Wide, indeed, is the difference between the spiritual mysticism of Bernard and the gross materialism and arrogant pretension which characterise the vision and the prophecy to which Hildegard laid claim. The morbid ambition of theurgic mysticism received a new impulse from the sanction afforded her by Bernard and the contemporary popes. Bernard makes no doubt of the reality of her gifts, and desires a place in her prayers. (_Epist._ 366.) He did not foresee that the most extravagant and sensuous mysticism must soon of necessity displace the simpler and less dazzling. He would be afraid of taking his place with Rationalist mockers, and a superstitious awe would readily persuade him that it was better to believe than to doubt. When emperors and popes corresponded on familiar terms with the seeress; when haughty nobles and learned ecclesiastics sought counsel at her oracle concerning future events, and even for the decision of learned questions; when all she said in answer was delivered as subject to and in the interest of the Church Catholic—was often the very echo of Bernard’s own warnings and exhortations—who was he, that he should presume to limit the operations of the Spirit of God? Many of Hildegard’s prophecies, denouncing the ecclesiastical abuses of the day, were decidedly reformatory in their tendency. In this respect she is the forerunner of the Abbot Joachim of Calabria, and of St. Brigitta, whose prophetic utterances startled the corrupt Church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In her supernatural gift of language, her attendant divine radiance, and her fantastic revelations, she, like her friend Elizabeth of Schonau (who had an angel to wait upon her, and saw the eleven thousand virgins), prepares the way for Catharine of Siena, Angela of Foligni, and St. Theresa. Footnote 39: See Note 1, p. 146. Footnote 40: See Note 2, p. 146. Footnote 41: _Vita_, ii. cap. v. Footnote 42: See the account of his diet, and of the feebleness and sickness consequent on his austerities, by the same biographer (Alanus), _Vita_, ii. cap. x., in the Paris reprint of 1839, from the Benedictine edition of Bernard, tom. ii. p. 2426. John Eremita describes the devil’s visit to Bernard, ‘ut ungeret sandalia sua secundum consuetudinem,’ and relates the rebuke of the proud monk who would not wash the _scutellæ_ in the kitchen.—_Vita_, iv. p. 2508. Footnote 43: _Vita_, ii. cap. x. 32. Footnote 44: _Epp._ cx., cxi. Footnote 45: _Chronologia Bernardina, Opp._ tom. i. p. 83. Footnote 46: _Epist._ cxli. Footnote 47: _De Consideratione_, IV. iii. 7, and II. vi. 11, pp. 1028 and 1060. Footnote 48: _Epist._ ccclxv. to the Archbishop of Mayence, against the fanatic Rudolph. Footnote 49: