This she accordingly did, and the life she wrote was, she insists, given her “by revelation.” It is a long and tedious work, a gush of weak and watery verbiage. When reduced to its elementary constituents, it is found to consist of absolutely nothing more than what was already known—that Disibod came from Ireland, settled on the mount that bore his name afterwards, and died there. But this was distended into a tract of 6,250 words. Hildegarde’s “Natural History” is a very funny book. She did not pretend to derive her knowledge of the property of things from inspiration, but there can be little doubt that, at the time when it was issued, those who regarded her prophecies as infallible, looked also on her enunciation of the properties of natural objects as inspired. She begins the book by likening the world to a human body: the earth is the flesh, the rocks are the bones, the moisture of the stones is the marrow, the slate rocks are the toe and finger nails, the plants are the hair, and the dew is the perspiration. All plants are either hot or cold; so also are all animals. This is the radical division between them. The recipes given are profoundly silly. For a boil, house-flies are to be taken, their heads cut off, and they are to be arranged like herrings in a barrel round the swelling. A poultice is to cover all—but it is the flies that bring the gathering to a head. Here is one of the shortest of her botanical accounts—that of the meadow convolvulus. “The herb is cold, it has not great powers nor is it of much use. But if a man’s nails get scaly and crack, then let him grind up the convolvulus, mix with it a little quicksilver and lay it on his nails, tie a bit of rag round, and his nails will be lovely.” Hildegarde wrote a commentary on the Rule of S. Benedict, another on the Athanasian Creed. She propounded difficult questions in Scripture, and solved them by her inner light, only making the difficulties greater, and always missing the simple meaning of a passage. S. Hildegarde had her troubles. She did not get on very well with the Archbishops of Mayence. At the instigation of S. Bernard she inflamed the minds of the people with a fever of zeal against the Saracens, and exhorted to a crusade. This resulted in a frightful massacre of Jews at Mayence, instigated by a monk named Badulf. The Archbishop Henry, a mild, amiable man, did what he could to protect the unfortunate Israelites, and opened to them his palace. But a papal legate appeared on the scene, and the Chapter induced him to depose the archbishop. He appealed to Rome, but the cardinals were bribed to declare against him. He had chosen his confidential friend, Arnold of Selnhofen, to take what money he could scrape together to Rome and plead his cause. Arnold made the most solemn assurances of fidelity, and betrayed his trust. He used the money entrusted to him to purchase the deposition of his friend and his own advancement.