Nostradamus
Nostradamus , [a] was a French
physician and reputed seer , who is best known for his book Les Propheties, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains[b] allegedly predicting future events. The book was first published in 1555 and has rarely been out of print since his death.
Nostradamus' biography
Nostradamus's family was originally
Jewish, but had converted to
Catholicism before he was born. He studied at the University of Avignon , but was forced to leave after just over a year when the university closed due to an outbreak of the plague . He worked as an apothecary for several years before entering the University of Montpellier , hoping to earn a doctorate , but was almost immediately expelled after his work as an apothecary (a manual trade forbidden by university statutes) was discovered. He first married in 1531, but his wife and two children were killed in 1534 during another plague outbreak. He fought alongside doctors against the plague before remarrying to Anne Ponsarde, who bore him six children. He wrote an
almanac for 1550 and, as a result of its success, continued writing them for future years as he began working as an
astrologer for various wealthy patrons.
Catherine de' Medici became one of his foremost supporters. His Les Propheties, published in 1555, relied heavily on historical and literary
precedent and initially received mixed reception. He suffered from severe
gout towards the end of his life, which eventually developed in edema . He died on 2 July 1566. Many popular authors have retold apocryphal legends about his life.
In the years since the publication of his
Les Propheties, Nostradamus has attracted a large number of supporters, who, along with much of the popular press , credit him with having accurately predicted many major world events. [6]
[7] Most academic sources reject the notion that Nostradamus had any genuine supernatural prophetic abilities and maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate).[8] These academics argue that Nostradamus's predictions are characteristically vague, meaning they could be applied to virtually anything, and are useless for determining whether their author had any real prophetic powers. They also point out that English translations of his quatrains are almost always of extremely poor quality, based on later manuscripts, produced by authors with little knowledge of sixteenth-century French , and often deliberately mistranslated to make the prophecies fit whatever events the translator believed they were supposed to have predicted.
HIS CHILDHOOD
Municipal plaque on the claimed birthplace of Nostradamus in St-Rémy, France, describing him as an 'astrologer' and giving his birth-date as 14 December 1503 (Julian Calendar)
Nostradamus was born on either 14 or 21 December 1503 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence , Provence , France, [9] where his claimed birthplace still exists, and baptized Michel. [9] He was one of at least nine children of notary Jaume (or Jacques) de Nostredame and Reynière, granddaughter of Pierre de Saint-Rémy who worked as a physician in Saint-Rémy. [9] Jaume's family had originally been Jewish , but his father, Cresquas, a grain and money dealer based in
Avignon , had converted to Catholicism around 1459-60, taking the Christian name "Pierre" and the surname "Nostredame" (Our Lady), the saint on whose day his conversion was solemnised. [9] The earliest ancestor who can be identified on the paternal side is Astruge of Carcassonne , who died about 1420. Michel's known siblings included Delphine, Jean (c. 1507–77), Pierre, Hector, Louis, Bertrand, Jean II (born 1522) and Antoine (born 1523). [10][11][12] 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 [13] — a tradition which is somewhat undermined by the fact that the latter disappears from the historical record
after 1504, when the child was only one year old.
At the age of 15 [6] Nostradamus 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 during an outbreak of the plague. After leaving Avignon, Nostradamus, by his own account, traveled 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 afterwards by the student
procurator , Guillaume Rondelet, when it was discovered that he had been an apothecary, a "manual trade" expressly banned by the university statutes, and had been slandering doctors. [15] The expulsion document, BIU Montpellier, Register S 2 folio 87 , still exists in the faculty library. [16] However, some of his publishers and correspondents would later call him "Doctor". After his expulsion, Nostradamus continued working, presumably still as an
apothecary , and became famous for creating a "rose pill" that purportedly protected against the plague.
In 1531 Nostradamus was invited by
Jules-César Scaliger, a leading
Renaissance scholar , to come to
Agen . [18] There he married a woman of uncertain name (possibly Henriette d'Encausse), who bore him two children. [19] In 1534 his wife and children died, presumably from the plague. After their deaths, he continued to travel, passing through France and possibly Italy .[20]
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. [21] Between 1556 and 1567 he and his wife acquired a one-thirteenth share in a huge canal project, organised by Adam de Craponne , to create the Canal de Craponne to irrigate the largely waterless Salon-de-Provence and the nearby Désert de la
Crau from the river Durance.
Nostradamus has great history when it comes to prophecies and predictions.We will talk about them in the next edition of "Man of History"
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