"Cry with a loud voice," said her guardian angel to St. Elizabeth of Schonau ([Cross] 1164), "cry to all nations: Woe! for the whole world has become darkness. The Lord's vine has withered, there is no one to tend it. The Lord has sent laborers, but they have all been found idle. The head of the Church is ill and her members are dead.... Shepherds of my Church, you are sleeping, but I shall awaken you! Kings of the earth, the cry of your iniquity has risen even to me."[42] "Divine justice," said St. Hildegarde ([Cross] 1178), "shall have its hour; the last of the seven epochs symbolized by the seven days of creation has arrived, the judgments of God are about to be accomplished; the empire and the papacy, sunk into impiety, shall crumble away together.... But upon their ruins shall appear a new nation of God, a nation of prophets illuminated from on high, living in poverty and solitude. Then the divine mysteries shall be revealed, and the saying of Joel shall be fulfilled; the Holy Spirit shall shed abroad upon the people the dew of his prophecies, of his wisdom and holiness; the heathen, the Jews, the worldly and the unbelieving shall be converted together, spring-time and peace shall reign over a regenerated world, and the angels will return with confidence to dwell among men." These hopes were not wholly confounded. In the evening of his days the prophet of Fiore was able, like a new Simeon, to utter his _Nunc dimittis_, and for a few years Christendom could turn in amazement to Assisi as to a new Bethlehem. FOOTNOTES: [1] Bull of June 8, 1198, _Quamvis_. Migne, i., col. 220; Potthast, 265. [2] For example, Pierre, Cardinal of St. Chryzogone and former Bishop of Meaux, who in a single election refused the dazzling offer of five hundred silver marks. Alexander III., Migne's edition, _epist._ 395. [3] _Fasciculus rerum expetend. et fugiend._, t. ii., 7, pp. 254, 255 (Brown, 1690). [4] John of Salisbury, _Policrat._ Migne, v. 15. [5] Among their sources of revenue we find the right of _collagium_, by payment of which clerics acquired the right to keep a concubine. Pierre le Chantre, _Verb. abbrev._, 24.