Michel de Nostredame (1503-1566)

Michel de Nostredame or otherwise referred to as Nostradamus was born in the south of France and was part of a large family.  In his teens he enrolled in the University of Avignon where he stayed until it closed a year later due to an outbreak of the plague.  It is said that he traveled afterwards for about eight years where he gained a particular interest in herbal remedies, then he entered the University of Montepellier to become a doctor but was expelled for being associated with herbal remedies and for slandering procedures that some doctors were intent on using at the time such as 'draining the blood' to heal sickness.

In 1531 Nostradamus met Jules-Cesar Scaliger , a leading scholar of the time and this is where he is rumored to have gained access to ancient books and scrolls which were at the time banned in the general society.  It is said that he married and had two children but they were all lost to the plague and so he devoted many years to help fight outbreaks.  In 1547 he settled down again in Salon-de-Provence where he re-married and had six children.

His first almanac was written for 1550 and was so popular that he decided to produce one once a year, and by the end of his life he had written well over six thousand prophecies.  He was dragged into the limelight when he apparently foretold the death of the King of France with a very exactly prediction.  From then on he was asked by prominent people for assistance, not only as a seer but as a healer.

There has been incredible debates about whether he was a true seer, or whether he was severely influenced by the work of others such as Joachim of Fiore, the Tiburtine Sibyl and others.  Many people however point to the fact that in his letters he clearly says that he is not a prophet.  Yet in all my research I have not yet found a biblical prophet that ever referred to themselves as being a prophet.  Prophecy is seen as a gift from God, one that maybe can be stripped away if the gifted person claims any greatness on their own behalf.

The greatest difficulty in reviewing any of the prophecies by Nostradamus is that, the translations tend not to be very accurate.  This is because the original by Nostradamus was written in old French and many people have attempted to translate using modern french, or even slightly adapting it in a way to make the prophecies apply to certain circumstances in modern times.  I came across this myself after comparing the words of his prophecies claimed on a DVD Nostradamus documentary against the words in my copy of his complete collection, and there were so completely different it was crazy.  However it is still my belief that he was a true prophet, it is not his fault that we cannot translate his words properly.