The Old Testament prophets and patriarchs inspired Bernard of Clairvaux with striking images of papal intervention in the church and the world. While later medieval theologians and jurists thought of Bernardine titles as designating the rights and prerogatives of the papacy, for Bernard they signified the duties of the pope, who must be active in exhorting and correcting the people of Christendom. The twelfth-century papacy was often obliged to rely on the practical assistance of members of the religious orders to no less a degree than the Gregorian papacy in the late eleventh century. Both the First Lateran Council and Eugenius III identified the spiritual reward of the crusaders as 'remission of sins'. The papal defeat of 1156, inaugurated three decades of harmonious cooperation between the papacy and the kingdom of Sicily. The premature death of the formidable Emperor Henry VI removed a serious threat to the independence of the papacy and gave the pope an unprecedented freedom of action.