Michel de Nostredame(1503-1566)
- Writer
An apothecary before he began to practice the occult, Michel de Nostredame spent the early part of his career battling outbreaks of the bubonic plague in southern France, and northern Italy. Historians attribute his higher-than-average survival rates to his then-radical practice of personal hygiene, his insistence that patients be bathed and their homes cleaned, his refusal to enter a town until the bodies of plague victims were properly interred (it was routine for bodies to be stacked in the streets like cord-wood), and his refusal to bleed patients. In a cruel irony, he lost his wife and two children to the plague while he was in Italy. After several years, he eventually settled in Salon-de-Provence, married a wealthy widow, and had six children. He and his wife were investors in a canal project to use the Durance River to irrigate Salon-de-Provence and the Désert de la Crau, which de Nostredame hoped would further his efforts to promote sanitation.
Writing under the Latinized version of his surname "Nostradamus", he began publishing farmers almanacs containing his prophecies in 1550. In "The Prophecies" (1555-1558), a collection of quatrains in three volumes, believers claim he predicted the Great London Fire of 1666; the French Revolution; the rise of Napoléon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler; the atom bomb; the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy; the first Gulf War; the death of Princess Diana; the 9/11 attacks; and Hurricane Katrina. He also supposedly predicted that the United States and Russia would go to war against China. Among his supporters was Catherine de Médicis, consort of King Henri II, whose death in a jousting match he had predicted. She made de Nostredame Counselor and Physician-in-Ordinary to her son, King Charles IX.
After having his lawyer draft a last will, he told his secretary: "You will not find me alive at sunrise." The next morning, July 2, 1566, he was dead. De Nostredame was buried in the local Franciscan chapel, but was re-interred during the French Revolution in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent, where he remains.
In the 20th and 21st Centuries, he has been used as a touchstone in books, films, television shows, comic books, and video games.
Writing under the Latinized version of his surname "Nostradamus", he began publishing farmers almanacs containing his prophecies in 1550. In "The Prophecies" (1555-1558), a collection of quatrains in three volumes, believers claim he predicted the Great London Fire of 1666; the French Revolution; the rise of Napoléon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler; the atom bomb; the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy; the first Gulf War; the death of Princess Diana; the 9/11 attacks; and Hurricane Katrina. He also supposedly predicted that the United States and Russia would go to war against China. Among his supporters was Catherine de Médicis, consort of King Henri II, whose death in a jousting match he had predicted. She made de Nostredame Counselor and Physician-in-Ordinary to her son, King Charles IX.
After having his lawyer draft a last will, he told his secretary: "You will not find me alive at sunrise." The next morning, July 2, 1566, he was dead. De Nostredame was buried in the local Franciscan chapel, but was re-interred during the French Revolution in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent, where he remains.
In the 20th and 21st Centuries, he has been used as a touchstone in books, films, television shows, comic books, and video games.
