The renowned prophet Nostradamus (Michel de Nostradame) was born on December 14, 1503 in St. Remy, Provence, France. Nostradamus came from a long line of Jewish doctors and scholars. His family had converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1502, as a result of persecution on the ascension of Louis the XII. After a classical education he studied medicine, herbalism and astrology.
During Nostradamus' lifetime the Black Death (today known as the bubonic plague) wiped out over a quarter of Europe. It is no wonder that a sense of apocalyptic terror fills Nostradamus' quatrains.
Nostradamus can indisputably be said to have been ahead of his time, at least in terms of medical practice. His treatment of the Black Death involved removal of the infected corpses, fresh air and unpolluted water for the healthy, a herbal preparation rich in Vitamin C, and (in contravention of contemporary medical practise) not bleeding his patients.
Nostradamus began to write his prophetic verses in the city of Salon, in 1554. They are divided into ten sections called Centuries. The Centuries - groups of 100 quatrains (one Century only had 42 quatrains) were published in 1555 and 1558, and have been in print continuously ever since. His poetic yet cryptic quatrains are claimed by some to conceal information about future events. He completed a total of 942 quatrains. A quatrain is simply a poem with 4 lines.
The rhymed quatrains of Nostradamus were written mainly in French with a bit of Italian, Greek, and Latin thrown in. He intentionally obscured the quatrains through the use of symbolism and metaphor, as well as by making changes to proper names by swapping, adding or removing letters. The obscuration is claimed to have been done to avoid his being tried as a magician. Of course a skeptic might say it was done so the quatrains could be interpreted to fit numerous situations.
Nostradamus had the visions which he later recorded in verse while staring into water or flame late at night, sometimes aided by herbal stimulants, while sitting on a brass tripod. The resulting quatrains are oblique and elliptical, and use puns, anagrams and allegorical imagery. Most of the quatrains are open to multiple interpretations, and some make no sense whatsoever. Some of them are chilling, literal descriptions of events, giving specific or near-specific names, geographic locations, astrological configurations, and sometimes actual dates. It is this quality of both vagueness and specificity which allows each new generation to reinterpret Nostradamus.
Nostradamus is said to have predicted his own death. When his assistant wished him goodnight on July 1, 1566, Nostradamus reputedly pronounced, "You will not find me alive at sunrise." He was found dead on July 2, 1566.
Nostradamus was interred standing upright in the Church of the Cordeliers of Salon. However, his story does not end there; he was disinterred twice, once on purpose and once maliciously.
In 1700, his body was moved by the city to a more prominent crypt. When a necklace was found on his skeleton bearing the date '1700', his body was hurriedly reinterred.
During the French Revolution, in 1791, some drunken soldiers broke into his tomb. The mayor quickly placated the mob by describing how Nostradamus had predicted the revolution, and they replaced the bones in the crypt.
However, Nostradamus had the last laugh. In Century 9, Quatrain 7, he had written:
The man who opens the tomb when it is found
And who does not close it immediately,
Evil will come to him
That no one will be able to prove.
Reputedly, the soldiers who desecrated his tomb for the final time were ambushed on their way back to base and killed to the last man.
Nostradamus has become one of the world's most widely known and read prophets.
The Prophets
Saint John
This page is dedicated to the prophets that have been used in the interpretations used in this novel.
Nostradamus
Martyred at Rome on 26 June. The year of his martyrdom is uncertain according to his Acts, it occurred under Julian the Apostate (361-3). In the second half of the fourth century, Byzantius, the Roman senator, and Pammachius, his son, fashioned their house on the Cælian Hill into a Christian basilica.
In the fifth century the presbyteri tituli Byzantii (priests of the church of Byzantius) are mentioned in an inscription and among the signatures of the Roman Council of 499. The church was also called the titulus Pammachii after Byzantius's son, the pious friend of St. Jerome.
In the ancient apartments on the ground-floor of the house of Byzantius, which were still retained under the basilica, the tomb of two Roman martyrs, John and Paul, was the object of veneration as early as the fifth century. The Sacramentarium Leonianum already indicates in the preface to the feast of the saints, that they rested within the city walls ("Sacr. Leon.", ed. Feltoe, Cambridge, 1896, 34), while, in one of the early itineraries to the tombs of the Roman martyrs, their grave is assigned to the church on the Cælian (De rossi, "Roma sotterrania", I, 138, 175).
The titulus Byzantii or Pammachii was consequently known at a very early date by the names of the two martyrs (titulus SS. Joannis et Pauli). That the two saints are martyrs of the Roman Church, is historically certain; as to how and when their bodies found a resting-place in the house of Pammachius under the basilica, we only know that it certainly occurred in the fourth century.
The year and circumstances of their martyrdom are likewise unknown. According to their Acts, which are of a purely legendary character and without historical foundation, the martyrs were eunuchs of Constantina, daughter of Constantine the Great, and became acquainted with a certain Gallicanus, who built a church in Ostia.
At the command of Julian the Apostate, they were beheaded secretly by Terentianus in their house on the Cælian, where their church was subsequently erected, and where they themselves were buried. The rooms on the ground-floor of the above-mentioned house of Pammachius were rediscovered under the Basilica of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Rome.
They are decorated with important and interesting frescoes, while the original tomb (confessio) of Sts. John and Paul is covered with paintings of which the martyrs are the subject. The rooms and the tomb form one of the most important early Christian memorials in Rome.
Since the erection of the basilica, the two saints have been greatly venerated, and their names have been inserted in the Canon of the Mass. Their feast is kept on 26 June.
The ancient manuscripts and translations of the Gospel constitute the first group of evidence. In the titles, tables of contents, signatures, which are usually added to the text of the separate Gospels, John is in every case and without the faintest indication of doubt named as the author of this Gospel.
The earliest of the extant manuscripts, it is true, do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century, but the perfect unanimity of all the codices proves to every critic that the prototypes of these manuscripts, at a much earlier date, must have contained the same indications of authorship.
Similar is the testimony of the Gospel translations, of which the Syrian, Coptic, and Old Latin extend back in their earliest forms to the second century.
Mother Shipton (circa 1486-1561) was a legendary English witch and soothsayer, known as the Yorkshire Sibyl. She is supposed to have been born at Dropping Well, Knaresborough, Yorkshire, in about the year 1486. No biographical information concerning her is based upon trustworthy sources.
An early account of her life says that she was christened Janet Ursula by the abbot of Beverly. Her surname was reportedly Southill. Her mother, Agatha, was reputed to be a witch. An 18th century biographer described her appearance in these words: "Her stature was larger than common, her body crooked, her face frightful, but her understanding extraordinary."
An ancient Scottish chronicle reports that her entrance into the world was attended by "various wonderful presages."
"A raven croaked upon the chimney top; an extraordinary noise was heard about the house for several nights before; and a violent storm of thunder and rain was the immediate precursor of her arrival. “
"It was also observed that as soon as she was born, she fell a grinning and laughing, after a jeering manner, and immediately the tempest ceased."
She is supposed to have married a builder named Tony Shipton in 1512, from whom she took the name by which she has been known to posterity.
She is generally supposed to have sold her soul to the Devil for the power of foretelling future events. Although during her lifetime she was looked upon as a witch, she escaped the common fate of 16th-century witches, and died peacefully in her bed at the age of 73, near Clifton in Yorkshire. A headstone is said to have been erected to her memory in the church-yard of that place, with the following epitaph:
"Here lies she who never lied;
Whose skill often has been tried:
Her prophecies shall still survive,
And ever keep her name alive."
Despite Mother Shipton’s popularity in some quarters, the prophecies of the Knaresborough seer were most likely forgeries of the 17th and 19th centuries, and certainly some proved completely erroneous. One prophecy that can go in the ‘whoops!’ file proclaimed:
"The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty one."
Not all her prophecies were duds, however, and some proved uncannily accurate (if they were not fabricated). Take, for example:
"Carriages without horses shall go.
And accidents fill the world with woe.
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye ...
Under water men shall walk,
Shall ride, shall sleep, shall talk;
In the air men shall be seen
In white, in black, and in green.
Iron in the water shall float
As easy as a wooden boat."
It is said she predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and, like some others in history with a knack for seeing their own demise, she even foretold her own death which occurred in 1561.
Old and young, rich and poor, especially young women, visited the old ‘witch’ to know the future. Among the seekers was the Abbot of Beverley, to whom she foretold the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII and his marriage with Anne Boleyn; she told him of the burning of heretics that came to pass in Smithfield, and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. She also foretold the accession of James I, adding that, with him,
"From the cold north,
Every evil should come forth."
On a subsequent visit from the cleric she issued another prophecy:
"The time shall come when seas of blood
Shall mingle with a greater flood.
Great noise there shall be heard –
Great shouts and cries,
And seas shall thunder louder than the skies;
Then shall three lions fight with three,
And bring Joy to a people, honour to a king.
That fiery year as soon as o’er,
Peace shall then be as before;
Plenty shall everywhere be found,
And men with swords shall plough the ground."
She predicted that Cardinal Wolsey would see York, yet never go there. This in fact happened in 1530 when Wolsey was travelling to that city. Just when he climbed to the top of a tower and saw York in the distance, he received a message from King Henry VIII commanding his to return to London. The cardinal died on the way home, and thus Mother Shipton's prophecy was fulfilled.
It must be borne in mind that we know of no edition of Mother Shipton’s prophecies dated before 1641, many decades after the deaths of both the prophetess and the churchman, and the most important editions of her work were published when she’d been 133 years in the ground. These were edited in 1684 by Richard Head, from whom we get the first biographical information about her.
Her clairvoyant verses about future technology, and about the failed global apocalypse predicted for 1881, first appeared in print three centuries after her death, in the 1862 edition. Shipton-fanciers will not be delighted to learn that some claim that Charles Hindley, the editor of that edition, later admitted that he was the author of those prognostications.
Mother Shipton probably shares with the Oracle of Delphi the title of the most famous prophetess of all time. In England her fame as a seer is only exceeded by that of Merlin, King Arthur’s magician, and every year more than 100,000 people visit her cave at Knaresborough.
It is said that Mother Shipton died at Clifton, Yorkshire, in 1561. For a number of years prior to 1839, a wax effigy of the Yorkshire Sibyl stood in Westminster Abbey, along with those of other noted persons.
Mother Shipton
Christopher Golde