The Nostradamus Keys to Decipherment—A Prophet’s Life and Times
Product ID: PP28
Report Topics:
- An overview of the famed French seer’s background, formal education and practice as a physician, his metaphysical training and becoming a leading astrologer, his many travels, marriages and family life, his patronage by the French court, the publication of his writings, and his death in 1566
- The organization of Nostradamus’ prophecies and speculations about the prophet’s other unpublished writings which may yet one day be found
Full Report:
Although his predictions are almost five hundred years old, Nostradamus is still considered a “superstar” among seers. Most people recognize his name and are aware he was a famous French prophet from the sixteenth century (1503–1566). He wrote a unique book of over a thousand prophetic poems and prose fragments which are still being fulfilled with amazing accuracy, titled Les Vrayes Centuries or The True Centuries, first published in 1555.
Walk into any good bookstore or any large library, and you will not fail to find at least one or more than a dozen volumes presently available written about Nostradamus‘ prognostications. Every time a national or international crisis arises, or a major disaster or cataclysm shakes the globe, his words are fervently sought after and re-read yet again. His impact is stronger than it has ever been, for his name is whispered more and more among the corridors of power, by those increasingly concerned with what will happen next in the world. In every generation that has gone by, Nostradamus’ mysterious verses have revealed new revelations on unfolding human and earthly events. He was indeed a “man for all seasons,” even a “man for all time,” for his visionary messages were in reality beyond time itself.
Just who was this enigmatic celebrity of the French Renaissance? If he was a true prophet, did he have something important to say to us today, living as we are at the beginning of a new century and new millennium?
In order to answer these questions, let us take an historical overview of the prophet’s life and times.
Our subject was born into and spent most of his years in the picturesque southern French region of Provence. It was named such because it had been the first Roman “province” beyond the Alps, established in the second century B.C.E. The old Provençal language was based on Latin, and local laws and customs remained essentially Roman even beyond the century in which Nostradamus lived.
From 1434 to 1480, Provence was the domain of René the Good, a somewhat eccentric and benevolent ruler who held various titles and far flung possessions in Italy as well as France. According to Nostradamus’ own family accounts, the seer’s maternal grandfather, Jean de Saint-Rémy, was a prominent Jewish physician-astrologer and advisor in René’s court. His paternal grandfather, whose original Hebrew name was Abraham Solomon, may have originally come from Italy with the Christianized name of Pietro Nostra-done, later changed yet again to Pierre de Nostradame. He too was a physician-astrologer, who served King René’s son, Jean, Duke of Calabria and Lorraine.
In 1470, after the Duke was murdered, Pierre’s services were bequeathed to René, and he was sent to the Provençal court at Tarascon. There he met Jean de Saint-Rémy, the two becoming fast friends. Upon the death of René, Jean persuaded Pierre to move back with him to his native village of Saint-Rémy, located about forty miles northwest of Marseilles, to set up a practice together. In time, Pierre’s son, Jacques, a notary, fell in love with Jean’s daughter, Renée, making a perfect inter-family match.
About the time their marriage took place, the last of King René’s family line died out, and Provence became the possession of the Valois house of France. Far less tolerant of Jews and other minorities than the old King, the French court issued an Edict in 1501, declaring that all citizens of Provence had to be duly baptized into the Church within three months, or lose their possessions and be deported. As was customary for the times, the entire family in Saint-Rémy complied, though they continued to practice their ancient faith in secrecy. Even the family name was altered slightly, changed from the Provençal Nostradame to reflect the more classical French rendition, Notredame.
It was under these conditions that Jacques and Renée’s first son was born at high noon on Thursday, December 14, 1503 (Julian calendar, which translates into December 23—the Winter Solstice—in our present Gregorian calendar). He was christened Michel de Notredame.
It is important to establish these early family ties, because more recently, in the 1950’s, a few researchers made attempts to document another background for the prophet, trying to prove that he had instead come from a family of local grain dealers and tax collectors of questionable character. But given the situation of the 1501 Edict, when thousands of Jewish residents chose new names and identities to satisfy Church authorities, local records were easily confused. It becomes evident through deeper research that what was actually found were the records for the wrong family in the wrong location. In fact, what may have been uncovered was the genealogy for a later imposter, who called himself “Michel Nostradamus the Younger,” who died rather ignobly at the siege of Pouisson in 1574.
In contrast, we have the solid testimonies of both grandfathers passed down and written by the prophet, by his son César who became a prominent Provençal historian, and by Chavigny, Nostradamus’ personal secretary and first biographer-interpreter. All these date contemporaneous to the period in question, and are corroborated by other existing historical sources. The original family lines thus hold strong and secure.
Young Michel soon became the eldest of four sons—Bertrand and Hectore, we know little about further; Jean, named after his grandfather, eventually wrote a history concerning the poets and mystical troubadours of Provence, and was also procurer to the local parliament; and César, the youngest, who also passed into obscurity, but nevertheless had a deep influence on Nostradamus, enough so to name his first son by his second marriage after him in later years.
When Michel attained an early age, grandfather Jean detected that the boy had special abilities. He requested that the child be moved into his own residence, so that he could personally take charge of his first education, particularly in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, astrology—as well as, to be sure, the more esoteric sciences of which Jean, because of his position, was a secret master. After Jean died, Michel was returned to his parents’ home, only now he was under the watchful tutelage of his second grandfather, Pierre.
Reaching fourteen, the boy was sent off to nearby Avignon, the ancient walled and towered city of the medieval Popes, renowned as a liberal center of French Renaissance learning. Here, for his Philosophia studies, he excelled in the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and the quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, music and astrology), all given in classical Latin and Greek. Of these the one subject in which he far surpassed everyone was the knowledge of the heavens, so much so that he was nicknamed by his classmates as the “little astrologer.”
When he began to defend the then heretical concepts of Copernican heliocentricity, however, young Michel was quickly withdrawn after his graduation from Avignon, for fear of coming to the attention of the Church authorities. It was then that his parents, with grandfather Pierre’s blessing, decided on a more “acceptable” career for the boy. In 1522, at age nineteen, Michel was enrolled into the University of Montpellier, close to fifty miles west of Saint-Rémy, second only to Paris in the teaching of the medical sciences and arts.
Secure in a large Jewish community, and aided by a mostly Jewish faculty, Michel breezed through the physiology of Aristotle, the anatomy of Galen, the histories of Pliny and Theophratus, and the medical wisdom of Hippocrates and Avicenna. After three years he entered the oral exams of the baccalaurèat, changing his black robes of the student to the red robes of the learned, upon their successful conclusion. Soon after, completing his delivery of five lectures, passing the per intentionem tests, and accurately diagnosing a patient’s illness before the Chancellor of the University, Michel next obtained his license to practice medicine from the Bishop of Montpellier in 1525.
In that same year plague broke out throughout southern France. Rather than immediately continue on for his doctorate, the young physician determined to test his skills against the dreaded epidemic. For the next four years he traveled from stricken town to town offering his services.
What was considered to be “plague” in those days actually took in a wide variety of ailments. Bubonic plague, also called Le Charbon or the black plague, had pneumonic and septicemia forms that were particularly virulent. In addition, fast-spreading “sweat-fever,” influenza, measles, chicken pox, diphtheria, whooping cough and syphilis from time to time and place to place brought widespread chaos and death.
For that period, doctors were considered by many to be as much a threat as the disease, often dressing in grotesque protective leather attire and masks soaked in garlic and other foul-smelling concoctions, inflicting horribly ineffective mercury and sulfur-based potions and the practice of “bleeding” upon their patients. In sharp contrast, Michel appeared among the plague victims as the epitome of health, rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed, offering hope and good spirits. He insisted on absolute cleanliness, the use of clean running water rather than stagnant well water, plus he gave powdered flower lozenges for general healing purposes—indicating he understood the importance of hygiene, disinfectants and homeopathic remedies to combat disease.
By the time the plague outbreaks had subsided in 1529, Michel’s return to the University was accompanied with an impressive reputation. He quickly fulfilled his les triduanes examinations by which he had to vigorously defend his unorthodox practices, and on October 23rd (November 2nd , or All Saints’ Day/ Halloween in our calendar), he received the doctor’s distinctive four-cornered hat, ermine-trimmed robe, a gold ring and a volume of Hippocrates. As was also the practice of the time among scholars, he Latinized his family name, thereafter recognized with the appellation which we are today most familiar, and know him by—Nostradamus.
Though he remained at the University for about two years as a teacher, he found academia too restrictive. The new doctor’s wanderlust finally bested him, and in the period from 1532 to 1534 he traveled again, revisiting cities and towns of his past curative triumphs, especially Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Toulouse along the Garonne.
While staying in Toulouse, Nostradamus received a letter from Jules-Cesar Scalinger. He was considered one of Europe’s greatest scholars, second only to Erasmus, being an authority in medicine, poetry, philosophy, botany and mathematics.
Scalinger expressed a desire to meet with the much talked-about young man. Nostradamus responded by traveling to the small town of Agen, about sixty miles southeast of Bordeaux, where he resided. Not only did their first encounter go well, but Nostradamus liked the location and climate of the place enough to decide on settling down. He became a student of Scalinger, opened a practice, and was soon married, with two children, a boy and a girl.
In 1537, however, disaster struck Nostradamus three times over. First, he had a major falling out with Scalinger, whose formal knowledge began to clash with his own deeper esoteric and now budding intuitive wisdom. Then, another wave of the plague swept through Agen, swiftly and tragically taking the lives of all three of his family. Despite the good doctor’s training, and having cured countless others, he could only stand by, utterly helpless to save those he loved most. Quite unsympathetic to his pain, his clients soon deserted him. His wife’s parents sued him for the return of her dowry, winning a somewhat biased judgment against him in the Agen courts.
Finally, to make matters worse, a casual remark he had made criticizing a local sculptor’s rendition of the Virgin Mary was reported to the Church as a blasphemous pronouncement. Word reached the forlorn Nostradamus that he would soon be called before the Inquisitor at Toulouse. With his faith in all then existing “establishment” institutions of education, medicine, family, society, law and religion completely shattered, the 35-year old Nostradamus quietly left Agen, never to return.
The next six years might be considered the “lost years” of Nostradamus. Most biographies agree that this period was one of intense Initiations, during which the lone scholar traveled extensively, reclaiming the esoteric wisdom instilled within him in his early youth, by making a grand pilgrimage of self-discovery to the ancient sacred places and secret centers of occult learning scattered throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.
Stories and traditions recount that he journeyed as far north as Lorraine, as far east as Venice and as far south as Sicily. But there are significant gaps, suggesting he may have also gone far beyond these realms within Christendom, into more “forbidden” regions.
Going incognito as a “wandering Jew,” he would have been helped by other widely scattered Jewish merchants and artisans who, being outcasts from all other societies, nevertheless could more freely move between them and among them. Evidence from the prophet’s own writings indicate he had an intimate knowledge of Spain, Portugal, England, Flanders, Germany, Malta, North Africa, Greece, the Aegean isles, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine and the Middle East. This was knowledge that could not have been obtained only through the inaccurate geographical hearsay of the day, but had to have been gotten firsthand.
With his contacts in the major ports of Bordeaux, Marseilles and Venice, and particularly among the Moorish businessmen and scholars of his native Provence, Nostradmaus would have had access by ship to a large portion of both the sixteenth century Catholic and Moslem worlds. Through his training from his grandfathers, he also knew where and how to contact other secret masters of the ancient esoteric wisdoms, to enter into a yet deeper training as an adept mystic and seer. Many of his source materials, as well as his prized instruments of divination, were no doubt obtained during these voyages of illumination.
The year 1544 found Nostradamus back in home territory, returned to the port of Marseilles from abroad, where he was called upon to once again combat the plague running rampant across the Provençal countryside. He first went to Aix, then was asked to work in the small nearby village of Salon, not far from his birthplace. He enjoyed its peacefulness, finally deciding to settle there in 1546. Here would be his home base for the next twenty years, until his death.
On November 11, 1547 (November 20 on our calendar) he married a local wealthy widow, Anne Ponsarde Gemelle. They established a household just off the Place de Poissonnerie, in the Farreiroux quarter, on a street today renamed after the prophet.
The house, recently restored, is now a tourist attraction. Nostradamus converted the entire top floor into his private study and observatory, which also became a permanent location for his further research.
During the day, he resumed his old medical practice, took on a few select students, as well as provided special cosmetics and potions for the local gentry. At night, however, the candles remained lit far into the hours of darkness, flickering in the upper story window, behind which he practiced the ancient arts of divination, and began writing down the results. Though accepted by way of his wife’s connections with the bourgeois of the town, the common Salonois took a dim view of Dr. Nostradamus’ nocturnal vigils.
They were suspicious of his Jewish background, occult leanings, and possible Huguenot (Protestant) sympathies. Whenever their ire against anything different from time to time exploded into a Caban or organized riot, the home of the seer was a regular target, pelted with stones.
In 1550 Nostradamus published his first almanac. Two years later he released two minor works on cosmetics, pharmaceutics, remedies and recipes, as well as an enigmatic treatise on the Egyptian Mysteries entitled Orus Apollo. It was not until after the arrival of his primary student and secretary, Jean-Aimé Chavigny in 1554, that the seer was free enough from his everyday business to begin his most ambitious and most famous book of all—Les Vrayes Centuries, The True Centuries, his major opus on prophecy.
It appears that originally Nostradamus’ intent was to organize this book as a collection of quatrains or four-lined poems, separated into ten divisions called “Centuries” (though nothing to do with actual periods of time), each division containing one hundred quatrains. The first or Bonhomme edition of 1555 had the first Three Centuries complete, and only 53 verses in Century IV, plus a “Preface” dedicated to his newly born son, César, that included further predictions in prose form. The later Rosne edition of 1557 possessed the Preface, the first Six Centuries complete, and 42 quatrains of Century VII. The fuller Roux-Tromblay edition of 1558 offered the Preface, all Ten Centuries (but with Century VII still incomplete), and an “Epistle to King Henri Secundus,” another prophetic prose piece.
This basic content remained relatively unchanged, even through to the Rigaud edition of 1568, published two years after the prophet’s death.
According to Nostradamus’ last will, his surviving papers were to be bundled up and locked away, only to be unsealed by one of his sons when they reached an age and disposition when they could study them. His eldest son, César, followed his wishes, and did not release any further of his father’s works until the issuing of the Ménier-Roger edition of 1589. This contained quite a few “Additional” quatrains. Their number indicated that not only had Nostradamus planned to complete Century VII, but was also developing a Century XI and XII, never finished (as far as we know).
In 1594, the prophet’s secretary and student, Chavigny, organized the seer’s almanac prognostications that had been previously published for the years 1555 to 1561, written separately from the Centuries. These became the “Presages,” four-lined poems, 141 in total, which Chavigny released under the title First Face of the French Janus.
Later, in 1603, Chavigny produced a second work, The Pleiades, wherein he related both the Centuries’ verses and the Presages to the more ancient prophecies of St. Cataldus and the Tiburtine Sibyl.
Finally, in the Duruau edition of 1605 published at Troyes (all previous editions had been published at Lyons), further “Additional” quatrains were released, as well as a new set of 58 “Sixains” or six-lined verses that had been more recently gleaned from Nostradamus’ posthumous papers. The Sixains show evidence of having been slightly reworked, either by Chavigny or César, though the essential core written by the master seer is clearly present. All this, included with the rest of the previously published materials, constituted the bulk of the 1605 edition, and it subsequently has become the standard collection upon which every other edition and commentary on the prophecies of Nostradamus is based.
There has been much speculation about what other prophetic materials the seer wrote, which never got published. In both the Ménier 1588 and the Rossett-Roger 1589 editions (both released at Paris), references were made to “39 New Articles” that had been added by Nostradamus to the original quatrains in 1561. What happened to these remains a mystery.
In Chavigny’s Janus, he stated that he promised to soon publish his teacher’s “twelve books of Prose Presages” in a later release. Chavigny unfortunately died in 1604, before he could complete his task. He is reported to have left behind several interpretive manuscripts, many that were known about and read through the centuries. One such work was last seen by the French commentator Papillon in Bourgogne in 1742, and by Buget in Aix-en-Provence in 1860. These may one day be rediscovered, gathering dust somewhere in one of the old libraries or private collections which still exist, unexplored, in the southern region of France, undisturbed by the general destructions of the Napoleonic, Franco-Prussian and World Wars.
There have been persistent rumors also that certain other “secret books” were buried with the prophet in his tomb. The local Salonois in fact had so much fearful respect for the man, that for years they claimed that if you placed your ear against the marble epitaph where the prophet had worded the warning inscribed QUIETUM POSTERI NE INVIDETE, “Let not posterity disturb his rest,” one could still hear the old seer scratching his pen against paper, writing an unending stream of prognostications far into the future. Tragically, if anything was placed in the tomb with his body, it would have vanished when the tomb was destroyed by Revolutionaries in 1791.
Even with the Centuries’ first incomplete appearance in 1555, the cryptic verses were an instant success among the courts of Europe, so much so that only a year later Nostradamus received an official summons to appear before the Queen of France, Catherine de Medici. After a month’s journey to Paris, the prophet finally met with Catherine in order for him to draw up horoscopes for all her children. He dutifully did so, but being diplomatic (and as a possible life-saving measure for himself), he offered her only half the truth. He predicted that all her male offspring would be placed upon a throne to rule.
What he did not dare say was that it would be the same throne they would occupy, following each other in rapid succession, cut down by sickness, ineptitude and assassination, to the final extinction of the Valois line.
Though his trip to Paris was by no means financially rewarding, upon Nostradamus’ return to Salon he was showered with honors and fame. This was later enhanced by a visit to Salon exclusively to see him by the Duke of Savoy and Princess Marguerite in 1559, and a second encounter with Queen Catherine when she came to Provence in 1564 on a royal tour with her son, Charles IX, who appointed him “Physician-in-Ordinary to the King.”
In the meantime, the prophet’s reputation was greatly spread abroad, especially by his accurate prediction concerning the violent death of Henri II in a joust. The ambassadorial correspondences of France, Italy and Spain were abuzz with further speculations of what he foresaw might happen next.
In this successful period also, from 1556 to 1564, Nostradamus’ family grew in number. Altogether he had six children. His eldest son, César, became a well respected historian, as well as the editor of the last of his father’s writings. A second son, André, became a Capuchin monk. His third son, Charles, chose a life of poetry and song as a Provençal troubadour. The seer’s three daughters, Madeleine, Diana and Anna, each married into well-to-do families in the region, blessing the prophet with many grandchildren.
It was at this time, too, that Nostradamus’ secretary, Chavigny, wrote this description of his employer and teacher:
“He was a little under medium height, of robust body, nimble and vigorous. He had a large and open forehead, a straight and even nose, gray eyes which were generally pleasant but which blazed when he was angry, and a visage both severe and smiling, such that along with his severity a great humanity could be seen; his cheeks were ruddy, even in his old age, his beard was long and thick, his health good and hearty (except in old age) and all his senses acute and complete.
“His mind was good and lively, understanding easily what he wanted to, his judgment was subtle, his memory quite remarkable. By nature he was taciturn, thinking much and saying little, though speaking, very well in the proper time and place; for the rest, vigilant, prompt and impetuous, prone to anger, patient in labor. He slept only four to five hours. He praised and loved freedom and showed himself joyous and facetious, as well as biting, in his jokery.”
In June of 1566, after returning from Arles, Nostradamus suffered a severe case of gout and arthritis that soon developed into the more serious ailment of dropsy (the modern edema) by which fluids began building up in his tissues. A local notary was called in on June 17th to draw up the prophet’s will. On the evening of July 1, Chavigny, taking his leave, said to his teacher, “I will see you tomorrow.” Nostradamus replied with his last prophecy, “You will not see me alive at sunrise.” The seer was found the next morning, sitting at his writing bench at the foot of his bed, slumped over his final penned words.
As was his request, he was buried in the local Church of the Franciscan Friars, Les Cordeliars. His tomb was later visited by Louis XIII in 1622, and by Louis XIV in 1660. In 1791, the Church was destroyed by Revolutionaries, one of whom claimed to have drunk wine from the skull of the seer. Nostradamus’ bones were eventually carefully re-gathered and reburied in Salon’s Church of St. Lawrence, where they remain today.
[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]
