Nostradamus: France’s Prophet of doom

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They say he predicted the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, Napoleon, World War II, 9/11 and more. And as times grow ever more unsettled, Nostradamus, France’s prophet of doom, is back in the news. But who was he really?

Nostradamus: France’s Prophet of doom

The world’s most famous prophet, Michel de Nostredame was born in St-Rémy-de-Provence in 1503, to a wealthy grain dealer whose Jewish father had converted to Catholicism to avoid the Inquisition and took the name Nostredame. Little Michel was a bright spark and learned the basics of a humanist education in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and math from his maternal grandfather, but his college education in Avignon was cut short when an outbreak of plague closed the school. It sparked a lifelong interest in healing and medicinal herbs.

After attending medical school in Montpellier, he made a name for himself as a travelling apothecary treating plague victims. An offhand remark about statues briefly brought him some unwanted attention from the Church; as a descendent of converted Jews, he would always have to be very careful. He married a woman in Agen and had two children, all of whom died of plague. His inability to treat them may have shaped his bleak worldview.

He wandered around the south of France and Italy until 1547 when he married wealthy widow Anne Ponsard in Salon-de-Provence, and fathered six children, practiced medicine and invented new recipes for herbal cures, cosmetics and hair dyes. Like many Renaissance humanists, his interests were wide ranging. He later helped finance his friend Adam de Craponne’s innovative canal that brought water from the Durance to Salon and irrigated the Plaine de la Crau.

The Prophesies of Nostradamus

Michel de Nostredame would have remained a little-known had he not begun writing almanacs, an interest that led to his most famous work, Prophecies first published in 1555. These 942 ambiguous quatrains appeared in groups of 100 called Centuries, predicting the most important historical events from 1557 to the end of days (the year 3797, in case you’re wondering). The explosive growth of the printing press saw his writings proliferate across Europe.

Nostradamus himself said that his inspiration came from ‘natural instinct and poetic passion’. His sources were ancient Greek and Latin classics, the Bible, and especially the Mirabilis liber of 1522, an anthology of prophecies from well-known seers of the time. Some believe he would open books at random, look at the stars and go from there. To avoid the Church’s wrath, he sneakily wrote in Latin, Provencal, Italian and Greek including puns, abbreviations, and anagrams, mixing up the usual word order.

In 1555, Nostradamus was summoned to Paris by the very superstitious Queen Catherine de’ Medici to explain his prophesies. He was afraid she would execute him, but instead she was impressed, especially three years later when this quatrain: ‘The young lion will conquer the old one upon the field in a single combat. He will pierce his eye in a golden cage, who will then die a dreadful death’ came true when during a joust the young Count of Montgomery drove a lance into the golden visor of her husband, Henri II and pierced his eye, eventually killing him.

In 1564, Catherine and her son, the young Charles IX called on Nostradamus in Salon. The Queen made him Counselor and Physician-in-Ordinary to the crown, although seriously ill, he died not long after, in 1566. He was, oddly, buried inside the wall of the Cordeliers’ church; tales spread that he was still alive in there writing prophecies, as ‘new’ ones kept appearing after his death. Fake news is nothing new!

After Nostradamus

In dedicating his Centuries to Henri II, Nostradamus predicted he would have detractors. ‘…as time elapses after my death, my writings will have more weight than during my lifetime.’ He was certainly right about that; over 200 editions of his Prophesies have been published since his death.

In 1939, after the invasion of Poland, Magda Goebbels, wife of Hitler’s propaganda minister, stumbled upon a prophecy which seemed to predict the rise of the Nazis (and Mussolini) ‘In Germany a new sect shall be born which shall renew ancient pagan times. Roman power shall be completely abased, a great neighbour imitates his footsteps’. Joseph Goebbels ran with it, distributing brochures in neutral countries proving Nostradamus himself predicted Nazi victory as inevitable.

But the Allies beat him to it. MGM had also produced short films about the famous soothsayer, in the dark days of 1938 and 1939, and air-dropped their own brochures over German-occupied territories in 1941, foretelling the Nazi’s defeat: ‘At last the two leaders shall be disjointed by the hunt, by a humane rule of Anglican breed, the daughter of the English Isles shall re-establish unity, justice, shall lock war within its bars.’

How accurate was Nostradamus really?

A quick google of them-who-know-more about the occult than your scribe (who admittedly knows nothing) produced a couple of easy winners. Nostradamus predicted that in 2025 ‘There will be a great noise in the West and a leader who will divide the land.’ Bingo! He also predicted a new pope, right again.

The Prophet of Doom was big on climate change. The dry Earth will become more parched and there will be great floods. There’s grim news for the Amazon (presuming it’s what Nostradamus meant by ‘the garden of the world’). Coming up are a new plague, a fireball hitting the earth, and one that could predict the end of the war in Ukraine, negotiated by France and Turkey: Through long war all the army exhausted, so that they do not find money for the soldiers; instead of gold or silver, they will come to coin leather, Gallic brass, and the crescent sign of the Moon.

But don’t bet the farm on it. Someone figured out that at best, Nostradamus has only been right 13.5% of the time.

More on Nostradamus

You can visit Nostradaumus’ house, the Musée Maison de Nostradamus, complete with mannequins of the man. After his tomb was desecrated in the Revolution, he was moved to the Collegiale de St-Laurent, where he remains. His prophesies translated into English are all online.

Dana Facaros has lived in France for over 30 years. She is the creator of French Food Decoder app: everything you want to know about French food, and co-author of the Bradt guide to Gascony & the Pyrenees and many guide books to France.