CONVERSIO AD EUM AD QUEM SCRIBIT
The Apology of a Fallen Teacher
Bernard acknowledges that he has described the steps of pride rather than humility, confessing that he can only teach what he has learned through his own experience of descent.
Perhaps you say, brothers—Godefridus—that I have at last presented something other than what you asked for, other than what I myself promised, since in place of the steps of humility, I seem to have described the steps of pride. To which I reply: I couldn't teach except what I have learned. I didn't think it fitting for me to describe ascents, when I know more about descending than ascending. Let blessed Benedict set before you the steps of humility, which he himself first arranged in his own heart; I have nothing to set forth except the pattern of my own descent.
The Way Down as the Way Up
Bernard proposes that careful attention to the descent into pride can itself reveal a path of ascent, illustrated by the traveler who shows the road to Rome by recounting the places he passed through on his return.
In which descent, nevertheless, if it is carefully examined, perhaps a way of ascent is found. For if, as you head toward Rome, a man coming from there were to meet you and, when asked the way, what better road could he show you than the one by which he himself came? While he names the forts, villages, and cities, the rivers and mountains through which he crossed, announcing his own route, he foretells yours to you—so that by traveling through the same places, I might recognize by going what he passed through by coming. In this descent of ours, you'll likewise perhaps find steps for climbing upward, which you'll read more clearly by ascending in your own heart than in our book.
Read the original Latin
Dicis forsitan, fratres Godefride, me aliud quam tu quaesisti, quam ipse promisi, tandem exhibuisse, cum pro gradibus humilitatis, superbiae gradus videar descripsisse. Ad quod ego: non potui docere nisi quod didici. Non putavi congruum me describere ascensiones, qui plus descendere quam ascendere novi. Proponat tibi beatus Benedictus gradus humilitatis, quos ipse prius in corde suo disposuit,; ego quid proponam non habeo, nisi ordinem meae descensionis. In quo tamen, si diligenter inspicitur, via forsitan ascensionis reperitur. Si enim tibi Romam tendenti homo inde veniens obviaret, quaesitus viam, quid melius quam illam, qua venit, ostenderet? Dum castella, villas et urbes, fluvios ac montes, per quos transierit, nominat, suum denuntians iter, tuum tibi praenuntiat, ita ut eadem loca recognosca eundo, quae ille pertransiit veniendo.
In hac similiter nostra descensione gradus ascensorios fortasse reperies, quos ascendendo melius tu in tuo corde quam in nostro codice leges.
De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae (On the Steps of Humility and Pride) companion
Humility is climbed one day at a time
Take the next step each morning with a free daily devotional in Chosen Portion.
Bernard frames humility as a ladder climbed by small repeated acts; Chosen Portion turns that into practice with one daily devotional step at a time.
- A daily 10-minute portion focused on one virtue at a time
- Re-take the 12-step self-check monthly and see real movement
- Historic texts like Bernard's, one readable portion per day