Nostradamus

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Michel de Nostredame

Nostradamus: original portrait by his son Cesar

14 December or 21 December or 24
Born December 1503
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France
2 July 1566(1566-07-02) (aged 62)
Died
Salon-de-Provence, France
Apothecary, author, translator,
Occupation
astrological consultant
Known for Prophecy
Michel de Nostredame (14 or 21 December 1503[1] – 2 July 1566), usually Latinised to
Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of
prophecies 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.
Most academic sources maintain that the associations made between world events and
Nostradamus's quatrains 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]

Contents
[hide]
• 1 Biography
○ 1.1 Childhood
○ 1.2 Student years
○ 1.3 Marriage and healing work
○ 1.4 Seer
○ 1.5 Final years and death
• 2 Works
• 3 Sources
• 4 Interpretations
• 5 Alternative views
• 6 Popular culture
• 7 Sources for article
• 8 See also
• 9 References
• 10 External links

[edit] Biography

Nostredame's claimed birthplace before its recent renovation.

[edit] Childhood
Born on 14, 21 or 24 December 1503[1] in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France,
where his claimed birthplace still exists, Michel de Nostredame was one of at least nine
children of Reynière (or Renée) de Saint-Rémy and grain dealer and notary Jaume (or
Jacques) de Nostredame. The latter's family had originally been Jewish, but Jaume's father,
Guy Gassonet, had converted to Catholicism 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]
[edit] Student years
At the age of sixteen Nostredame entered the University of Avignon to study for his
baccalaureate. After little more than a year (when he would have studied the regular trivium
of grammar, rhetoric and logic, rather than the later quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic,
music and astronomy/astrology), he was forced to leave Avignon when the university closed
its doors in the face of an outbreak of the plague. After leaving Avignon, Nostredame
(according to his own account) travelled the countryside for eight years from 1521
researching herbal remedies. In 1529, after some years as an apothecary, he entered the
University of Montpellier to study for a doctorate in medicine. 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]
[edit] Marriage and healing work
In 1531 Nostredame was invited by Jules-César Scaliger, a leading Renaissance scholar, to
come to Agen.[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. After their deaths, he continued to travel, passing through France and
possibly Italy.[3]
Nostradamus's house at Salon-de-Provence, as reconstructed after the 1909 earthquake.
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. 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 from the river Durance.[6]
[edit] Seer
After another visit to Italy, Nostredame began to move away from medicine and toward the
occult. Following popular trends, he wrote an almanac 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 quatrains,[12]
which constitute the largely undated prophecies for which he is most famous today. Feeling
vulnerable to opposition on religious grounds,[2] however, he devised a method of obscuring
his meaning by using "Virgilianized" syntax, word games and a mixture of other languages
such as Greek, Italian, Latin, and Provençal.[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. In the light of their post-Biblical sources (see under Nostradamus' sources
below), Nostradamus himself encouraged this belief. Catherine de Médicis, the queen consort
of King Henri II of France, 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 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.
Some accounts of Nostradamus's life state that he was afraid of being persecuted for heresy
by the Inquisition, but neither prophecy nor astrology fell in this bracket, and he would have
been in danger only if he had practiced magic to support them. In fact, his relationship with
the Church was always excellent.[14] 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]
[edit] Final years and death
Nostradamus' current tomb in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent, Salon, into which his scattered
remains were transferred after 1789.
By 1566, Nostradamus's 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 July 1, 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 during the French Revolution in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent,
where his tomb remains to this day.[3]
[edit] Works

Copy of Garencières' 1672 English translation of the Propheties, located in The P.I. Nixon
Medical History Library of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
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. 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 2,000 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).
[edit] Sources
Nostradamus claimed to base his published predictions on judicial astrology – the astrological
'judgement', or assessment, of the 'quality' (and thus potential) of events such as births,
weddings, coronations etc. – 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 actually 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 century 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.The latest
research suggests that he may in fact have used bibliomancy for this—randomly selecting a
book of history or prophecy and taking his cue from whatever page it happened to fall open
at.[17]
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.[18] This may help explain the fact that, during the same period, The Prophecies
reportedly came into use in France as a classroom reader.[19]
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)[20]
Not that I would attribute to myself either the name or the role of a prophet – Preface to
César, 1555[20]
[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[21]
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

Detail from title-page of the original 1555 (Albi) edition of Nostradamus's Les Propheties
(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[22] 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 and 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).
[edit] 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 people. 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[23] – a
conviction that sparked numerous collections of end-time prophecies at the time, not least an
unpublished collection by Christopher Columbus.[24]
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. In particular, no quatrain suggests, as is often claimed by books and films on the
alleged Mayan Prophecy, that the world will end in December 2012.[25]
[edit] 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. 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. Due to the subjective nature of these interpretations,
however, no two of them agree on exactly what he predicted, whether for the past or for the
future.[4] Many of these do agree, though, that particular predictions refer, for example, to the
French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler,[2][26]both world wars, and the nuclear
destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is also an evident consensus among popular
authors 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,[27] 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 popular in English was Henry C. Roberts' The
Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus of 1947, reprinted at least seven times during the next
forty years, which contained both transcriptions and translations, with brief commentaries.
This was followed in 1961 (reprinted in 1982) by Edgar Leoni's 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
served as the basis for the documentary The Man Who Saw Tomorrow. A two-part translation
of Jean-Charles de Fontbrune's Nostradamus: historien et prophète was published in 1980,
and John Hogue has published a number of books on Nostradamus from about 1994 onwards,
including Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies (1999) and 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;[28] 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[29] 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 did not fit the documented facts. The academics[3][4][6][30] revealed 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 relayed 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]
Additionally, the academics,[4][30][31] 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 were based on the original editions: Roberts had based his writings on that of 1672,
Cheetham and Hogue on the posthumous edition of 1568. Even Leoni accepted on page 115
that he had never seen an original edition, and on earlier pages he 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 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 some 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.
[edit] Popular culture
Main article: Nostradamus in 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.[32]
[edit] Sources for article
• 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; Nostradamus,
Bibliomancer, 2010
 • 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
[edit] See also

Century I, Quatrain 1: 1555 Lyon Bonhomme edition

• For comparison with another predictive protoscience see Alchemy.
• Divination
• List of astrologers
• Mysticism
• Postdiction
• Roger Frontenac
• Vaticinia Nostradami
[edit] References
1. ^ a b Guinard, Patrice, CURA Forum
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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 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. ^ a b Lemesurier, P., The Unknown Nostradamus (O Books, 2003)
15. ^ See comprehensive charts supplied here [1].
16. ^ See Savonarola and Nostradamus text comparison
17. ^ Lemesurier, P., Nostradamus, Bibliomancer, 2010
18. ^ 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.")
19. ^ Garencières, Théophile de: The true prophecies or prognostications of Michel
Nostradamus, 1672.
20. ^ a b Preface to César[dead link]
21. ^ Nostradamus Repository
22. ^ See facsimile of letter
23. ^ Nostradamus, M., Les Propheties, 1568 omnibus edition
24. ^ 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
25. ^ Lemesurier, P., Nostradamus, Bibliomancer, Career Press, 2010, p. 41: see his
detailed analysis.
26. ^ In several quatrains he mentions the name Hister (somewhat resembling Hitler),
although this is 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" – refers to three towns in southwestern France near his
one-time home.
27. ^ "CI, Q81". Maar.us. http://www.maar.us/first_century_nostradamus.html. Retrieved
2010-03-20.
28. ^ Actually the 13th–14th century Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus in a misascribed
version sometimes referred to as the Vaticinia Nostradami
29. ^ Dupèbe, Jean, Nostradamus: Lettres inédites, 1983
30. ^ a b Randi, James, The Mask of Nostradamus, 1993
31. ^ Wilson, Ian, Nostradamus: The Evidence, 2002
32. ^ "False prophesy". Snopes.com. http://www.snopes.com/rumors/predict.htm.
Retrieved 2010-03-20.
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