Page 61 and 62: In the interim or “meanwhile” o
Page 63 and 64: Why do you judge yourself worthy to
Page 65 and 66: For Bernard, the lesson to be drawn
Page 67 and 68: warning and why should it compel he
Page 69 and 70: worldly things her flesh and senses
Page 71 and 72: aspired to seize a kind of parody o
Page 73 and 74: thousands of evils upon our entire
Page 75 and 76: edemptive work is suitably adapted
Page 77 and 78: emains forever, this grass too rema
Page 79 and 80: graciously condescending to assume
Page 81 and 82: Thus the abbot resolves his spiritu
Page 83 and 84: of self-knowledge enabled self-dece
Page 85 and 86: humbles himself will be exalted”
Page 87 and 88: 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
Page 93 and 94: edeem him, sanctify him, and offer
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
Page 103 and 104: consideration of his treatise as a
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symmetry between these two parts an
Page 107 and 108:
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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and judge others or to see how they
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condemned. Lifting his eyes in humi
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will contrary to both the law of Go
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in him by her obedience to his will
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contempt not only for herself and h
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his rule over the reprobate he woul
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in misery rather than to be subject
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descending these early steps of pri
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pleases them and avoid what makes t
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knows.” 201 Should the topic of c
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Here abbot Bernard figures the prou
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ut believe in his inmost heart that
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Asserting Self-Will Against Superio
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As so often in his narrative of the
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who he is, everyone judges him, and
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monk’s descent into this deepest
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God in heaven. He will acknowledge
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Consumed by this self-centered love
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their hearts. Hence Bernard’s fre
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done…by whoever would walk in the
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In recognizing the two distinct mom
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experience, lamenting how he has ma
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inward movement in the soul. In any
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share with them in that divine merc
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Operating inwardly within this judg
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the Truth in his own nature? Matter
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arguing from both allusions in text
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upon the “stage” of the soul an
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(Is 46:8). For Bernard, this first
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desperate need for the healing grac
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consolations afforded it by the lif
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thoroughly diseased: reason now see
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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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