Harmful Beauty

Quaeris quis ille tam noxius, tamque perniciosus decor? Tuus. Adhuc forte sine intellectu es? Planius audi. Privatus, proprius. Non culpamus donum, sed usum. Denique si advertisti, non in decore, sed in suo decore dictus est ille perdidisse sapientiam. Et, in fallor, unus angeli animaeque decor ipsa est. Quid enim vel haec vel ille absque sapientia, nisi rudis deformisque materia est? Ea ergo ille non modo formatus, sed et formosus fuit. Sed perdidit eam, cum fecit suam: ut non sit aliud in decore suo quam in sua sapientia perdidisse sapientiam. Proprietas in causa est. Quod sibi sapiens fuit, quod non dedit gloriam Deo, quod non retulit gratiam pro gratia, quod non secundum veritatem ambulavit in ea, sed ad suam eam retorsit voluntatem: istud est cur eam perdidit; imo istud est quod eam perdidit. Etenim sic habere, perdere est. Et si Abraham, inquit, ex operibus iustificatus est, habet gloriam, sed non apud Deum. Et ego: non ego in tuto, inquam. Perdidi quidquid habeo non apud Deum. Nam quid tam perditum, quam quod extra Deum exsulat? Quid mors, nisi privatio vitae? Ita nihil perditio, nisi alienatio a Deo est. Vae qui sapientes estis in oculis vestris, et eoram vobismetipsis prudentes! de vobis dicitur: Perdam sapientiam sapientium, et prudentiam prudentium reprobabo. Perdiderunt sapientiam, quia sua sapientia perdidit eos. Quid non perdiderunt, qui et ipsi perditi sunt? An vero non perditi, quos nescit Deus? Sanctus Bernardus Clarae Vallensis, In Cantica Canticorum, Sermo LXXIV Source: Migne PL 183.1143b-d

Do you wonder what beauty can be harmful and ruinous? Yours. Perhaps you do not understand yet. Let it be made more clear. It is your own. We do not blame the gift, but the use of it. If you consider it, it was by his own beauty that Lucifer ruined his wisdom. Unless I err, the beauty of an angel and of the soul is one, and it is wisdom. For what is anything without wisdom but raw and disordered matter? Therefore Lucifer was not only ordered but beautiful because of it, but he ruined it when he used it. There is not anything else to be found in his beauty but that with his own wisdom he destroyed wisdom. Possession is the cause. Because he was wise in his own eyes, because he did not give glory to God, because he did not return grace for grace, because he did not walk in the truth but he turned to his own will, that is how he ruined it, that is how he destroyed it, such was his way of destroying it. And if Abraham, it says, had been justified by works, he would have had glory, but not before God. 1 And I am not safe. I have destroyed whatever I have that is not in God. What is so ruined as that which exults to be separated from God? What is death but the loss of life? Therefore there is no ruin but separation from God. 'Alas, you who are wise in your own eyes, and prudent for yourselves,' of whom it is said, 'I shall destroy the wisdom of the wise and the prudence of the prudent I shall reprove.' 2 They will destroy wisdom because their own wisdom has destroyed them. What do that not destroy who have destroyed themselves? Are they not utterly destroyed whom God disregards? Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Commentary On The Song of Songs, from Sermon 74 1 Rom 4.2 2 Isaiah 5.21, 1 Cor 1.19