Michel de Nostredame (14 December or 21 December 1503^[1] – 2 July 1566), usually Latinised Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many to Nostradamus, was a French France (pronounced /ˈfrænts/ frantss or /ˈfrɑːnts/ frahnts; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a state in Western Europe with several of its overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, apothecary Apothecary is a historical name for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons and patients — a role now served by a pharmacist (or a chemist or dispensing chemist), and some caregivers and reputed seer In religion, a prophet is an individual who has been contacted by, or has encountered, the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other humans. The message that the prophet conveys is called a prophecy who published collections of prophecies A prophecy is the message that has been communicated to a prophet which the prophet then communicates to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of events to come that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties ("The Prophecies"), the first edition of which appeared in 1555. Since the publication of this book, which has rarely been out of print since his death, Nostradamus has attracted a following that, along with the popular press, credits him with predicting many major world events. The prophecies have in some cases been assimilated to the results of applying the alleged Bible code The Bible code , also known as the Torah code, is a series of messages alleged to exist within the Bible text, that when decoded form words and phrases supposedly demonstrating foreknowledge and prophecy. The study and results from this cipher have been popularized by the book The Bible Code, as well as to other purported prophetic works.

Most academic sources maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains A quatrain is a stanza consisting of four lines. Existing in various forms, the quatrain appears in poems from ancient civilizations including Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome and continues into the 21st century where it is seen in works published in several languages. During Europe's Dark Ages, in the Middle East and especially Iran, polymath are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate) or else are so tenuous as to render them useless as evidence of any genuine predictive power. Moreover, none of the sources listed offers any evidence that anyone has ever interpreted any of Nostradamus's quatrains specifically enough to allow a clear identification of any event in advance.^[2]

Biography

Childhood

Born on 14 or 21 December 1503^[1] in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in southern France in the south of France, where his claimed birthplace still exists, Michel de Nostredame was one of at least nine children of Reynière de St-Rémy and grain dealer and notary Jaume de Nostredame. The latter's family had originally been Jewish The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos, but Jaume's father, Guy Gassonet, had converted to Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with more than a billion members. The Church's leader is the Pope who holds supreme authority in concert with the College of Bishops of which he is the head. A communion of the Western church and 22 autonomous Eastern Catholic churches (called around 1455, taking the Christian name "Pierre" and the surname "Nostredame" (the latter apparently from the saint's day on which his conversion was solemnized).^[3] Michel's known siblings included Delphine, Jean I (c. 1507–77), Pierre, Hector, Louis, Bertrand, Jean II (born 1522) and Antoine (born 1523).^[2][3][4] Little else is known about his childhood, although there is a persistent tradition that he was educated by his maternal great-grandfather Jean de St. Rémy^[5] – a tradition which is somewhat vitiated by the fact that the latter disappears from the historical record after 1504, when the child was only one year old.^[6]

Student years

At the age of fifteen the young Nostredame entered the University of Avignon to study for his baccalaureate A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for four years, but can range from two to six years depending on the region of the world. It may also be the name of a "postgraduate" degree, such as a Bachelor of Civil Law, the Bachelor of Music, or the Bachelor of. After little more than a year (when he would have studied the regular trivium In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word is a Latin term meaning “the three ways” or “the three roads” forming the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education. This study was preparatory for the quadrivium. The trivium is implicit in the De nuptiis of of grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. Linguists do not normally use the, rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of using language to communicate effectively. It involves three audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as the five canons of rhetoric: invention or discovery, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient and logic Logic is the study of reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, and computer science. Logic examines general forms which arguments may take, which forms are valid, and which are fallacies. It is one kind of critical thinking. In philosophy, the study of logic, rather than the later quadrivium The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities after the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" or "the four roads": the completion of the liberal arts. The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium of geometry Geometry "Earth-measuring" is a part of mathematics concerned with questions of size, shape, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. Geometry is one of the oldest sciences. Initially a body of practical knowledge concerning lengths, areas, and volumes, in the 3rd century BC geometry was put into an axiomatic form by, arithmetic Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. It involves the study of quantity, especially as the result of combining numbers. In common usage, it refers to the simpler properties when, music Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses." and astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere (such as the cosmic background radiation). It is concerned with the evolution, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and motion of celestial objects, as well as the formation and development of the universe/astrology Astrology is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs which hold that the relative positions of celestial bodies and related details can provide information about personality, human affairs and other "earthly" matters. A practitioner of astrology is called an astrologer. Astrologers believe that the movements and positions of), he was forced to leave Avignon when the university closed its doors in the face of an outbreak of the plague The Black Death was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. It is widely thought to have been an outbreak of bubonic plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, but this view has recently been challenged. Usually thought to have started in Central Asia, it had reached the Crimea by 1346. From. After leaving Avignon, Nostredame (according to his own account) traveled the countryside for eight years from 1521 researching herbal remedies. In 1529, after some years as an apothecary Apothecary is a historical name for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons and patients — a role now served by a pharmacist (or a chemist or dispensing chemist), and some caregivers, he entered the University of Montpellier The University of Montpellier was a French university in Montpellier in the Languedoc-Roussillon région of the south of France. Its present-day successor universities are the University of Montpellier 1, Montpellier 2 University and Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III to study for a doctorate in medicine Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Before scientific medicine, healing arts were practised in accordance with alchemical treatments and ritual practices that developed out of religious and cultural traditions. He was expelled shortly afterward when it was discovered that he had been an apothecary, a "manual trade" expressly banned by the university statutes.^[7] The expulsion document (BIU Montpellier, Register S 2 folio 87) still exists in the faculty library.^[2] However, some of his publishers and correspondents would later call him "Doctor". After his expulsion, Nostredame continued working, presumably still as an apothecary, and became famous for creating a "rose pill" that supposedly protected against the plague.^[8]

Marriage and healing work

In 1531 Nostredame was invited by Jules-César Scaliger Julius Caesar Scaliger or Giulio Cesare della Scala , was an Italian scholar and physician spending a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the new learning. In spite of his arrogant and contentious disposition, his contemporary reputation was high,, a leading Renaissance scholar A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath (or polymathic person) may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable. Most ancient scientists were polymaths by today's standards, to come to Agen Agen is a commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in Aquitaine in south-western France. It lies on the river Garonne 84 miles (135 km) southeast of Bordeaux. It is the capital of the department.^[3] There he married a woman of uncertain name (possibly Henriette d'Encausse), who bore him two children.^[9] In 1534 his wife and children died, presumably from the Plague Bubonic plague is the best known manifestation of the plague, caused by the Gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis . It belongs to the family Enterobacteriaceae. The term "bubonic plague" comes from the Greek word bubo, meaning "swollen gland," especially in the armpit and groin. It was often used synonymously for plague, but. After their deaths, he continued to travel, passing through France and possibly Italy Italy (pronounced /ˈɪtəli/ ; Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a country located partly on the European Continent and partly on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine.^[3]

On his return in 1545, he assisted the prominent physician Louis Serre in his fight against a major plague outbreak in Marseille, and then tackled further outbreaks of disease on his own in Salon-de-Provence and in the regional capital, Aix-en-Provence Aix , or Aix-en-Provence (Provençal Occitan: Ais de Provença in classical norm, or Ais de Prouvènço in Mistralian norm, both pronounced [ˈajs de pʀuˈvɛⁿsɔ] or [zaj])[citation needed] to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city in southern France, some 30 km (19 mi) north of Marseille. It is in the region of. Finally, in 1547, he settled in Salon-de-Provence in the house which exists today, where he married a rich widow named Anne Ponsarde, with whom he had six children – three daughters and three sons.^[3] Between 1556 and 1567 he and his wife acquired a one-thirteenth share in a huge canal project organized by Adam de Craponne to irrigate largely waterless Salon-de-Provence and the nearby Désert de la Crau The Crau is the ancient confluence of the Durance and Rhône, and constitutes their vast flat alluvial fan from the river Durance The Durance is a major river in south-eastern France.^[6]

Seer

After another visit to Italy, Nostredame began to move away from medicine and toward the occult The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g. an "occult bleed" may be one detected indirectly by the presence of otherwise unexplained anaemia. Following popular trends, he wrote an almanac An almanac is an annual publication that includes information such as weather forecasts, astronomical information, and tide tables, containing tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar etc. Astronomical data and various statistics are also found in almanacs, such as the times of the rising and for 1550, for the first time Latinizing his name from Nostredame to Nostradamus. He was so encouraged by the almanac's success that he decided to write one or more annually. Taken together, they are known to have contained at least 6,338 prophecies,^[2][10] as well as at least eleven annual calendars, all of them starting on 1 January and not, as is sometimes supposed, in March. It was mainly in response to the almanacs that the nobility and other prominent persons from far away soon started asking for horoscopes and "psychic" advice from him, though he generally expected his clients to supply the birth charts on which these would be based, rather than calculating them himself as a professional astrologer would have done. When obliged to attempt this himself on the basis of the published tables of the day, he always made numerous errors, and never adjusted the figures for his clients' place or time of birth.^[4][6] (Refer to the analysis of these charts by Brind'Amour, 1993, and compare Gruber's comprehensive critique of Nostradamus’ horoscope for Crown Prince Rudolph Maximilian.)^[11]

He then began his project of writing a book of one thousand mainly French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in quatrains,^[12] which constitute the largely undated prophecies for which he is most famous today. Feeling vulnerable to religious fanatics,^[2] however, he devised a method of obscuring his meaning by using "Virgilianized Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BCE – September 21, 19 BCE) was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works—the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the Aeneid—although several minor poems are also attributed to him" syntax, word games and a mixture of other languages such as Greek Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic , Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (&, Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it, Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many, and Provençal Provençal is a dialect of Occitan spoken by a minority of people in southern France, mostly in Provence. In the English-speaking world, "Provençal" is often used to refer to all dialects of Occitan, but it actually refers specifically to the dialect spoken in Provence.^[2] For technical reasons connected with their publication in three installments (the publisher of the third and last installment seems to have been unwilling to start it in the middle of a "Century," or book of 100 verses), the last fifty-eight quatrains of the seventh "Century" have not survived into any extant edition.

The quatrains, published in a book titled Les Propheties (The Prophecies), received a mixed reaction when they were published. Some people thought Nostradamus was a servant of evil, a fake, or insane, while many of the elite thought his quatrains were spiritually-inspired prophecies – as, in the light of their post-Biblical sources (see under Nostradamus' sources below), Nostradamus himself was indeed prone to claim. Catherine de Médicis, the queen consort of King Henri II of France Henry was born in the Royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, the son of Francis I and Claude, Duchess of Brittany, was one of Nostradamus' greatest admirers. After reading his almanacs for 1555, which hinted at unnamed threats to the royal family, she summoned him to Paris Paris ([paʁi] in French, pronounced /ˈpærɪs/ in English) is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region (or Paris Region, French: Région parisienne). The city of Paris, within its administrative limits largely unchanged since 1860, has an estimated to explain them and to draw up horoscopes for her children. At the time, he feared that he would be beheaded,^[13] but by the time of his death in 1566, Catherine had made him Counselor and Physician-in-Ordinary to her son, the young King Charles IX of France Charles IX was King of France, ruling from 1560 until his death. His reign was dominated by the Wars of Religion. He is best known as king at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

Some accounts of Nostradamus's life state that he was afraid of being persecuted for heresy Heresy is the rejection of one or more established beliefs of a religious body, or adherence to "other beliefs." Christian heresy refers to unorthodox practices and beliefs that were deemed to be heretical by one or more of the Christian churches. The term "heresy" most commonly refers to those beliefs which were declared to be by the Inquisition The term Inquisition or inquisition can apply to any one of several institutions charged with trying and convicting heretics within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It may also refer to:, but neither prophecy A prophecy is the message that has been communicated to a prophet which the prophet then communicates to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of events to come nor astrology Astrology is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs which hold that the relative positions of celestial bodies and related details can provide information about personality, human affairs and other "earthly" matters. A practitioner of astrology is called an astrologer. Astrologers believe that the movements and positions of fell in this bracket, and he would have been in danger only if he had practiced magic Magic, sometimes known as sorcery, is the practice of consciousness manipulation and/or autosuggestion to achieve a desired result, usually by techniques described in various conceptual systems. The practice is often influenced by ideas of religion, mysticism, occultism, science, and psychology.[citation needed] to support them. In fact, his relationship with the Church as a prophet and healer was excellent. His brief imprisonment at Marignane in late 1561 came about purely because he had published his 1562 almanac without the prior permission of a bishop, contrary to a recent royal decree.^[14]

Final years and death

By 1566, Nostradamus' gout, which had plagued him painfully for many years and made movement very difficult, turned into oedema, or dropsy. In late June he summoned his lawyer to draw up an extensive will bequeathing his property plus 3,444 crowns (around US$300,000 today) – minus a few debts – to his wife pending her remarriage, in trust for her sons pending their twenty-fifth birthdays and her daughters pending their marriages. This was followed by a much shorter codicil.^[3] On the evening of 1 July, he is alleged to have told his secretary Jean de Chavigny, "You will not find me alive at sunrise." The next morning he was reportedly found dead, lying on the floor next to his bed and a bench (Presage 141 [originally 152] for November 1567, as posthumously edited by Chavigny to fit).^[2][10] He was buried in the local Franciscan chapel in Salon (part of it now incorporated into the restaurant La Brocherie) but re-interred in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent during the French Revolution, where his tomb remains to this day.^[3]

Works

In The Prophecies he compiled his collection of major, long-term predictions. The first installment was published in 1555. The second, with 289 further prophetic verses, was printed in 1557. The third edition, with three hundred new quatrains, was reportedly printed in 1558, but now only survives as part of the omnibus edition that was published after his death in 1568. This version contains one unrhymed and 941 rhymed quatrains, grouped into nine sets of 100 and one of 42, called "Centuries".

Given printing practices at the time (which included type-setting from dictation), no two editions turned out to be identical, and it is relatively rare to find even two copies that are exactly the same. Certainly there is no warrant for assuming – as would-be "code-breakers" are prone to do – that either the spellings or the punctuation of any edition are Nostradamus' originals.^[6]

The Almanacs: by far the most popular of his works, these were published annually from 1550 until his death. He often published two or three in a year, entitled either Almanachs (detailed predictions), Prognostications or Presages (more generalized predictions).

Nostradamus was not only a diviner, but a professional healer, too. It is known that he wrote at least two books on medical science. One was an extremely free translation (i.e. a "paraphrase") of The Protreptic of Galen (Paraphrase de C. GALIEN, sus l'Exhortation de Menodote aux estudes des bonnes Artz, mesmement Medicine) , and in his so-called Traité des fardemens (basically a medical cookbook containing, once again, materials borrowed mainly from others) he included a description of the methods he used to treat the plague – none of which, not even the bloodletting, apparently worked. The same book also describes the preparation of cosmetics.

A manuscript normally known as the Orus Apollo also exists in the Lyon municipal library, where upwards of 2,000 original documents relating to Nostradamus are stored under the aegis of Michel Chomarat. It is a purported translation of an ancient Greek work on Egyptian hieroglyphs based on later Latin versions, all of them unfortunately ignorant of the true meanings of the ancient Egyptian script, which was not correctly deciphered until the advent of Champollion in the 19th century.

Since his death only the Prophecies have continued to be popular, but in this case they have been quite extraordinarily so. Over two hundred editions of them have appeared in that time, together with over 2000 commentaries. Their popularity seems to be partly due to the fact that their vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote them selectively after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claim them as "hits" (see Nostradamus in popular culture).

Nostradamus' sources

Nostradamus claimed to base his published predictions on judicial astrology – the astrological assessment of the quality of expected future developments – but was heavily criticized by professional astrologers of the day such as Laurens Videl^[2] for incompetence and for assuming that "comparative horoscopy" (the comparison of future planetary configurations with those accompanying known past events) could predict what would happen in the future.^[6]

Recent research suggests that much of his prophetic work paraphrases collections of ancient end-of-the-world prophecies (mainly Bible-based), supplemented with references to historical events and anthologies of omen reports, and then projects those into the future in part with the aid of comparative horoscopy. Hence the many predictions involving ancient figures such as Sulla, Gaius Marius, Nero, and others, as well as his descriptions of "battles in the clouds" and "frogs falling from the sky." Astrology itself is mentioned only twice in Nostradamus's Preface and 41 times in the Centuries themselves, but more frequently in his dedicatory Letter to King Henri II. In the last quatrain of his sixth centurie he specifically attacks astrologers.

His historical sources include easily identifiable passages from Livy, Suetonius, Plutarch and other classical historians, as well as from medieval chroniclers such as Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Jean Froissart. Many of his astrological references are taken almost word for word from Richard Roussat's Livre de l'estat et mutations des temps of 1549–50.^[15]

One of his major prophetic sources was evidently the Mirabilis liber of 1522, which contained a range of prophecies by Pseudo-Methodius, the Tiburtine Sibyl, Joachim of Fiore, Savonarola and others. (His Preface contains 24 biblical quotations, all but two in the order used by Savonarola.)^[16] This book had enjoyed considerable success in the 1520s, when it went through half a dozen editions (see External links below for facsimiles and translations) but did not sustain its influence, perhaps owing to its mostly Latin text, Gothic script and many difficult abbreviations. Nostradamus was one of the first to re-paraphrase these prophecies in French, which may explain why they are credited to him. It should be noted that modern views of plagiarism did not apply in the 16th century. Authors frequently copied and paraphrased passages without acknowledgement, especially from the classics.

Further material was gleaned from the De honesta disciplina of 1504 by Petrus Crinitus,^[6] which included extracts from Michael Psellus's De daemonibus, and the De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum (Concerning the mysteries of Egypt...), a book on Chaldean and Assyrian magic by Iamblichus, a 4th century Neo-Platonist. Latin versions of both had recently been published in Lyon, and extracts from both are paraphrased (in the second case almost literally) in his first two verses, the first of which is appended to this article. While it is true that Nostradamus claimed in 1555 to have burned all of the occult works in his library, no one can say exactly what books were destroyed in this fire. The fact that they reportedly burned with an unnaturally brilliant flame suggests, however, that some of them were manuscripts on vellum, which was routinely treated with saltpeter.

Only in the 17th century did people start to notice his reliance on earlier, mainly classical sources.^[17] This may help explain the fact that, during the same period, The Prophecies reportedly came into use in France as a classroom reader.^[18]

Nostradamus's reliance on historical precedent is reflected in the fact that he explicitly rejected the label prophet (i.e. a person having prophetic powers of his own) on several occasions:^[2][6]

Although, my son, I have used the word prophet, I would not attribute to myself a title of such lofty sublimity – Preface to César, 1555 (see caption to illustration above)^[19]

Not that I would attribute to myself either the name or the role of a prophet – Preface to César, 1555^[19]

[S]ome of [the prophets] predicted great and marvelous things to come: [though] for me, I in no way attribute to myself such a title here. – Letter to King Henri II, 1558^[20]

I do but make bold to predict (not that I guarantee the slightest thing at all), thanks to my researches and the consideration of what judicial Astrology promises me and sometimes gives me to know, principally in the form of warnings, so that folk may know that with which the celestial stars do threaten them. Not that I am foolish enough to pretend to be a prophet. – Open letter to Privy Councillor (later Chancellor) Birague, 15 June 1566^[2]

His rejection of the title prophet also squares with the fact^[2] that he entitled his book

(a title that, in French, as easily means "The Prophecies, by M. Michel Nostradamus", which is precisely what they were; as "The Prophecies of M. Michel Nostradamus", which, except in a few cases, they were not, other than in the manner of their editing, expression and reapplication to the future.) Any criticism of Nostradamus for claiming to be a prophet, in other words, would have been for doing what he never claimed to be doing in the first place.

Given this reliance on literary sources, it is doubtful^[2] whether Nostradamus used any particular methods for entering a trance state, other than contemplation, meditation and incubation (i.e., ritually "sleeping on it"). His sole description of this process is contained in letter 41^[21] of his collected Latin correspondence.^[2] The popular legend that he attempted the ancient methods of flame gazing, water gazing or both simultaneously is based on a naive reading of his first two verses, which merely liken his efforts to those of the Delphic and Branchidic oracles. The first of these is reproduced at the bottom of this article: the second can be seen by visiting the relevant facsimile site (see External Links). In his dedication to King Henri II, Nostradamus describes "emptying my soul, mind and heart of all care, worry and unease through mental calm and tranquility", but his frequent references to the "bronze tripod" of the Delphic rite are usually preceded by the words "as though" (compare, once again, External References to the original texts).

Interpretations

Most of the quatrains deal with disasters, such as plagues, earthquakes, wars, floods, invasions, murders, droughts, and battles – all undated and based on foreshadowings by the Mirabilis Liber. Some quatrains cover these disasters in overall terms; others concern a single person or small group of persons. Some cover a single town, others several towns in several countries. A major, underlying theme is an impending invasion of Europe by Muslim forces from further east and south headed by the expected Antichrist, directly reflecting the then-current Ottoman invasions and the earlier Saracen (that is, Arab) equivalents, as well as the prior expectations of the Mirabilis Liber.^[2] All of this is presented in the context of the supposedly imminent end of the world – even though this is not in fact mentioned^[22] – a conviction that sparked numerous collections of end-time prophecies at the time, not least an unpublished collection by Christopher Columbus.^[23]

Nostradamus enthusiasts have credited him with predicting numerous events in world history, from the Great Fire of London, by way of the rise of Napoleon I of France and Adolf Hitler, to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center,^[11] but only ever in hindsight. Skeptics such as James Randi suggest that his reputation as a prophet is largely manufactured by modern-day supporters who fit his words to events that have either already occurred or are so imminent as to be inevitable, a process sometimes known as "retroactive clairvoyance". There is no evidence in the academic literature to suggest that any Nostradamus quatrain has ever been interpreted as predicting a specific event before it occurred, other than in vague, general terms that could equally apply to any number of other events.

Alternative views

A range of quite different views are expressed in printed literature and on the Internet. At one end of the spectrum, there are extreme academic views such as those of Jacques Halbronn, suggesting at great length and with great complexity that Nostradamus's Prophecies are antedated forgeries written by later hands with a political axe to grind.^[24] Although Halbronn possibly knows more about the texts and associated archives than almost anybody else alive (he helped dig out and research many of them), most other specialists in the field reject this view. At the other end of the spectrum, there are numerous fairly recent popular books, and thousands of private websites, suggesting not only that the Prophecies are genuine but that Nostradamus was a true prophet. Thanks to the vagaries of interpretation, no two of them agree on exactly what he predicted, whether for our past or for our future.^[4] Many of them do agree, though, that particular predictions refer, for example, to the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler,^[2][25] both world wars, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is also a consensus that he predicted whatever major event had just happened at the time of each book's publication, from the Apollo moon landings, through the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986,^[26] to the events of 9/11: this 'movable feast' aspect appears to be characteristic of the genre.^[4]

Possibly the first of these books to become truly popular in English was Henry C. Roberts' The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus of 1947, reprinted at least seven times during the next 40 years, which contained both transcriptions and translations, with brief commentaries. This was followed in 1961 (reprinted in 1982) by Edgar Leoni's comprehensive and remarkably dispassionate Nostradamus and His Prophecies. After that came Erika Cheetham's The Prophecies of Nostradamus, incorporating a reprint of the posthumous 1568 edition, which was reprinted, revised and republished several times from 1973 onwards, latterly as The Final Prophecies of Nostradamus. This went on to serve as the basis for Orson Welles' celebrated film The Man Who Saw Tomorrow. Apart from a two-part translation of Jean-Charles de Fontbrune's Nostradamus: historien et prophète of 1980, the series could be said to have culminated in John Hogue's well-known books on the seer from about 1994 onwards, including Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies (1999) and, most recently, Nostradamus: A Life and Myth (2003).

With the exception of Roberts, these books and their many popular imitators were almost unanimous not merely about Nostradamus's powers of prophecy, but also about various aspects of his biography. He had been a descendant of the Israelite tribe of Issachar; he had been educated by his grandfathers, who had both been physicians to the court of Good King René of Provence; he had attended Montpellier University in 1525 to gain his first degree: after returning there in 1529 he had successfully taken his medical doctorate; he had gone on to lecture in the Medical Faculty there until his views became too unpopular; he had supported the heliocentric view of the universe; he had travelled to the north-east of France, where he had composed prophecies at the abbey of Orval; in the course of his travels he had performed a variety of prodigies, including identifying a future Pope; he had successfully cured the Plague at Aix-en-Provence and elsewhere; he had engaged in scrying using either a magic mirror or a bowl of water; he had been joined by his secretary Chavigny at Easter 1554; having published the first installment of his Propheties, he had been summoned by Queen Catherine de' Medici to Paris in 1556 to discuss with her his prophecy at quatrain I.35 that her husband King Henri II would be killed in a duel; he had examined the royal children at Blois; he had bequeathed to his son a 'lost book' of his own prophetic paintings;^[27] he had been buried standing up; and he had been found, when dug up at the French Revolution, to be wearing a medallion bearing the exact date of his disinterment.

From the 1980s onwards, however, an academic reaction set in, especially in France. The publication in 1983 of Nostradamus's private correspondence^[28] and, during succeeding years, of the original editions of 1555 and 1557 discovered by Chomarat and Benazra, together with the unearthing of much original archival material^[3][6] revealed that much that was claimed about Nostradamus simply did not fit the documented facts. The academics^{[3][4][6][29]} made it clear that not one of the claims just listed was backed up by any known contemporary documentary evidence. Most of them had evidently been based on unsourced rumours retailed as fact by much later commentators such as Jaubert (1656), Guynaud (1693) and Bareste (1840), on modern misunderstandings of the 16th century French texts, or on pure invention. Even the often-advanced suggestion that quatrain I.35 had successfully prophesied King Henri II's death did not actually appear in print for the first time until 1614, 55 years after the event.^[2][6]

On top of that, the academics,^[4][29][30] who themselves tend to eschew any attempt at interpretation, complained that the English translations were usually of poor quality, seemed to display little or no knowledge of 16th century French, were tendentious and, at worst, were sometimes twisted to fit the events to which they were supposed to refer (or vice versa). None of them, certainly, were based on the original editions: Roberts had based himself on that of 1672, Cheetham and Hogue on the posthumous edition of 1568. Even the relatively respectable Leoni accepted on his page 115 that he had never seen an original edition, and on earlier pages indicated that much of his biographical material was unsourced.

However, none of this research and criticism was originally known to most of the English-language commentators, by function of the dates when they were writing and, to some extent, of the language it was written in. Hogue, admittedly, was in a position to take advantage of it, but it was only in 2003 that he accepted that some of his earlier biographical material had in fact been apocryphal. Meanwhile various of the more recent sources listed (Lemesurier, Gruber, Wilson) have been particularly scathing about later attempts by some lesser-known authors and Internet enthusiasts to extract alleged hidden meanings from the texts, whether with the aid of anagrams, numerical codes, graphs or otherwise.

Popular culture

The prophecies retold and expanded by Nostradamus have figured largely in popular culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. As well as being the subject of hundreds of books (both fiction and nonfiction), Nostradamus's life has been depicted in several films and videos, and his life and writings continue to be a subject of media interest.

There have also been several well-known internet hoaxes, where quatrains in the style of Nostradamus have been circulated by e-mail as the real thing. The best-known examples concern the collapse of the World Trade Center in the attacks of September 11, 2001, which led both to hoaxes and to reinterpretations by enthusiasts of several quatrains as supposed prophecies.^[31]

The September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City led to immediate speculation as to whether Nostradamus had predicted the events. Nostradamus enthusiasts pointed to Quatrains VI.97 and I.87 as possible predictions, but none of the listed sources supported this suggestion (compare the Snopes website listed under External Links).^[2][11][32]

See also

• For comparison with another predictive protoscience see Alchemy.
• Divination
• List of astrologers
• Mysticism
• Postdiction
• Vaticinia Nostradami

Sources

• Nostradamus, Michel:
  • Orus Apollo, 1545 (?), unpublished ms; Almanachs, Presages and Pronostications, 1550–1567; Ein Erschrecklich und Wunderbarlich Zeychen..., Nuremberg, 1554; Les Propheties, Lyon, 1555, 1557, 1568; Traite des fardemens et des confitures, 1555, 1556, 1557; Paraphrase de C. Galen sus l'exhortation de Menodote, 1557; Lettre de Maistre Michel Nostradamus, de Salon de Craux en Provence, A la Royne mere du Roy, 1566
• Leroy, Dr Edgar, Nostradamus, ses origines, sa vie, son oeuvre, 1972 (the seminal biographical study)
• Dupèbe, Jean, Nostradamus: Lettres inédites, 1983
• Chomarat, Michel, and Laroche, Jean-Paul: Bibliographie Nostradamus (1989)
• Benazra, Robert: Répertoire chronologique nostradamique (1990)
• Randi, James, The Mask of Nostradamus, 1993 ISBN 0-87975-830-9
• Rollet, Pierre, Nostradamus: Interprétation des hiéroglyphes de Horapollo, 1993
• Brind'Amour, Pierre: Nostradamus astrophile, 1993; Nostradamus. Les premières Centuries ou Prophéties, 1996
• Lemesurier, Peter, The Nostradamus Encyclopedia, 1997; The Unknown Nostradamus, 2003; Nostradamus: The Illustrated Prophecies, 2003
• Prévost, Roger, Nostradamus, le mythe et la réalité, 1999
• Chevignard, Bernard, Présages de Nostradamus 1999
• Wilson, Ian, Nostradamus: The Evidence, 2002
• Clébert, Jean-Paul, Prophéties de Nostradamus, 2003
• Gruber, Dr Elmar, Nostradamus: sein Leben, sein Werk und die wahre Bedeutung seiner Prophezeiungen, 2003

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Guinard, Dr Patrice, CURA Forum
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q} Lemesurier, Peter, The Unknown Nostradamus, 2003
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Leroy, Dr Edgar, Nostradamus, ses origines, sa vie, son oeuvre, 1972, ISBN 2-86276-231-8
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Lemesurier, Peter, 'The Nostradamus Encyclopedia, 1997 ISBN 0-312-17093-9
5. ^ Chavigny, J.A. de: La première face du Janus françois... (Lyon, 1594)
6. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Brind'Amour, Pierre, Nostradamus astrophile, 1993
7. ^ Benazra, R, Espace Nostradamus
8. ^ Nostradamus, Michel, Traite des fardemens et des confitures, 1555, 1556, 1557
9. ^ Maison de Nostradamus at Salon
10. ^ ^{a b} Chevignard, Bernard, Présages de Nostradamus 1999
11. ^ ^{a b c} Gruber, Dr Elmar, Nostradamus: sein Leben, sein Werk und die wahre Bedeutung seiner Prophezeiungen, 2003
12. ^ Mario Gregorio. "Centuries of Nostradamus". Propheties.it. http://www.propheties.it/no/nostradamus.html. Retrieved 2010-03-20.
13. ^ Guéraud, J., La chronique Lyonnaise (1536–1562), cited in Leroy, Dr. E., Nostradamus, ses origines, sa vie, son oeuvre, Bergerac, Trillaud, 1972, p.83
14. ^ Lemesurier, P., The Unknown Nostradamus (O Books, 2003)
15. ^ See comprehensive charts supplied here [1].
16. ^ See Savonarola and Nostradamus text comparison
17. ^ Anonymous letters to the Mercure de France in August and November 1724 drew specific public attention to the fact(Anonyme) Lettre critique sur la personne et sur les écrits de Michel Nostradamus, Mercure de France, août et novembre 1724 (Comment in the French Wikipedia article on Nostradamus : "Relève, dans un esprit rationaliste, des coïncidences entre certains quatrains des Prophéties et des évènements antérieurs à la publication de ces quatrains. Tout n'est pas également convaincant, mais on repoussera difficilement, par exemple, le rapprochement entre le quatrain VIII, 72 et le siège de Ravenne de 1512.")
18. ^ Garencières, Théophile de: The true prophecies or prognostications of Michel Nostradamus, 1672.
19. ^ ^{a b} Preface to César
20. ^ Nostradamus Repository[2]
21. ^ See facsimile of letter
22. ^ Nostradamus, M., Les Propheties, 1568 omnibus edition
23. ^ Watts, P.M., Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus' 'Enterprise of the Indies' in: American Historical Review, February 1985, pp. 73–102
24. ^ See Free.fr, Ramkat and Free.fr, CURA
25. ^ It is true that in several quatrains he mentions the name Hister (somewhat resembling Hitler), but this is merely the classical name for the Lower Danube, as he himself explains in his Presage for 1554. Similarly, the expression Pau, Nay, Loron – often interpreted as an anagram of "Napaulon Roy" – simply refers to three towns in southwestern France near his one-time home.
26. ^ "CI, Q81". Maar.us. http://www.maar.us/first_century_nostradamus.html. Retrieved 2010-03-20.
27. ^ Actually the 13th–14th century Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus in a misascribed version sometimes referred to as the Vaticinia Nostradami
28. ^ Dupèbe, Jean, Nostradamus: Lettres inédites, 1983
29. ^ ^{a b} Randi, James, The Mask of Nostradamus, 1993
30. ^ Wilson, Ian, Nostradamus: The Evidence, 2002
31. ^ "False prophesy". Snopes.com. http://www.snopes.com/rumors/predict.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-20.
32. ^ Wilson, Ian, Nostradamus: The Evidence, 2002

External links

This section is for links to sites consistent with the established facts reported in the article only, not with others that are mainly speculative or purely fictional in character and thus not complementary to it.

• Timeline
• Facsimiles of original editions with translations
• Facsimiles of many contemporary texts
• Facsimiles, reprints and some translations of a huge range of Nostradamus texts, info etc.
• Facsimiles of the first four editions of the Propheties compared (downloadable)
• Historical origins of the Propheties
• Espace Nostradamus Benazra's French website and major academic forum
• CURA's major international academic forum
• Nostradamus Research Group
• World's largest online library of Nostradamus facsimiles
• Logodaedalia Scientific and Medical French website (Dr. Lucien de Luca)
• Anna Carlstedt (La poésie oraculaire de Nostradamus, 2005)
• Selected English translations from the Mirabilis liber.
• Texts, FAQs, translations, quatrain search engine, general information and illustrated tour of Nostradamus's Provence

Categories: Nostradamus | 1503 births | 1566 deaths | 16th-century French writers | Deaths from edema | Divination | French occult writers | People from Bouches-du-Rhône | Prediction | Apocalypticists

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