Prophet… or Just Good with a Thesaurus? (1503-1566)
Nostradamus, born under the name Michel de Nostredame, was a French apothecary turned seer, whose book Les Propheties skyrocketed him to cult-like status after his death. Although often credited with predicting major events in the world, many of his “predictions” have been the result of misinterpretations or deliberate mistranslations of his extremely ambiguous quatrains.
As a child, Nostradamus grew up in Southern France’s Saint-Remy-de-Provence with at least eight other brothers and sisters. Although his family was originally Jewish, his father converted to Catholicism before Nostradamus was born. There is very little additional information known about his childhood, however when he was fifteen, Nostradamus attended the University of Avignon for studies. Only a year later, he was forced to leave the school when it was shut down from a plague outbreak, but he would eventually return to school at the University of Montpellier in 1529 to study medicine.
Unfortunately, Nostradamus was expelled from the school when they learned of his time spent as an apothecary before attending the University, which was a trade expressly forbidden by the school statutes. Undeterred, he continued to practice as an apothecary after the expulsion, and anyone wishing to read the expulsion document can actually still do so – it is still on file in the university library!
In 1531, Nostradamus married, but it was only a few years later that his wife and both children died from plague. It was after their death that he began to travel more frequently, often spending time in various places in France and Italy. During one visit to Italy, his interest in medicine began to wane, and in 1550, Nostradamus wrote his own almanac – and, thrilled at its success, continued to write at least one per year for quite some time. With an estimated 6,338 prophesies contained inside the almanacs, high-born officials and nobles soon started seeking out Nostradamus for advice on personal and public matters.
It was after this success that he set out to write a book of a thousand quatrains, which he purposely constructed in an ambiguous manner so as to avoid criticism and attack from religious fanatics. When they were finally published in their final form as one book, Les Propheties, Nostradamus was labeled by many as insane or fake, though the elites of society still seemed to find inspiration in his words. This admiration may have led him to his claim of spiritually inspired writing, and while he did spend time in prison in 1561 for his writings, it was simply because he had neglected to seek the permission of a bishop before publishing his work, as was written in a royal decree for all publications.
Because he did not practice magic to support his prophesies, he could not be persecuted by the Inquisition, as some have suggested, and his relationship with the established church was actually quite jovial. In 1566, Nostradamus passed away after a long battle with gout: a skilled pharmacist, medical professional and self-professed prophet whose works would go on to become some of the most mistranslated writings in the entirety of history.
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