Introduction to Degrees of Pride

In our spring issue, we focused on money and the vice associated with it—avarice. A common theme was St. Paul’s warning that “the love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tm 6:10 RSVCE), which likely prompted not a few people to wonder, “but what about pride?” Well, here it is. The book of Sirach tells us that “nothing is more wicked than the covetous man” (Sir 10:9 DRA), but it also notes that “pride is the beginning of all sin” (Sir 10:15, DRA). While covetousness is most wicked—since it sets even the soul for sale (Sir 10:10)—it finds its beginning in the turning of the soul from God unto itself, in the abandonment, Augustine says, of “the principle to which the mind ought to adhere and instead, as it were, to become and to be one’s own principle” (Civ. Dei XII.13).

All other vices flow from pride in such a way that some of the Church Fathers replaced it with vainglory in the list of capital sins and instead placed pride in a category all its own as the Queen of the Vices. This is why—for those paying close attention—the intro to the text of John Cassian’s Institutes in part 2 of our last issue identified the subject matter as “means of overcoming the eight deadly sins.” The same is indicated in the first part of this issue, which begins with Cassian’s treatment of pride, which he identifies as “the eighth and last combat” of the monk.

Cassian’s work is an expert treatment of the primal vice, based on the collected wisdom of many generations of monks dwelling in the desert and wrestling with sin and temptation. Cassian identifies the progress pride makes as it grows from the smallest seed in the monk’s soul and develops into a thirst to gather others around him to teach them the way of perfection; he grows so full of himself that he fails to see that he is himself most in need of instruction and not fit to teach. Cassian describes the successive stages of pride not so much as growth—as he would describe the successive stages of virtue—but as descent; this he does ironically to convey that the more one elevates himself in pride, the deeper he plunges into the depths of sin and away from the heights where God dwells. Yet, Cassian does not end in the depths; rather, he presents humility, the beginning of every virtue as the cure of pride and admonishes the monk to imitate the way of humility, of lowering oneself, by means of which one truly reaches the heights of perfection.

Our other work presented here comes from St. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the great spiritual masters of the Middle Ages and an excellent student of the desert fathers. He builds on Cassian’s treatment of pride by developing twelve degrees of the vice, each aligned with one of the degrees of humility. Unlike Cassian, Bernard begins with humility, making his way up the twelve steps to the pinnacle of holiness, before descending through the corresponding twelve steps of pride back to the base. The image produced is something like the mountain of God, where one meets Christ at the top, but having reached the summit, one can still fall into pride and must be always careful to keep his focus fixed on God and Him alone. Here, on account of limited space, we reproduce only Bernard’s treatment of the twelve descending steps of pride. We would, of course, encourage any and all to read his treatment in full, as it is readily accessible.

In the subsequent parts of this issue we will treat of the effects of pride as well as its cure, concluding with Christ as the exemplar of humility, so we follow Cassian’s pattern more than Bernard’s, but Bernard is far from foreign.

And, of course, if you like what we are doing, I encourage you to support us by sharing our work, subscribing on Substack, browsing our store, submitting articles for future issues, or simply—but most importantly—through prayer. Now, without further ado, we embark on our journey through the stages of pride.

Aaron P. Debusschere
Editor