The conflicts intensified in the latter years of Hildegard’s life when, from 1160, Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III were bitterly opposed to one another. Hildegard felt the terror keenly, as her monastery in Rupertsberg was at the front line of hostilities. She wrote personally to both the emperor and pope, giving advice while daring to criticise the two most powerful men of her time. It was through this role as prophetess to the powerful that she gained the title ‘Sibyl of the Rhine’. Like a medieval Cassandra, she wanted influence in what she saw as a pivotal point of moral and social
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