阅读诺查丹玛斯 Nostradamus在旅游地理的作品!!! | |||
诺查丹玛斯幼小的时候起就因他非凡的才能而十分引人注目。他所受的教育主要来自于他的祖父，拉丁语、希腊语、希伯来语、数学，以及被称之为天体学的占星术等，无所不学，无所不通。祖父去世后，他回到住在巴里大街的父母身边，继续接受外祖父对他的教育。不久，诺查丹玛斯被送到阿维尼翁去学习，与居住在当地的几位表兄弟住在一起。
诺查丹玛斯对占星术显示出了极大的兴趣，在同学们中间，有关占星术的讨论时常发生。他支持地球围绕着太阳旋转的天体论学说，在当时，这使得他的父母常常担忧他会不会被当成异端分子而受到镇压，因为他们毕竟曾经是犹太教的信徒。
1522年，诺查丹玛斯19岁时，家里人送他到了蒙彼利埃，为了让他改学医学。3 年之后，他轻轻松松地获得了学士学位，并拿到开业许可证。之后，他决定离开大学返回故里，全心全意地去救助可伶的传染病的牺牲者。
诺查丹玛斯 - 与病疫战斗的日日夜夜
16世纪，恶疫成了法国南部地方的风土病，特别是炭疽病的流行，使得人们整天在惊恐不安中度日。在诺查丹玛斯的一生中，曾有过不少的中伤者或反对者，但对他面对疾病时的勇气、人性，以及对患者倾注的爱心，对贫困者的宽容，无一人表现过异议。早在1525 年，他就成了当地知名度颇高的好医生。 诺查丹玛斯走街串巷，并研治出若干种独特的处方及治疗方法，与各种病疫战斗，这从他于1552年出版的著作中亦可找到佐证，为了救助患者，他倾注了心血。他从纳尔榜辗转到卡尔卡松。在那里，他时常为当地的司教开一些长生不老的处方。他期望他的处方能奏效，倘若真的有效的话，岂不可以将更多的患者从死亡线上挽救下来吗？卡尔卡松之后他又去了图卢兹。后听说波尔多疫性严重，他又奔赴波尔多。
当他再次回到阿维尼翁后，他花了数月的时间对各种病疫进行了潜心研究。也许正是在这段时间内，他对魔法与玄学产生了浓厚的兴趣，因为在阿维尼翁图书馆此类藏书甚多。当时，教皇使节与马耳他的骑士团长正在阿维尼翁。于是诺查丹玛斯以最佳配方为他们配制了 鲜美的温博果冻。以现代人的眼光来判断，是一种含糖过多的食品。
近 4年的轻松生活之后，为了取得博士学位，诺查丹玛斯返回蒙彼利埃，并于1529年10 月23日再度就读于医学部。因为他的名声与成功。以至于在医学部内部树敌甚多，使得他难以对自己的独特见解进行深入研究与发表。然而，由于他的学识与能力是谁也无法否认的事实，所以他轻而易举地就得到了博士学位。他选择了在蒙彼利埃执教的道路。在一年多的短暂的教学生涯中，由于他的新的理论招致众多的非议，他毅然辞职离去，继续开始了他飘泊不定的游医生涯，身着黑长袍，夜宿黑色帐篷，拥有学者风度的诺查丹玛斯，给人以典型的犹太人的印象。
在图卢兹工作时，诺查丹玛斯收到了仅次于伊拉斯漠的著名哲学家斯卡里杰尔的信。诺查丹玛斯的回信令斯卡里杰尔十分高兴，并发出了欢迎诺查丹玛斯去阿让小住的邀请。 1534年前后，诺查丹玛斯与一位“身份高贵而极富魅力的美女”结婚（遗憾的是迄今为止我们也未能查到该女子的姓名），婚后生下一男一女。斯卡里杰尔的帮助，加上他精湛的医术与非凡的才能，使他过上了安稳而幸福的生活。
然而，好景不长，一连串的悲剧给诺查丹玛斯以沉重的打击。恶疫肆虐阿让，尽管他拼命与恶疫搏击，但无奈恶疫的流行迅速，以至于连妻子及两个孩子都被无情地夺去了生命。 连自己的亲人都无力医救，这一事实对他这名医生来说，无疑是无情而致命的打击。接踵而来的是与斯卡里杰尔的关系越来越糟，最后失去了他的友情。尽管斯卡里杰尔是一个与什么人都要争吵的人，但在这种情况下失和，不能不说是船漏又遇顶头雨。更悲惨的是亡妻的家人逼他返还嫁女时所带去的财产，甚至到法庭提起了诉讼。
令人难以相信的是，1538年，他竟因几年前的出言不慎而被人密告当局，当局将他作为异端分子加以追究。事由很简单，诺查丹玛斯曾对一位正在制作圣母玛利亚青铜像的匠人说 ：“你制作的是恶魔。”尽管诺查丹玛斯反复说明他的本意是说匠人的作品缺少铜像所特有的美的魅力，但宗教法官仍然命令他去图卢兹自首。诺查丹玛斯压根就没打算去自首，更不想心甘情愿地接受法庭的惩罚。为了逃避教会的纠缠，在其后的6年中，他在教会管辖不到的地区颠沛流离。风餐露宿。
诺查丹玛斯 - 预言集在宫廷中引起巨大反响
诺查丹玛斯于11月回到萨朗。不久便与富翁的未亡人安努·蓬萨尔结婚。直到现在，我们仍可以在普拉斯·德·拉·普瓦索努利的一角见到他们婚后居住过的那幢房舍。
与安努·蓬萨尔结婚之后，诺查丹玛斯过上了一段安稳的家庭生活。据推测，他对玄学的关心、预言性洞察力的产生正是在这一段时间。他把他的主要精力放在潜心钻研玄学及著书上，很少顾及长期以来的行医事业。从1550年起，他每年要编制一套年历，1554年以后，开始出版预言集。也许最初的成功给他增添了巨大的信心。他全身心地投入了他的预言工作。
诺查丹玛斯将他在萨朗的住宅的最顶层改造成他的研究室，每到夜间，他总是与他那些神秘学的书籍为伴，在研究室中展开细致的研究。据他本人后来的记述，他习惯于将他读过的书籍读一本烧一本。作为一个学者，是否真会这样去做，是令人怀疑的。毋宁说是对教会当局施放的一种烟幕弹，以逃避教会的纠缠罢了。
他魔法的灵感、幻想的源泉，来自于1547年里昂出版的《神秘埃及》。在他的预言集中多处引用了该书的段落，因此可以断定，当时他手头上拥有这本书。
1554年，据说波努市长埃姆·姆·杰维尼竟然辞去市长职务，敲开诺查丹玛斯的门，请求收他为弟子，专门研习占星术与天文学。
诺查丹玛斯去世后，杰维尼为整理编纂老师的预言集作出了巨大的努力。但正如诺查丹玛斯的儿子赛扎尔所说，杰维尼有时过于夸张了与老师之间关系。这在诺查丹玛斯的遗嘱中亦能找到证据。诺查丹玛斯的遗嘱十分冗长，他详细记述了有关金钱及全部财产的分配，嘱咐将一切交给长大成人的儿子处理。诺查丹玛斯特别在遗嘱中指出，杰维尼有过“寒窗之苦”，但并没有说他是一个真正的学者。但无论怎么说，杰维尼在得到了诺查丹玛斯夫人的同意后，替老师整理了大批的遗稿是一个铁的事实。
1555年，诺查丹玛斯完成了他的第一部预言集，预言的时间跨度是从他所生活的时代直至世界末日。《诸世纪》这一题名与“百年”的概念没有关系。而是因为每一部预言集由百首自由体诗或四行诗构成，故而得名，他打算写一千首诗，编成十部预言集。但不知何故，第七部并未完稿（也就是说收入的预言诗未达到一千首）。当整理他的遗稿时发现，他曾经还想写第十一部与第十二部，但未能实现便离开了人世。
诗是以晦涩难懂的文体写成的，其中有法语、普罗旺斯方言、意大利语、希腊语以及拉丁语等，时间顺序也故意被打乱，估计是为了逃避教会的加害而这样做的，因此，诗中所隐藏的真正含义及秘密，非是专家是难以破解的。
1555年，当他未完成的预言集公开出版后，诺查丹玛斯在法国乃至欧洲名声大震。出版物选用了他的前3部（300 篇）及第4部的部分内容。在当时，书是昂贵的奢侈品，只有贵族或有钱人才能买来阅读，而普通的平民多半是文盲，预言集在宫廷内引起了巨大的反响，因为其中有一句似乎预见到了国王的死。
诺查丹玛斯 - 准确预言王妃及其子女的命运
应卡特琳娜·德·梅迪西斯王妃的招请，诺查丹玛斯于1556年 7月14日前往巴黎。因为王妃的特别关照，原本需要 8周的旅行仅用了一个月的时间就顺利到达了巴黎。诺查丹玛斯 在圣米谢尔的一处旅店找到了住处。王妃恨不得立刻见到诺查丹玛斯，于是第二天一早便招他进宫。在当地警察署长的带领下，诺查丹玛斯接受了王妃的召见。遗憾的是，没有任何人对这次召见做过任何记录。二人的会谈长达两小时。据传说，王妃向他询间了暗示国王之死的四行诗，并对诺查丹玛斯的回答表示满意。事实上，卡特琳娜至死为止都一直很相信诺查丹玛斯的预言。
国王亨利二世对诺查丹玛斯并不感兴趣。虽然接见的时间极短，但仍然赏赐了他 100枚金币。王妃后又追加了30枚，对诺查丹玛斯来说，这点赏赐实在是太少，因为他来巴黎的路费就花去了100多枚金币。然而值得安慰的是，他的住处被移到了大主教的豪华住宅。在巴黎滞留的二周里，他会见了许多慕名来仿者，并利用占星术，给其以预见性忠告。其间，王妃又一次召见了诺查丹玛斯，并要求他对瓦卢瓦的七个孩子的运势进行预言。这的确是一件微妙而困难的事情。其实，在业已公开出版的书籍中已经明确预言了他们的悲剧性命运。但此时此刻也只能对卡特琳娜说：“您的儿子都能成为君王”。他的预言并不完全正确，因为其中有位叫弗朗索瓦的在继承王位之前就离开了人世。另外，假如他实际的天启是会出现四位君王的活，预言就再正确不过了。亨利三世在重登法国国王之前，曾是波兰国王。
之后不久，诺查丹玛斯受到巴黎警方的追查，其理由是他以魔法惑众。为此他不得不慌慌张张返回萨朗。可为他回到故里时，却被作为名士受到了欢迎。
回故里后，因患痛风及关节炎，他几乎没有做多少像样的工作。大多数时间用于接待来访者或著书立说。1568年，也就是他去世两年之后，所著的著作才得以公开出版，其实在此之前，他很多的预言早以被他人引用，说明他的部分书稿在出版之前就已流传于世，而诺查丹玛斯对此并不十分在意。
诺查丹玛斯之所以对他的预言在社会上广为流传保持沉默，大概是由于国王驾崩（1559 年）所致，因为事实验证了他预言的正确性。尽管如此，他仍对这一预言感到有些不安。为 了不至于引起各界的恐慌，他对社会上流传的预言只好保持沉默。但就在次年（1560），娶苏格兰女王玛丽为王妃的弗朗索瓦二世撒手人寰。从此宫廷中的人也公然引证预言诗。 长子，
不幸的婚姻无后的寡妇
二岛纷争
十八青春未成人
更有少年将成婚弗朗索瓦二世是亨利二世的长子，他在即将满18岁的六星期前告别妻子离开人世。苏格兰女王玛丽返回故乡后，两国产生不和。弗朗索瓦的弟子聂尔年仅11岁便与奥地利的伊丽莎白结成婚约。
1564年，摄政掌权的卡特琳娜王妃决定率领次子聂尔九世及其一族，巡幸法国全疆。
因为此次巡幸需要两年时间，所以把随行大臣等人削减到最低限度的800人。
当巡幸至普罗旺斯时，卡特琳娜理所当然地访问了萨朗，会见了诺查丹玛斯，并邀请与其共同进餐。卡特琳娜还前往诺查丹玛斯的私宅拜会了诺查丹玛斯，对其子女给予了赞誉。会见时，卡特琳娜赏赐给诺查丹玛斯300枚金币，并授予他常任侍医的职衔。这一职衔除了薪金之外，更伴随着诸多金钱以外的利益，使得诺查丹玛斯喜出望外。
在卡特琳娜访问萨朗期间，另外还发生了一件令人饶有兴趣的事情。
在随从中有一位少年。诺查丹玛斯对他说：“让我看看你身上的一颗痣。”少年害羞而不允。次日，正当少年还在熟睡时，诺查丹玛斯悄悄地看了一眼便预言说：“这位少年未来 将会成为法国的国王／尽管当时卡特琳娜尚有两位儿子健在……。这位少年就是纳瓦尔的亨利，即后来的亨利四世。
长期忍受痛风折磨，并逐步并发水肿的诺查丹玛斯意识到自己不会活得太久，于是于1566年6月17日写下了他的遗嘱。他的全部财产达3444枚金币，在当时着实是一笔不小的数目。7月1日，他请当地的神父为他举行了最后的仪式。是夜，当杰维尼向他告辞时，诺查丹玛斯对他说：“我再也不会活着见到你了。”第二天早上，当人们发现他的遗体时，正如他本人所预言的那样：“将会发现僵硬地躺在椅子与床之间”。他被葬在萨朗的方济会派教会的墙壁中，妻子安努用最精美的大理石为他立下了碑。
在大革命时期，迷信的士兵们将他的墓掘开，把遗骨埋到萨朗的另外一个教会里，这就是圣·罗兰教会。如今人们若是去那里的话，仍可以看到诺查丹玛斯的墓及其肖像。
诺查丹玛斯 - 再版达400余年的“新的圣经”
在评价自称有预言能力的人物的业绩时，首先要做的有两件事：一是要判断手中资料的真伪；二是要确认其出版发行的年月日。几个世纪来，诺查丹玛斯几乎成了众多赝作的牺牲者，并且受到了许多不公正的评价，细想起来，倒也不难理解。
他著作的初期版本中，包括《诸世纪》在内，显得十分的混乱。那是因为那些著作最初被分成两部分，分别于1555年与1568年印刷所致。1555年所印的那一部分，连印刷日期都没有。正因为如此，难免有一些被篡改过的、与真正的初版相隔数百年之遥的“初版”在世间流传。
《诸世纪》出版的数量之多自不必言。但除圣经之外，再版达400余年而仍不绝版的，恐怕除诺查丹玛斯的《诸世纪》之外就再也没有了，他所唤起的人们的关心是绝无仅有的。《诸世纪》也好，对《诸世纪》所做的注也好，大约30册的书籍在他死后的各个世纪，从未中断过出版。甚至在法国大革命以及第一、二次世界大战那样不同寻常的时期，那些书籍仍然在大量出版发行。其中虽然有许多恶劣者，放弃公正的判断，根据自己的需要任意篡改原文。也有人以批判的、怀疑的眼光去看待这些书籍。然而，却没有一个人企图全面否定诺查丹玛斯的正确的预言中所闪烁的星光。
诺查丹玛斯 - 诺查丹玛斯证实了法国革命的胜利
上自1649年，下至20世纪80年代的今天，诺查丹玛斯一直被人们作为宣传工具而加以利用。
1649年，马扎兰枢机卿的反对派们，对马扎兰在法国宫廷中的强有力的影响力深表不快，便公开发行了被认定为1568年版的《诸世纪》，其中硬是插入了对枢机卿极为不利的 四行诗。
1789年7月14日，巴士底监狱发生暴动时，革命志士们就是从《诸世纪》中得到感悟的。根据是在狱中的桌子上有一部分供阅读用的《诸世纪》影印件，被关押的囚犯们在十天 中相互传阅，以此坚定了行动成功的信心。
拿破仑是在妻子博阿尔内的劝导下才把目光转向《诸世纪》的。然而他却成了被认定为是诺查丹玛斯粗糙而杂乱的伪作的牺牲者。那实际上是一本叫做“奥立弗利斯预言集”的伪 作，出版于1820年，其后又有类似的赝作如“奥尔弗尔”流传于世。但所有这类书籍，与诺查丹玛斯都没有一丝一毫的关系。
诺查丹玛斯不仅在法国十分有名，在整个欧洲也享有盛誉，《诸世纪》的各种版本，在 初版发行后的25年内就遍布了整个欧洲。在此很难列举出他全部的版本，但就目前所知的 而言，就有26种版本与4种赝作。从书籍作为珍贵的奢侈品的1555年至1643年，欧洲不断出版《诸世纪》这一事实来看，就足以说明诺查丹玛斯是何等地受人欢迎。
诺查丹玛斯 - 被希特勒的宣传材料所利用的四行诗
1860年以后，在法国某偏僻的乡村，有一位叫阿贝·杜尔耐的牧师。此人以诺查丹玛斯弟子杰维尼的名义，向世人推出了若干册诺查丹玛斯四行诗的注解书。他的这一举动震撼 了法国，并对当时的许多重大决策起到了很大的影响。阿贝·杜尔耐相信波旁王族必将复归法国王位，同样确信在下一次战争中，法国将会经瑞士而被侵略。受这一情报的支配，当时法国的参谋长下令修筑了可悲的马其诺防线。据说 其根据是《诸世纪》第4章的第80首诗，这话听起来挺荒唐，但却是事实。希特勒对诺查丹玛斯的关心，是由于约瑟夫·保罗·戈培尔夫人读到了一首有关臭名昭著的希恩塔的四行诗而引起的。正如戈培尔夫人所说的那样，1939年，同样是这首诗，引起了约瑟夫·保罗·戈培尔对诺查丹玛斯的兴趣。
1940年，德军用飞机撤下了大量的“取自于”诺查丹玛斯的伪预言诗。散发的预言告诉人们：希特勒的胜利是必然的；战争不会波及到法国的东南部。通过这些“预言”，想达到的真正目的是为了削弱入侵巴黎的通道及英法海峡各港口的防备。
另一方面，英国的情报机关也毫不示弱。他们从被称得上是世界上最大的骗子的路易·德·保罗那里借来智慧，投入巨额资金，展开了反德宣传。他们从空中向比利时、法国 抛撒用德文编集的诺查丹玛斯的预言诗。这些事情发生在1943年，离我们现在并不遥远。
诺查丹玛斯 - 多元宇宙的注视者
有关诺查丹玛斯的最后一个问题，他到底是一个真正的预言家，还是一个骗子？他本人确信自己具有某种能力，但他也有理由说明不能根据他人的需要而引发这种能力。在他的预 言集中，的确存在部分降低他的价值的预言。因此，对于读者来说，哪些预言可信？400年前的他到底能否对未来的偶发事件作出预见，他是否是凭靠某种直感作出的推断？这都需要用自己的眼睛去做判断。
有心人应该明白，在现实生活中，绝大多数人相信自己的未来是可以通过思考与行动而发生改变的。预言无非是否定这一事实，言明所有的未来都是不可改变的、固定的东西，人类面向未来无论如何挣扎也无济于事。也就是说，神也好，命运也罢，一切都是由某种绝对的东西支配着的。我们通常坚信人类必须拥有自由意志。但是，即使我们把诺查丹玛斯的预言诗的95％看成是与历史的巧合而加以排除的话，同时也不得不承认仍有部分预言诗是不应该草率地去对待的。
路易十六世逃往瓦伦。拿破仑战败、希特勒死亡、伊朗国王退位，这些事实都在诺查丹玛斯的预言之中，难道我们可以无视这些预言诗吗？那些能明确预见到事件发生年月的诗又该如何解释呢？比如预言波斯与土耳其将于1729年10月签订秘密协定的诗；再比如指出君主被暗杀月份与日期的诗等等。要想清楚地解开这类诗中的谜，是十分困难的。我们认为这决不是偶然与巧合。
现代的爱因斯坦的信奉者们只承认永远的现在。古代的神秘主义者也同样相信永远的现在。假如说存在未来的话，（未来现象的）预知便是事实。进步的知识的整体倾向将会把物理学的各种法则适用于四元连续体，也就是说，适用于永远的现在。如果真的这样去做的话，那么，过去、现在、未来将会同时存在。于是，变动的岂不就是我们的意识了吗？事情总会弄清楚的，倘若果真如此，预知将会成为被人们所接受的事实。
另一方面，解答或许隐藏在多元的思想中。即相互平行运行的，可变换的二者择一的未来已经定型在了所谓的多元宇宙的概念之中。
诺查丹玛斯也许能够幻视出某人在初期阶段自由决定的行动，或许会发生、或许不会发生的时间的平行线。无论从什么意义上说。人始终不是死海中的一座孤岛，人们的所有行动都会相互影响。因此，假如路易十六世采取不同的行动留在巴黎，而不惊慌失措地逃往瓦伦的话，本书中岂不是又会出现一首难以理解的四行诗吗？同样如此，无论你觉得多么离奇怪，当初希特勒的注意力若不被预言集中英国与波兰的关系所吸引的话，他果真会发起那场战争吗？
读者不妨可以把自由意志的概念与数学上的概率加以融合。充分调动透视或者类似透视的能力，也许你就会朦胧地看到或者捕捉到未来。当然，这种未来是因感知者的修养不同而 相异的、有条件的未来…… 人类似乎总是在重复某种错误。诺查丹玛斯的部分预言诗之所以能正确地预言到相隔一个世纪以上的事件，正是证明了这一事实。倘若我们要回避诺查丹玛斯为人类所预见到的不吉利、黑暗的未来的话，我们就必须从过去数百年延袭至今的行为模式中解脱出来。在向世界和平和全球经济一体化不断迈进的同时，从饥饿、战乱、悲剧的诺查丹玛斯的中世纪的理性概念中获得自由。
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.
Biography
Nostredame's claimed birthplace before its recent renovation.
Childhood
Born on 14 or 21 of December 1503 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). Michel's known siblings included Delphine, Jean I (c. 1507–77), Pierre, Hector, Louis, Bertrand, Jean II (born 1522) and Antoine (born 1523). 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 – 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.
Student year
At the age of fifteen the young 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) 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 afterward when it was discovered that he had been an apothecary, a "manual trade" expressly banned by the university statutes. The expulsion document (BIU Montpellier, Register S 2 folio 87) still exists in the faculty library. 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.
Marriage and healing work
In 1531 Nostredame was invited by Jules-César Scaliger, a leading Renaissance scholar, to come to Agen. There he married a woman of uncertain name (possibly Henriette d'Encausse), who bore him two children. In 1534 his wife and children died, presumably from the Plague. After their deaths, he continued to travel, passing through France and possibly Italy.
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. 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.
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, 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. (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.)
He then began his project of writing a book of one thousand mainly French quatrains, which constitute the largely undated prophecies for which he is most famous today. Feeling vulnerable to religious fanatics, 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. 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, 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. 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.
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' 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. 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). 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.
Work
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.
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' source
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 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.
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.
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.) 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.
Further material was gleaned from the De honesta disciplina of 1504 by Petrus Crinitus, 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. This may help explain the fact that, during the same period, The Prophecies reportedly came into use in France as a classroom reader.
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:
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)
Not that I would attribute to myself either the name or the role of a prophet – Preface to César, 1555
[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
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
His rejection of the title prophet also squares with the fact that he entitled his book
Detail from title-page of the original 1555 (Albi) edition of Nostradamus's Les Prophetie
(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 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 of his collected Latin correspondence. 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).
Interpretation
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. All of this is presented in the context of the supposedly imminent end of the world – even though this is not in fact mentioned – a conviction that sparked numerous collections of end-time prophecies at the time, not least an unpublished collection by Christopher Columbus.
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, 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 view
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. 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 the past or for the future. Many of them do agree, though, that particular predictions refer, for example, to the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, 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, to the events of 9/11: this 'movable feast' aspect appears to be characteristic of the genre.
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 the documentary 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; 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 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 revealed that much that was claimed about Nostradamus simply did not fit the documented facts. The academics 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.
On top of that, the academics, 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.