A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Hildegardis
HILDEGARDIS, a famous Abbess of the Order of St. Benedict, at Spanheim, in Germany,
Whose prophesies are supposed to relate to the reformation, and to the destruction of the Romish see; and had great influence over the minds of people about the time of the Reformation. She flourished about the year 1146. The books in which these prophesies are contained are quoted in an old English ecclesiastical history, and appear to have been written by a zealous, godly, and understanding woman, disgusted with the vices of her own age, and foreseeing that they would still bring forth more. Shocked that crimes and hypocrisy should pollute that holy religion in which her hope was grounded. She wrote also a poem upon medicine, and a book of Latin poems.