Michel de Nostredame, born in December 1503 and died in July 1566, was a French astrologer, apothecary, physician, and famous seer. He is most well-known for his book Les Prophéties, published in 1555, which contains 942 poetic quatrains—four-line poems said to predict future events.
Nostradamus’s family was originally Jewish but had converted to Catholic Christianity before his birth. He studied at the University of Avignon but left after about a year when the university closed due to a plague. He worked as an apothecary (a person who prepares medicines) for several years before attending the University of Montpellier to earn a doctorate. However, he was quickly expelled because his apothecary work, which was not allowed by the university, was discovered. He married in 1531, but his wife and two children died in 1534 during another plague outbreak. He later married Anne Ponsarde, with whom he had six children. He wrote an almanac (a calendar with predictions) for 1550, and because it was successful, he continued writing them and became an astrologer for wealthy people, including Catherine de’ Medici. His book Les Prophéties relied on historical and literary examples and received mixed reactions when first published. He suffered from severe gout (a type of arthritis) later in life, which led to swelling in his legs. He died on July 1 or 2, 1566. Many popular stories about his life have been written, but they are not based on facts.
Since Les Prophéties was published, many people have claimed that Nostradamus accurately predicted major world events. However, scholars do not believe he had real supernatural powers. They argue that people often misinterpret or mistranslate his quatrains, which are vague and could apply to many events. These scholars say his predictions are not specific enough to prove he had real prophetic abilities.
Life
Nostradamus was born on either December 14 or 21, 1503, in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. His claimed birthplace still exists today, and he was baptized Michel. He was one of at least nine children of Jaume (or Jacques) de Nostredame, a notary, and Reynière, who was the granddaughter of Pierre de Saint-Rémy, a physician. Jaume’s family originally came from a Jewish background. His father, Cresquas, was a grain and money dealer in Avignon who converted to Catholicism around 1459–60. He took the Christian name "Pierre" and the surname "Nostredame," which means "Our Lady," the saint honored on the day of his conversion. The earliest known ancestor on his father’s side was Astruge of Carcassonne, who died around 1420. Michel’s known siblings included Delphine, Jean (born about 1507 and died in 1577), Pierre, Hector, Louis, Bertrand, Jean II (born in 1522), and Antoine (born in 1523). Little is known about his early life, though some sources say he was educated by his maternal great-grandfather, Jean de St. Rémy. However, this tradition is weakened by the fact that Jean de St. Rémy is not mentioned in historical records after 1504, when Michel was only one year old.
At age 14, Nostradamus entered the University of Avignon to study for a baccalaureate degree. He studied basic subjects like grammar, rhetoric, and logic for less than a year before the university closed due to a plague outbreak. He then traveled across the countryside for eight years, starting in 1521, researching herbal remedies. In 1529, after working as an apothecary, he entered the University of Montpellier to study medicine. He was expelled shortly after by Guillaume Rondelet, a student leader, because he had previously worked as an apothecary, which the university banned, and he had criticized doctors. A document about his expulsion still exists in a library. Some of his publishers later called him "Doctor." After being expelled, he continued working as an apothecary and became known for creating a "rose pill" claimed to protect against the plague.
In 1531, Nostradamus was invited to Agen by Jules-César Scaliger, a famous Renaissance scholar. There, he married a woman whose name is uncertain (possibly Henriette d'Encausse) and had two children. In 1534, his wife and children died, likely from the plague. After their deaths, he continued to travel through France and possibly Italy.
In 1545, he helped the doctor Louis Serre fight a major plague outbreak in Marseille. Later, he worked alone to stop other disease outbreaks in Salon-de-Provence and Aix-en-Provence. In 1547, he settled in Salon-de-Provence, where he married a wealthy widow named Anne Ponsarde. They had six children—three daughters and three sons. Between 1556 and 1567, he and his wife owned a share in a large canal project called the Canal de Craponne, designed to bring water to Salon-de-Provence and the nearby Désert de la Crau from the Durance River.
After visiting Italy, Nostradamus shifted his focus from medicine to the "occult." He wrote an almanac for 1550, using the Latin name "Nostradamus" for the first time. Encouraged by its success, he wrote almanacs every year. These books included at least 6,338 prophecies and eleven annual calendars, all starting on January 1, not March as some people believe. Nobles and other important people began asking him for horoscopes and advice, though he usually relied on his clients to provide birth charts instead of calculating them himself. When he had to do this on his own, he often made mistakes.
Nostradamus then began writing a book of 1,000 French quatrains, which are the prophecies he is most famous for. To avoid religious trouble, he used complex language, wordplay, and mixed languages like Greek, Italian, Latin, and Provençal. Due to how the book was published in three parts, the last 58 quatrains of the seventh "Century" are missing in all known editions.
His book, Les Prophéties (The Prophecies), received mixed reactions. Some people thought he was evil, fake, or mad, while others, like Catherine de' Medici, the wife of King Henry II of France, admired him. After reading his 1555 almanacs, which hinted at dangers to the royal family, she called him to Paris to explain them and create horoscopes for her children. At first, he feared being executed, but by 1566, Queen Catherine made him a counselor and physician to her son, King Charles IX of France.
Some stories say Nostradamus worried about being persecuted for heresy by the Inquisition, but prophecy and astrology were not considered heretical. He would have been in danger only if he had practiced magic. In 1538, he had a conflict with the Church in Agen after an Inquisitor searched for anti-Catholic views. In late 1561, he was briefly imprisoned for breaking a royal law by publishing his 1562 almanac without a bishop’s permission.
By 1566, Nostradamus suffered from gout, a painful condition that made movement difficult, which worsened into swelling. In late June, he asked his lawyer to prepare a will, leaving his property and 3,444 crowns (about $300,000 today) to his wife, with conditions for his children and daughters. He also wrote a short addition to the will. On the evening of July 1, he told his secretary, Jean de Chavigny, "You will not find me alive at sunrise." As he predicted, he was found dead the next morning, lying on the floor next to his bed and a bench. He was buried in a local Franciscan chapel in Salon, later moved to
Works
Nostradamus collected his major, long-term predictions in a work called The Prophecies. The first part of this collection was published in 1555 and included 353 quatrains. A third edition, which added 300 new quatrains, was printed in 1558. However, this version no longer exists in full. Instead, only part of it remains in a combined edition published after Nostradamus died in 1568. This final version includes one unrhymed quatrain and 941 rhymed quatrains, organized into nine groups of 100 and one group of 42, called "Centuries."
At the time, printing was done by setting type based on spoken words, which made it rare for two editions to be exactly the same. Even today, it is uncommon to find two copies that match perfectly. There is no evidence to support the idea—often claimed by people trying to decode his work—that the spelling or punctuation in any edition reflects Nostradamus’s original writing.
Nostradamus’s Almanacs were his most popular work. These were published every year from 1550 until his death. He sometimes released two or three Almanachs in a single year, each titled Almanachs (detailed predictions), Prognostications, or Presages (more general predictions).
Nostradamus was not only a prophet but also a healer. He wrote at least two books on medical science. One was a loose translation of Galen’s Protreptic, titled Paraphrase de C. GALIEN. His other work, Traité des fardemens, was a medical cookbook that included descriptions of treatments for the plague, such as bloodletting, which did not seem to be effective. This book also described how to prepare cosmetics.
A manuscript known as Orus Apollo is stored in the Lyon municipal library. This library holds over 2,000 original documents related to Nostradamus, managed by Michel Chomarat. Orus Apollo is believed to be a translation of an ancient Greek text about Egyptian hieroglyphs, based on later Latin versions. However, these Latin versions did not understand the true meanings of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were only correctly deciphered by Champollion in the 19th century.
After Nostradamus’s death, only The Prophecies remained popular. Over 200 editions of this work have been published, along with more than 2,000 commentaries. Their lasting appeal may be due to their unclear language and lack of specific dates, which allow people to use them selectively after major events and claim they were accurate predictions.
Origins ofThe Prophecies
Nostradamus said his predictions were based on judicial astrology—the use of astrology to judge or assess the quality and potential of events like births, weddings, and coronations. However, professional astrologers of his time, such as Laurens Videl, criticized him for being unskilled and for believing that "comparative horoscopy" (comparing future planetary positions with those from past events) could predict the future.
Research shows that much of Nostradamus’s work rephrased ancient end-of-the-world prophecies, mostly from the Bible, along with historical events and reports of omens. He used comparative horoscopy to project these into the future, which explains why his predictions often mention ancient figures like Sulla, Gaius Marius, and Nero, as well as strange events like "battles in the clouds" and "frogs falling from the sky." Astrology is mentioned only twice in his Preface, 41 times in the Centuries, and more often in his letter to King Henry II. In the last quatrain of his sixth century, he directly criticized astrologers.
His sources included writings by classical historians like Livy, Suetonius, and Plutarch, as well as medieval chroniclers such as Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Jean Froissart. Many of his astrological references were copied almost exactly from Richard Roussat’s Livre de l’estat et mutations des temps (1549–50).
A major source for his prophecies was the Mirabilis Liber (1522), which included prophecies by Pseudo-Methodius, the Tiburtine Sibyl, Joachim of Fiore, and others. His Preface includes 24 biblical quotes, most in the same order as those used by Savonarola. The Mirabilis Liber was popular in the 1520s but later lost influence due to its complex Latin text, Gothic script, and difficult abbreviations. Nostradamus was among the first to rephrase its prophecies in French, which may explain why some credit him for them. In the 16th century, copying and paraphrasing without acknowledgment was common, and some scholars suggest Nostradamus used bibliomancy—a method of randomly selecting a book and using the page it opened to as a guide.
Additional material came from De honesta disciplina (1504) by Petrus Crinitus, which included excerpts from Michael Psellos’s De daemonibus and Iamblichus’s De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum (a book on Chaldean and Assyrian magic). Latin versions of these works were recently published in Lyon, and parts of them appear in Nostradamus’s first two verses. Although Nostradamus claimed in 1555 to have burned all occult books in his library, no one knows exactly which books were destroyed.
People began noticing his reliance on classical sources only in the 17th century. Nostradamus explicitly rejected the title "prophet" (a person with prophetic powers) on several occasions, as seen in his writings:
> "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
> "Not that I would attribute to myself either the name or the role of a prophet." — Preface to César, 1555
> "Some of [the prophets] predicted great and marvelous things to come: for me, I in no way attribute to myself such a title here." — Letter to King Henry II, 1558
> "Not that I am foolish enough to claim to be a prophet." — Open letter to Privy Councillor Birague, 1566
Given his reliance on literary sources, it is unlikely Nostradamus used trance methods other than contemplation, meditation, and incubation. His only description of this process is in letter 41 of his Latin correspondence. The idea that he used flame gazing or water gazing comes from a misunderstanding of his first two verses, which compare his methods to those of the Delphic and Branchidic oracles. In his dedication to King Henry II, he described "emptying my soul, mind, and heart of all care, worry, and unease through mental calm and tranquility." However, his references to the "bronze tripod" of the Delphic rite are usually introduced with "as though," indicating they are comparisons, not literal practices.
Interpretations
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Most of the quatrains talk about disasters, such as plagues, earthquakes, wars, floods, invasions, murders, droughts, and battles. These events are not given specific dates and are based on predictions from the Mirabilis Liber. Some quatrains describe these disasters in general terms, while others focus on a single person or a small group of people. Some quatrains refer to a single town, and others mention several towns in several countries. A major theme is the expected invasion of Europe by Muslim forces from the east and south, led by the Antichrist. This theme reflects the Ottoman invasions and earlier Saracen invasions, as well as expectations from the Mirabilis Liber. All of this is presented in the context of the world ending soon, even though the end of the world is not directly mentioned. This belief led to many collections of end-time prophecies, including one by Christopher Columbus that was never published. Views on Nostradamus have changed over time. Some scholars, like Jacques Halbronn, believe that Nostradamus's prophecies were written by later people for political reasons.
Many people who support Nostradamus believe his prophecies are real. Because the interpretations are subjective, no two people agree completely on what Nostradamus predicted, whether about the past or the future. However, many supporters agree that he predicted the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and Adolf Hitler, both world wars, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Popular authors often claim that Nostradamus predicted major events that had just happened when their books were published, such as the Apollo Moon landing in 1969, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, and the September 11 attacks in 2001. This tendency to match prophecies with recent events is a common feature of the genre.
One of the first books about Nostradamus to become popular in English was Henry C. Roberts' The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus in 1947. This book was reprinted many times and included both transcriptions and translations of the prophecies, along with short commentaries. In 1961, Edgar Leoni published Nostradamus and His Prophecies, which was also reprinted in 1982. Erika Cheetham's The Prophecies of Nostradamus followed, which included a reprint of the 1568 edition. This book was revised and republished several times starting in 1973, and later became The Final Prophecies of Nostradamus. This book was used as the basis for the documentary The Man Who Saw Tomorrow and mentioned possible future attacks on New York using nuclear weapons, though not specifically on the World Trade Center or any particular date.
A two-part translation of Jean-Charles de Fontbrune's Nostradamus: historien et prophète was published in 1980. John Hogue has also written several books on Nostradamus, including Nostradamus and the Millennium: Predictions of the Future, Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies (1999), and Nostradamus: A Life and Myth (2003). In 1992, a commentator who claimed to be able to contact Nostradamus under hypnosis had him "interpret" his own verse X.6, which was about floods in southern France, as a prediction of an undated attack on the Pentagon, even though Nostradamus clearly stated in his letter to King Henri II that his prophecies were about Europe, North Africa, and part of Asia Minor.
Except for Roberts, these books and their many popular imitators were almost unanimous in believing that Nostradamus had great prophetic powers and in creating interesting details about his life. These details include that he was a descendant of the Israelite tribe of Issachar, that he was educated by his grandfathers who were physicians to the court of Good King René of Provence, that he attended Montpellier University in 1525 and later earned his medical doctorate, that he taught at the university until his views became unpopular, that he supported the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun, that he traveled to the Habsburg Netherlands and composed prophecies at the abbey of Orval, that he performed various miracles, including identifying future Pope Sixtus V when he was a seminary monk, that he successfully cured the plague in Aix-en-Provence and other places, that he used scrying with a magic mirror or a bowl of water, that he was joined by his secretary Chavigny at Easter 1554, that he was summoned by Queen Catherine de' Medici to Paris in 1556 to discuss his prophecy about the death of King Henri II, that he examined the royal children at Blois, that he left a "lost book" of his prophetic paintings to his son, that he was buried standing up, and that when his body was exhumed during the French Revolution, it was found wearing a medallion with the exact date of his disinterment. This was first recorded by Samuel Pepys as early as 1667, long before the French Revolution. Pepys wrote in his diary about a legend that Nostradamus made the townspeople swear his grave would never be disturbed, but 60 years later, his body was exhumed and a brass plaque was found on his chest with the date and time of his disinterment and a curse on the people who exhumed him.
In 2000, Li Hongzhi claimed that the 1999 prophecy at X.72 was a prediction of the Chinese Falun Gong persecution that began in July 1999, which led to increased interest in Nostradamus among Falun Gong members.
Nostradamus's work was used in propaganda during World War II by both Nazi Germany and the Allies. Josef Goebbels, the Reichsminister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, was introduced to Nostradamus's work by his wife, Magda, who brought to his attention a claim from a 1921 book by a German postal worker named C. L. Loog, which allegedly predicted a crisis in Poland and the defeat of England in 1939. Goebbels found the predictions "intriguing but potentially useful" and tried to find someone to write propaganda based on Nostradamus. Loog declined, so Goebbels eventually chose a Swiss astrologer named Karl Ernst Krafft, who had supposedly used Nostradamus to predict an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in November 1939. Goebbels wrote in his diary on 9 January 1940 that he had "set up an expert committee to deal with Nostradamus and Astrology" to "supply the necessary material for propaganda," and on 16 January 1940 he wrote: "Trash out the Nostradamus verses in cooperation with the Intelligence Service for use in France and neutral countries. Every little helps." Krafft produced propaganda booklets using fake verses of Nostradamus that German planes airdropped over Belgium and France during the Nazi invasion in May 1940. The Allies responded by dropping their own Nostradamus pamphlets over occupied Europe, and MGM made four short Nostradamus films to boost American morale.
However, Goebbels seemed to see Nostradamus only as a tool for black propaganda. He wrote that his friend, the Nazi journalist Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, had "drawn up a plan demonstrating how we could enlist the aid of the occult in our propaganda. … The Americans and English fall easily for that type of thing. … Nostradamus must once again…"
In popular culture
Nostradamus's prophecies, which were rewritten and added to by him, played a big role in popular culture during the 20th and 21st centuries. Hundreds of books, including both fiction and nonfiction, have been written about Nostradamus. His life has also been shown in many movies and videos. People continue to be interested in his life and writings, and they are often discussed in the media.