the prophet a simple visionary, or, in coarser phrase, a fool; others
accused him of magic, and of being in too close treaty with the Devil to
be honest. A few held their judgment in suspense, and would pronounce
no opinion on the subject. A vast number of the grandees and of the
learned, both at home and abroad, thought that he was endowed with a gift
supernatural; and amongst these were Henri II. and Catherine de Medici.
It remained to the _esprits forts_ and the ignorant public, who knew
nothing of him but his name, to pronounce him a charlatan and impostor.
There is one thing certain, he felt much hesitation as to publishing at
all; and, when he took that step at last, he addressed the book to his
infant son, and not to any public character, in the year 1555. At this
period he would be fifty-two. This is not a time of life at which men
usually commence a course of imposture. When he is summoned to the Court
at Paris, loaded with honours and consulted on high matters (_de choses
importantes_), he displays nothing but moderation and good sense, and
returns contentedly to his modest home at Salon. Upon all ordinary lines
of human judgment, such conduct seems to indicate genuineness; and this
is strengthened, if not established, by his genuine gravity of deportment
and serious religious sentiments. Nobody has denied the purity of his
life. Still, a certain Lord Pavillon, of his own day, wrote against him,
or perhaps against this publishers’ figment of a name, rather than his.
Further, we find the book led to the bitter epigrammatic distich of the
poet Jodele, or as others say, of Beza,—
“Nostradamus cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est,
Et cum falsa damus, nil nisi nostra damus.”
This can very easily be turned against the piratical almanac makers,
thus:—
“Vera damus cum verba damus quæ Nostradamus dat;
Sed cum nostra damus, nil nisi falsa damus.”
In spite of piracy and obloquy, the repute of Nostradamus grew, as we
have said, in influential quarters, until it came to the ears of Queen
Catherine de Medici and Henri II., on the publication, in March, 1555, of
the first seven Centuries of his “Prophecies.” The remaining Centuries,
the Sixains, and Presages, were not published till long after. In the
following year, 1556, they sent for him to attend the Court in Paris:
though Garencières says he left Salon on July 14, 1555, and reached
Paris on August 15th, a particularity which seems to indicate special
knowledge.[10] The Lord Constable Montmorency attended him at his inn,
and presented him to the king in person. The king showed him high
favour, and ordered him to be lodged at the palace of the Cardinal de
Bourbon, Archbishop of Sens, during his stay in the capital.
When there a severe attack of gout seized him, that lasted ten or twelve
days. His majesty sent him two hundred crowns in gold (two hundred
écus d’or; vid. Moreri) in a velvet purse, and the queen one hundred
crowns (Le Pelletier, i. 92). They then despatched him to Blois, to
visit their children, the royal princes, and give his astrological
opinion. He repaired thither, and seems to have acquitted himself to
the satisfaction of the king. It is quite certain that he did not tell
them precisely what he thought,[11] for the princes were Francis II.,
Charles IX., and Henri III., whose tragical fates he has correctly
set out, and with unmistakable clearness, as may be seen (at pp. 84,
86, 96) by the forecasts in his strange book. He, however, cast their
horoscopes and acquitted himself in this, as in all other transactions,
_en homme d’esprit_. He returned to Salon so much encouraged that he
set to work and completed his “Centuries,” consisting of three hundred
more quatrains. These further quatrains he appears to have printed in
1558, but Garencières says that he dedicated them to the king in 1557.
The only thing that is certain is that the Texte-type dates the epistle
June 27, 1558. This “Luminary Epistle” to the king, Garencières tells us,
discovers future events “from the birth of Louis XIV., now reigning, till
the coming of antichrist.”[12]
Henri II. was killed the following year, 1559, at the tournament of St.
Quentin, as we shall see it fully set forth at Quatrain 35 in Century I.
He had now become quite a court favourite, for Emanuel, the Duke of
Savoy, visited him at his house at Salon about this period, in the month
of October; and, in the December following, the Princesse Marguerite
de France, sister of Henri II, who by the treaty of peace at Cambresis
was to marry the duke, came also to Nostradamus, entertaining him very
familiarly (Garencières and Moreri).
Charles IX. made a progress through the kingdom in 1564, to quiet the
cities that had mutinied; and when he came to Provence, on arriving at
Salon, November 17th, he asked first of all for Nostradamus. Nostradamus
was in the suite of magistrates around the king, so that he was presented
on the instant, upon which the king made him his Physician in Ordinary,
and honoured him with the title of Counsellor. He complained rather
bitterly of the neglect with which his fellow-townsmen treated him. César
Nostradamus reports this, saying, “_Et de ce, me souviens fort bien, car
je fus de la partie_” (Moreri). On the return journey he again inquired
for Nostradamus, and gave him two hundred écus. He was at this time over
sixty, and with his health fast breaking under severe attacks of gout.
He died within about sixteen months of this period, and the salary and
profits of Physician in Ordinary must have greatly comforted the old man
in his latter days. He enjoyed now the further satisfaction of being
flocked to by learned men, grandees, and others, who resorted to him far
and near, as to an oracle. “As St. Jerome remarks of Livy, so may we
remark of him,” says his biographer, Jean Aimes, “that those who came to
France sought Nostradamus as the only thing to be seen there.”
The closing scene is now drawing very near, and we find him much
afflicted with his maladies, notably arthritic gout, as distinguished
from podagra, which Dr. Cullen considers as the seat of idiopathic gout.
He awaited with firmness his climacteric, as they used to designate a
man’s sixty-third year. He died on the 2nd of July, 1566, a little before
sunrise, having all his senses yet about him, for the arthritis turned
to dropsy about eight days previously, and early on the second day of
the month suffocated him. Jean Aimes says that Nostradamus was well
advised of the time, even of the very day and hour, when his death must
take place. The prophet reminded him frequently towards the close of the
previous June that he had written with his own hand, in the Ephemerides
of Jean Stadius, these words in Latin, _Hic prope mors est_ (“Here is
death at hand”). “The day,” continues this friend, “before he exchanged
this life for a better, after I had spent many hours with him, and late
at night was taking leave of him until the following morning, he said,
‘You will not see me alive at sunrise.’” M. le Pelletier gives (i. 91)
Presage 141 as a stanza pointing to his own death; but, as the “Presages”
were not printed till 1568, their authenticity may or may not be accepted
as the reader feels inclined. The lines run thus, and are remarkable
enough, if we admit that they were a genuine forecast; for, although
they assign no specific date, yet they sum up the principal facts rather
fully:—
“De retour d’Ambassade, don de Roy mis au lieu;
Plus n’en fera; sera allé à Dieu:
Parans plus proches, amis, freres du sang,
Trouvé tout mort près du lict et du banc.”
The meaning given to this is, that on his return from Arles, whence he
was sent for, in 1564, by Charles IX., to see him a second time, after he
had safely put away the three hundred crowns given him by the king and
queen, his last transaction would be concluded, and he would then render
his soul to God. His nearest relatives, brothers, and friends would find
him dead near his bed, seated, as was customary with him, on the bench
at its foot, as he could there breathe more freely.
This is the interpretation put upon it by M. le Pelletier. As I
understand César Nostradamus, the king did not send for him to Arles, but
asked again for him on his majesty’s return to Salon; and I should think
the word “ambassade” must refer to some private mission the king had sent
him upon entirely apart from this, and for which he paid him. Be this
as it may, the fact that Nostradamus assigns no date for his death, in
this presage, goes to establish its authenticity, one would incline to
say. For supposing it to have been foisted in, after his death, surely
a fabricator of the marvellous would first of all have made it to show
_trois vingts et trois bis_, and twisted that into some colourable shape.
He would have been little likely to add as a prophetical feature that
the king’s present had been put away in a safe place, as to do so seems
anything rather than a supernatural instinct. It is a touch of prose
more than of the Python. On the whole, I should incline to take the
verse for a genuine emanation from the pen of Nostradamus. Certainly he
would recognize, even medically, that, as he found himself to be growing
“_fort caduc et débile_” towards his climacterical year, he would know
that his dissolution was at hand. A man’s grand climacteric is generally
considered to arrive at 63, though some place it at 81, that number being
composed of 9 times 9. In either of these periods, if sickness occur, it
is considered as especially likely to prove fatal.
There seems to be a diversity of opinion about this, for some say that
the _annus climactericus_ is 84, or 12 times 7. Aulus Gellius thinks the
opinion to be of immense antiquity, running back to the Chaldeans; and no
doubt Pythagoras derived it from the East. Ficinus explains it by saying
that the body of man is ruled over by each planet in turn for the space
of one year, and, Saturn being the most maleficent, every seventh year
falling to his presidency becomes extremely dangerous. This explanation
would shut out the nines, except in the sixty-third and eighty-first
year, but it would also vitiate the whole scheme of astrology, for the
planet under which a man was born (say he were born under Saturn) would
dominate his body at birth, and be, one must suppose, the ruling planet
that year, and, if it were Saturn, would recur only on his eighth year.
Eighty-four would not be in favour generally, as it consists entirely of
even numbers, though divisible by seven. Many held that only a number
produced by the multiplication of an odd number could be climacterical.
Augustus thought it a subject of great rejoicing when he had passed
over his sixty-third year.[13] Moreri will have eighty-one to be
properly speaking the climacteric, and he notes that at this age died
Plato, Diogenes, Eratosthenes the geometer, and many other illustrious
personages. Some went so far as to say that political bodies had their
climacterical periods; and they certainly, judging from our own country,
have periods of fatal folly, whether or no the nines and sevens collide,
or the stars fight against Sisera. But amongst other oddities of history
may be chronicled the fact that Henri Quatre was the sixty-third King of
France, which made Malherbe talk of—
“La vaine étude s’applique,
A trouver la climatérique,
De l’éternelle fleur-de-lis”—
that _fleur-de-lis_ whose terrible withering up in the fatal year of ’93
Nostradamus so powerfully forecasts.
Suffice it to say that in this climacterical crisis Nostradamus succumbed
in his sixty-third year to gout, which turned to dropsy.[14]
Nostradamus was interred at the church of the Franciscan Friars (Les
Cordéliers) at Salon, as it is noted, on the left-hand side of the
church door (Garencières). His widow erected to him a marble tablet,
“representing his figure to the life, and his arms above it.” The
epitaph is as follows, made, they say, in imitation of that great Livy
aforenamed, the Roman historian:—
D. M.
CLARISSIMI OSSA
MICHAELIS NOSTRADAMI,
UNIUS OMNIUM MORTALIUM JUDICIO DIGNI,
CUJUS PENE DIVINO CALAMO TOTIUS ORBIS,
EX ASTRORUM INFLUXU, FUTURI EVENTUS
CONSCRIBERENTUR.
VIXIT ANNOS LXII. MENSES VI. DIES XVII.
OBIIT SALONE AN. CIↃIↃLXVI.
QUIETEM POSTERI NE INVIDETE. ANNA PONTIA GEMELLA
CONJUGI OPT. V. FELICIT.
TRANSLATION.
“Here lie the bones of the illustrious Michael Nostradamus,
whose almost divine pen alone, in the judgment of all mortals,
was worthy to record, under the influx of the stars, the future
events of the whole world. He lived 62 years, 6 months, 17
days. He died at Salon in the year 1566. Posterity, disturb not
his sweet rest! Anne Ponce Gemelle hopes for her husband true
felicity.”
The text of this epitaph is that given by Benoist Rigaud in the edition
of Nostradamus published by him in 1568.
In stature he was somewhat undersized, of a robust body, sprightly, and
vigorous. He had a broad and open forehead, a straight even nose, grey
eyes, of kindly expression, but in anger capable of flashing fire. The
general expression was severe, though pleasant, so that a grand humanity
shone through the seriousness. Even in age his cheeks were rosy. He had a
long thick beard, and excellent health till nearly the close of life; he
had his senses, being alert and keen, up to the very last moment. He had
a good and lively wit, seizing with quick comprehension everything that
he wished to acquire. His judgment was very penetrating, his memory happy
and retentive. He was taciturn by nature, thought much and spoke little;
but at the right time and occasion he could discourse extremely well. He
was quick, and sudden even to irascibility; but very patient where work
had to be done. He slept four or five hours only out of the twenty-four.
He practised freedom of speech himself and commended it in others. He
was cheerful and facetious in conversation, though in jesting a little
given to bitterness. He was attached, so says De Chavigny, to the Roman
Church, and held fixedly the Catholic faith; out of its pale there
was for him no salvation. Though pursuing a line of thought entirely
his own, he had no sympathy with the Lutheran heretics of so-called
Freethought. He was given to prayer, fasting, and charity. As far as
outward observance was concerned, he might be classed with the highly
respectable and decent. Le Pelletier says, “Sa fin fut Chrétienne;” but
he adds a little further on that his style is very much more like that of
the Pagan oracles of Greece and Rome than of the canonical prophets of
Hebrew inspiration. He was very generous to the poor, and held it as a
sort of maxim that in this sense it was legitimate to make friends with
“the mammon of unrighteousness.”
Jean Aimes de Chavigny, who seems to have come over from Beaune to play
the part of a Boswell to Nostradamus, and, after his friend’s death,
is said to have devoted twenty-eight years of his life to editing the
“Centuries” with notes,[15] says that he collected twelve books of the
“Centuries,” of which vols. vii., xi., and xii. are imperfect. These are
in quatrains, and are classified as _Prophéties_, and they extend to
very remote ages. The _Presages_, we are told, were written between 1550
and 1567,[16] and were collected by Aimes and reduced into twelve books
in prose, as he thinks them worthy of the attention of posterity. The
few _Presages_ that are in print run to only one hundred and forty-three
quatrains in verse; so we must suppose that those written in prose have
perished entirely.
Nostradamus left two brothers behind him: one named Bertrand; the
other, Jean, who was his junior, and proctor to the Parliament at Aix,
composed a History of Provence, and also wrote the lives of the Poets of
Provence.[17]
Moreri states that by his second wife he had six children, three boys
and three girls. Of his sons, César, the eldest, was a person of
demonstratively gay and kindly spirit. It was to him, when quite a child,
that Nostradamus dedicated the first seven of the “Centuries” published
by him. These are the most authentic of all, and Moreri remarks that, if
you wish the quatrains to be without interpolation, you should secure
early editions. The reader will understand that to be now unnecessary,
inasmuch as we have all along been dealing with the _Texte-type_. César
was born at Salon, 1555, and died 1629. He, like his uncle Jean, was
an author, and wrote upon the same topics, leaving in manuscript a
collection of the most remarkable things happening in Provence from
the year 1080 to 1494. In this he included the lives of the poets of
Provence. Many years after his death, his nephew and namesake, César
Nostradamus, who was Governor of Provence and gentleman in waiting upon
the Duc de Guise, found them, and himself worked at them, till, in
1603, the Parliament of the province voted him three thousand livres to
encourage him to complete the work, which he did; and they were finally
printed in Lyons in 1614, under the title of “Chroniques de l’Histoire de
Provence.” He commences with the Celtic Gauls at the early date of the
Deluge. This is worthy of a true scion of the tribe of Issachar. A very
strange story is told of César by La Motte le Vayer in his “Instruction
pour Monseigneur le Dauphin.” He, like his father, Michel, had a taste
for forecasting the future, and had ventured to predict that Pouzin,
which was besieged, would perish by fire; but it was taken by _coup de
main_. Whilst the pillage was going forward, the foolish prophet was,
it is said, seen, match in hand, endeavouring to set it on fire. He was
caught; and Saint-Luc, the commander, asked him if he had prophesied
anything for himself that day. He replied, “No!” on which the general
rode at him with his lance, and killed him on the spot. Moreri relates
this story somewhat differently. If either version were true, it would be
clear that César did not understand “_la parole héréditaire de l’occulte
prédiction_,” and that the lancehead instead was “_dans son estomac
intercluse_.” From other authorities, however, it would seem that he was
busy about his history long after the date thus assigned for his death.
Charles, his brother, was very excellent in Provençal poetry, and several
pieces of his are still extant. Michel’s third son, whose name is not
given us by Moreri, became a Capuchin.
An anecdote is related by Garencières, which he throws out as “a merry
passage” to re-create his reader. Nostradamus was with Lord Florinville
in Lorraine, at the Castle of Faim. He was attending medically his
lordship’s mother. In the yard where they strolled there were two little
pigs, one white and the other black. His lordship inquired of Nostradamus
jestingly what would be the fate of those pigs. “We shall eat the black
one, and the wolf shall eat the white,” said he. Lord Florinville
secretly ordered the cook to get ready the white one for supper. When it
was spitted ready for roasting, the cook left the kitchen for something,
and in his absence a young tame wolf came in and ate a part of it, so
that it could not appear at table. The cook immediately killed the black
one, and sent it up at the time appointed. His lordship, not knowing what
had happened, said to Nostradamus, “Well, sir, we are now eating the
white pig; how shall the wolf get it?” “I do not believe it,” rejoined
the prophet; “it is the black one that is upon the table.” The cook was
sent for, and by his confession the truth came out, much to the surprise
of everybody present. Another story follows this, that Nostradamus had
said that treasure was hidden in a little hill near Faim, that it would
not be found if sought for, but that, if the ground was dug for any
other reason, it would. Garencières adds that there is great probability
about this, as it is the site of an ancient temple, and many times since
antiquities have been unearthed here. He completes his cock-and-bull
story by saying that many such tales are told of Nostradamus all over
France, but that he passes them by as being “unwilling to write anything
without good warrant.”
Amongst other nonsensical reports spread was one that he caused himself
to be buried alive, and that he continued to write prophecies. This, no
doubt, was set afloat by those honest publishers who in life had done
him the honour to pirate his almanacs; at any rate, it made for their
interest. It has also been pretended that so many in Salon regarded him
as an impostor, that for security’s sake he was buried in the Franciscan
Church.
Those who desire the Bibliography of the editions of Nostradamus up to
the year 1840 will consult that which has been admirably drawn up by
Eugène Bareste, Paris, 1840, in his work upon “Nostradamus.” Or they may
find it copied textually, with all due acknowledgment of its excellence,
in the first volume of Le Pelletier’s edition of the “Oracles.”
The works of Nostradamus, besides the “Prophecies,” seem to have been—
Several Almanacs, two of which were translated at once into
English, and are given by Watt, “Bib. Brit.”
“Almanacke for 1559.” London: 1559. 8vo.
“Almanacke et Prognostications.” London: 1559. 8vo.
Moreri gives further an—
Almanac for country labourers, to mark the seasons favourable
for their work. A true predecessor, this, of Moore’s _Vox
Stellarum_.
“Predictions before 1558.” London: 1691. 4to. This is named by
Watt, and may be a translation of the genuine first edition of
the “Seven Centuries,” but I have not met with it.
“Prophecies of the Kings and Queens of England.” 1715. This is
the work by D. D. that we have largely quoted from.
“An excellent Treatise on Contagious Infirmities in 1559-60.”
Translated into English. London: 1559.
“Traité des Fardements.” Lyon: 1552.
“Des Confiteurs,” etc. Anvers: 1557.
“Opuscule de plusieurs exquises Receptes, divisé en deux
parties.” Lyon: 1572. 16mo. This contains both the above.
“La Remède très utile contre la Peste et toutes Fièvres
pestilentielles.” Paris: 1651. 8vo.
“Paraphrase de Galien sur exhortation de Menodote aux Études
des Beaux Arts.” Lyon: 1558. 8vo.
Touching the prophecies of Nostradamus, Théophile de Garencières gives
us an interesting fact, that, after the primer, it was the first book
at school in which he learnt to read. It was the custom in France then
(_i.e._ 1618) to initiate children by that book. They thought the crabbed
and obsolete words, such as long survived in the English law, would give
the scholars some idea of the old French language; so that the book got
republished from year to year like an almanac. He chronicles that many
have run mad from overstudying the prophecies. He dissuades readers from
doing this, because interpretation must always be a little uncertain
where, like an ancient oracle, the author indulges in a double sense,
which he thinks Nostradamus often does. Without a peculiar genius, he
does not suppose it possible to get at a right understanding of the
quatrain. Even when the prophecy is quite plain, as that the Parliament
should put King Charles to death, no reader, until it had happened, could
tell when, or how, it would be brought about. Even his astrological signs
will not fix things, because the planets go and return again to the same
bearings. Some of his reasons are very peculiar, one being that it is
not profitable for the _vulgar_ to have knowledge of the future, that
God reserves the knowledge of the times to Himself, and that it might
trespass upon “business of State” to discover and lay open things which
the prudent wish to conceal; and he concludes, oddly enough, that “for
these reasons (dear Reader) I would not have thee entangle thyself in the
pretentions of knowing future things.”