History of the Prophecies

The Works of the Prophecies

The prognostications that Nostradamus intended for publication are, for the most part, a series of four lined poems written in the style of the rhètoriqueurs, a style of poetry that is exceedingly difficult. The number of lines must be even and there must be rhyming for each and every line, though which sets of lines rhyme can be up to the poet. Its difficulty is attested to in the fact that the most common form of the rhètoriqueur, the quatrain, is found in the structure of the sonnet, a poetry style that does lend itself to incredible verbal beauty but is exceedingly difficult to utilize properly. It is hard to understand why Nostradamus started out using this hard to use poetry style. Very likely he indulged in a bit of personal vanity in his first almanac and, having started, found he was stuck with it. At least he limited himself to the four lined version known as the quatrain, at least for his officially published works.

The collections that he intended for publication were the Almanacs and the Centuries. In the centuries were found the two epistles, the one to his son César, the other to his monarch Henri II. There are exactly ten centuries and the various number of almanacs. There is some evidence that he was starting to prepare two more centuries when he died, what there are of centuries eleven and twelve come to us thanks to his reputed secretary Chavigny. There was nothing else he intended to survive him in official publication.

People may ask about the Presages. In truth there is not much to say about them, except that they are a collection of almanac quatrains, and not all of them either. In fact, we have to thank the Presages for our knowing which almanacs are, in fact, accurate for there are many forgeries out there that for the most part brought Nostradamus’ reputation down. Even today some of the forgeries have survived and not all of the original almanacs have survived. So the collection known as the Presages has served a very useful purpose in preserving almanac quatrains for us to use and understand.

People also may ask about the Sixains, the work that also reportedly comes to us from Nostradamus and also follows the rules of the rhètoriqueurs. Yes, I am convinced he wrote them but I seriously doubt he ever intended them to be public knowledge. It is true his nephew Henri Nostradamus reputedly brought the Sixains to Vincent Sève but it was with the instructions that Sève get them to the reigning monarch, Henri IV. Henri Nostradamus was dying when he gave the volume to Sève and it is doubtful he would have given it to him in any other situation. From this and from other indications I deal with elsewhere, it is obvious that the volume known as the Sixains was intended to be a collection of private prognostications for the royal family alone.

So why would Sève include the Sixains when they were intended for the private use of the royal family? For the same reason that people in the English speaking world keep reading up on all of the occurrences of the royal family of Britain – the fact that they are royalty makes even their private lives public knowledge. It is really a ridiculous thing, and it is one that I am certain the royal family would for the most part agree with me in this, but the mere fact that they are royalty practically guarantees that they have no private life. Nobody cares to read about the Duke or Duchess of Glouchester (well, except perhaps some more localized British people), and people do not really care about the lesser nobility – for instance who cares about the Baron Cromwell or the Baroness Berners? But talk about royalty and suddenly so many want to read up on it, look into it, know all about it. It must be infuriating to the royal family to have their lives so completely open to all. But in the same way that people in Britain (and to a lesser degree throughout the English speaking world) want to read up on what the royal family of today is doing, so the French people of Sève’s day wanted to read up on anything and everything concerning the French Royal Family. Naturally the existence of the Sixains was a temptation, one that Vincent Sève could not resist. He published it. It was very a very profitable decision.

The first volume of the Centuries was published by the reputable publisher Mace Bonhomme in 1555. The second volume was published two years later by Du Rosne and the last edition was published by the Rigaud house. The almanacs ceased to be published at the time of his death and in 1605 Vincent Sève would collect everything, or as much as he could, into one volume.

The History of the Prophecies

The prophecies themselves were established before Nostradamus died. And it was this quatrain that established him.

”Cursed be the one who predicted so well,” the Duke of Montgomery is reputed to have cried out. Nostradamus was burnt in effigy and many people wanted him dead. Naturally people wanted to read him, they considered him to be a prophet even though he denied the appellation.

Nostradamus died and the prophecies were, for all intents and purposes, cast to the wind. No changes were made by Nostradamus’ hand, though Sève tried to foolishly edit them. Still, they continued on until a definite miss occurred.

No matter how you look at it, one fact definitely stands out. Though Paul V was sick and almost died, he survived. There was no convocation of the College of Cardinals in 1609. The black one from Campagnia never assumed the Papal Throne. It was as complete a miss as one could ask for.

Detractors had a field day. Nostradamus was a liar, they claimed. His prophecies were nothing more than lies and delusions, they asserted, the same assertions they make even today. And in truth in those days this marked failure seems to have given fuel to the speculations, for if he could truly see the future why was he so wrong? With so many of the quatrains dealing with issues that clearly could not have happened, it was as if everything that Nostradamus wrote about was nothing but speculation.

Nostradamus’ work would survive this, though not in the way he likely foresaw. Or maybe he did foresee it and simply did not write about it. But it survived. If Theophilus de Garencières is to be believed, and I have no reason to doubt him, the works survived only because they became textbooks in the study of the earlier style of French. The variety of subject matter, combined with the writing style, did make the works themselves interesting.

Then came the year 1700.

With this definite hit, a prediction that so accurately described the beginning of the Great Northern War, Nostradamus was revived. Nobody could, with any honesty, deny that Nostradamus had been completely right about this event. But the revival of Nostradamus was not complete, nor was it honest. Speculators tried to interpret him and make certain quatrains fit whatever fancy they wanted it to. Naturally detractors used this as a means to claim that Nostradamus wrote vaguely, that his predictions could apply to anything. Both were wrong, but how were people to know it? But some of the people who looked back did get some of the interpretations right.

The Modern Era

The French Revolution opened the Epistle to Henri, though few realized it and nobody could interpret it. In the year 1792, someone left a copy of Nostradamus’s Prophecies on the steps of one of the public monuments in Paris. A knife was thrust through the open book, keeping the book open to a specific page of the Epistle to Henri. Marked by the knife was the following phrase:

1792 would indeed see this happen. Doing exactly as Nostradamus foresaw centuries prior, the National Assembly instituted several important changes. Most notably was the ending of the French Monarchy, instituting the First French Republic, and the revocation of the Gregorian calendar. Declaring that a new age was upon us, the Legislative Assembly, created the Republican Calendar.

More and more quatrains were interpreted. The fulfillment of predictions began to increase on an ever larger scale. France endured several disasters, most notably the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War and the conquest of the Second World War. England stood tall and, to the surprise of the French, strove to defend France from German agression. The nations across the oceans were created, two of which actually had predictions in Nostradamus' quatrains. Communism rose and fell.

Which brings us to the present. And the present is dark indeed.

On Poetry

There are many types of poetry available to people today. The works of Nostradamus introduces us to the rhètoriqueurs, even lined structures where rhyming is all important. The four lined version of the rhètoriqueurs, the quatrain is used in the Sonnet, an exceedingly difficult type of poetry that utilizes three quatrains before it ends with a couplet, a two lined rhètoriqueur where both lines must rhyme. As a final note, while the number of syllables for each line is not written in stone, they must be roughly similar in length for all the lines.

But there are other types of poetry, the rhètoriqueur is by far from the only type. The limerick is a five lined poetry type where the first, second and fifth lines must rhyme while the third and fourth lines must also rhyme. Not only that, but the length of the lines must be equivalent - the first, second and fifth lines must not only rhyme, they must have the same number of syllables, ideally seven to ten. And the third and fourth lines must not only rhyme, they must also have the same number of syllables, five to seven. An ancient Irish type of poetry, the limerick is renown for humorous poems.

Of course, poetry is not limited to the west. The isles of the Japans, the land of the Rising Sun, gave us the poetry style known as Tanka which is really one of the more beautiful poetic styles. The structure of the Tanka is exceedingly rigid, as the number of syllable for the first and third lines must be five while the number of syllables for the second line must be seven. But no rhyming is necessary for this type of poetry. There are two subsets of the Tanka and they are determined by what their subject matter is. The Senryu deals with people while the Haiku deals with nature.

There is, of course, the ballad, or ballade, a type of poetry useful for storytelling. Usually the ballade has three stanzas of approximately seven to ten lines and a final stanza of four to five lines. The ballad is often a number of ballades structured together.

I must mention the Canzone, an obsolete medieval type of poetry that was especially prevalent in Italy. It had five to six long stanzas of a decent length and a single shorter stanza. This is because it leads us to the next (and last) type of poetry we will discuss here.

This last type of poetry that will be discussed is Epic poetry. Made famous by the works of Homer and Virgil, the epic poetry usually followed what is known as the Iambic Pentameter. The pentameter determined the structure of the syllables for it always alternated between short and long syllables, started with a short syllable and ended with a long one. Shakespeare’s plays were famous for their use of the Iambic pentameter, though Homer and Virgil were the ones who developed them to perfection.

There are, of course, other types of poetry that are out there. This list is far too short to be an exhaustive description of all poetic styles. In fact, it would not have been mentioned at all, except that Nostradamus, whatever his strengths, had this one weakness - he was a poor poet and his poetry ... well the lack of poetry skill definitely shows. Still, he did use it so it was incumbent that this be discussed, at least briefly.