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- [00:00]
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- [00:17]
Peter Frankopan
Today we're going to be talking about a man whose name has become synonymous with his ability to see the future. If a major catastrophic global event happens, you can pretty much Bet that within 24 hours, someone on the Internet will claim that this guy predicted it hundreds of years ago.
- [00:34]
Afua Hirsch
We're talking about major events like the Great Fire of London, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the assassination of JFK, the September 11 attacks on the US. According to this man's believers, he foresaw it all. He is the ultimate historic conspiracy theorist dream. The 16th century French astrologer, philosopher, physician and reputed seer, Michel de Nostradam, better known to us all as Nostradamus.
- [01:05]
Peter Frankopan
He became huge afro in the 1980s, I think, as we were living in an age of anxiety and the worry about global war and famine and disaster. So he was one of those people who suddenly gone and got a cult following a few hundred years later. So I don't know whether Nostradamus played a role when you were growing up, but he's popped up as being the only guy who could see the future from the past. I don't know whether he has a resonance in your childhood, adolescence or beyond.
- [01:32]
Afua Hirsch
Well, he's always just been there. And what I didn't realise until we started researching for this was that that hasn't always been the case. He was a big deal in his lifetime. Not uncontroversial, but you're right, it's this age of anxiety and uncertainty that seems to have given him new life. And he wasn't just staring into crystal balls. He was a medical professional navigating one of the most dangerous periods in European history.
- [01:58]
Peter Frankopan
Never trust someone who's a doctor who hasn't got a PhD in the humanities as well. That's what I like to think. But behind the myth of this mystical prophet is a man who's deeply embedded in the very real, also terrifying realities of the Renaissance. He wasn't just staring into crystal balls, like you said, Afra, he was trying to work out what was going on in the world around him and I guess tried to help. So he's going to be one of the group of mystics, prophets and seers, future tellers that we're going to look at. And I think it's part of your idea, Afra, you said enough of history. Let's look at people who could work out the future rather than work out the past. So this is something you wanted to do, right?
- [02:36]
Afua Hirsch
I don't think enough of history is exactly what I said. But yes, I thought, what about the figures in history who predicted the future? And this feels like, funny. As you were saying actually about the 80s was full of all this uncertainty and conflict and famine and war. I was like, that sounds so different. Here we are from our age. We are also in a world governed by chaos and political instability. And what we'll find out in this episode is that Nostradamus discovered that that was also a lucrative marketplace for someone offering certainty.
- [03:20]
Peter Frankopan
Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankopan.
- [03:24]
Afua Hirsch
I'm Afua Haysh.
- [03:25]
Peter Frankopan
And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
- [03:42]
Afua Hirsch
This is Nostradamus the Apothecary. See what I did there? Peter Prophet, the Apothecary.
- [03:51]
Peter Frankopan
Okay, I like that. You get a prize if you can spell that.
- [03:53]
Afua Hirsch
By the way, dear listeners, thanks for listening to Legacy. And don't forget to sign up to Legacy Plus. To enjoy bonus content, early access, fewer ads, Q&As, maybe even more newly invented words, go to Legacy Supportingcast FM.
- [04:10]
Peter Frankopan
Okay, so let's set the scene afoir so in 1503 in St. Remy de Provence in the south of France. That's a beautiful place to visit, by the way. And you know, don't just take my word for it. Speak to Vincent Van Gogh when you get to the next life. But Michel de Nostredame was born into a family of Jewish heritage who had converted to Catholicism a generation earlier to avoid persecution. So he grows up in a world where his family have had to reinvent or rethink about who they are.
- [04:39]
Afua Hirsch
And that cultivates an atmosphere of secrecy. Living as a converted family during the Inquisition, keeping your true thoughts and your true beliefs hidden behind layers of acceptable public displays of faith and discourse, is crucial to not just your identity, but your survival.
- [04:58]
Peter Frankopan
And that world is one which it's merit based as well. You have to use your brains and if you are smart, you can move ahead in the world. So age 15, he goes to study at the University of Avenue, but he has to leave a little bit early because university closes its doors. And if you've heard us talk about the Black Death and the Justinian Plague, you'll know that pathogens kick their nasty heads up repeatedly in history. At this moment in time in the early 1500s, it's a. It's a new wave of bubonic plague that forces people to. I can't remember what we used to call it. Not the ruler's six. Self isolate. That's it. Run away from everybody else, because every time you cop.
- [05:39]
Afua Hirsch
Quarantine.
- [05:40]
Peter Frankopan
Quarantine. That's the word I was looking for.
- [05:42]
Afua Hirsch
Do you think during COVID we felt so unique living through this era? We, you know, we knew about the Black Death and the plague. But I think it's so interesting when we tell these stories, realizing how frequent these occurrences of plague were. It was just generation after generation experiencing basically lockdowns and quarantines because the plague kept rearing its ugly head. And this is the defining trauma of Nostradamus early life. The plague is everywhere. After leaving Avignon, he travels the countryside for eight years from 1521. And he's so consumed by the problems of plague and the devastation it's wreaking that he dedicates his time to searching for herbal remedies. And he becomes what in that era was known as an apothecary.
- [06:27]
Peter Frankopan
Today's world, it'd be called the US Secretary of Health. Right. That he's the equivalent of rfk.
- [06:32]
Afua Hirsch
I mean, look, I feel like that's flattering to RFK because obviously apothecaries cover a wide range of practice. But this young Nostradamus is not just a quack. He's looking for plants and herbs that could offer solutions. He actually makes and invents something called a rose pill, which actually, in the scheme of medicines, doesn't sound that disgusting.
- [06:54]
Peter Frankopan
Tell us about that rose. Tell us about that rose pill. Sounds like. I mean, not that I've got any knowledge of this at all, but sounds like the sort of thing you get in a nightclub in Ibiza. I mean, that's what you'd call it, right?
- [07:02]
Afua Hirsch
Oh, God, I'm so innocent. I was thinking it's the kind of thing I get. You get at the kind of farmer's market from the. From. From the herbalist witchy lady.
- [07:10]
Peter Frankopan
That is, of course, what I also thought.
- [07:13]
Afua Hirsch
It's a lozenge made of rose petals, sawdust from green cypress and crushed clothes.
- [07:19]
Peter Frankopan
Right? And it's described as a sort of vitamin C tablet with a pleasant smell to mask the stench of death.
- [07:26]
Afua Hirsch
So.
- [07:26]
Peter Frankopan
But, you know, you said he's not a quack, but he's. I mean, he. He's not that that's not a medical solution. He. He's quite progressive, Nostradamus, but he is also. He also realizes that if he has a platform and could convince people that what he's offering will make them healthier, you get a following. So it is obviously slightly different to somebody who says vaccines don't work, but there is a kind of marketplace that goes with this stuff too. So if you could convince people that you know what you're talking about and you're going to give them better healthcare, a bit like all the series we did on self improvement, the ideas of how you can think about mental health, physical health and improve it, there's a way in which you can become quite well known. And what's interesting with Nostradamus is that he is in a world where we kind of think of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as a time where people didn't have any ideas at all. Or it's all pretty basic, but there's a huge amount of experimentation going on.
- [08:18]
Afua Hirsch
Well, I think this question of what is a proper doctor, what is an apothecary, is actually really crucial to Nostradamus story, and it is worth thinking about a little bit because this is an era where, notoriously, the medical profession, so the supposedly respectable scientific community of doctors were pretty dodgy, Peter. I mean, to get into one of these universities and become an elite physician, you are, yes, studying Latin and Greek and you're in this very heavily gatekept professional world, but. But you're looking down on apothecaries who work with their hands, who gather herbs and remedies who experiment. And you could actually say that the apothecaries are the empiricists of the era. Now, obviously some of them might be doing things that have no basis in evidence, but a lot of them are really experimenting with remedies, with sick people. They are the ones who are actually conducting what's more recognisable as scientific experiment in many ways. Whereas the elite intellectual physicians have some really, really crazy ideas at this time. And when the bubonic plague hits, they're basically useless. They don't have any solutions. Whereas some of these apothecaries actually, and Nostradamus is in this category, do have, even if basic, an understanding of the importance of clean water, of fresh air, of kind of hygiene in a way that actually isn't part of medical professional thought at that time.
- [09:46]
Peter Frankopan
So you're not saying, afraid that the world's had too much of experts and that these elite guys who are studying Latin and Greek and telling you about Galen and the great medical doctors from a thousand years earlier, that they are not the ones who are to be trusted, but the actual people who know what they're doing and talking about hygiene. That's where proper advice comes from.
- [10:06]
Afua Hirsch
I mean, if you were sick, Peter, and you were rich, you would probably get a surgeon with like some kind of hacksaw that if you're poor, you get someone with a mortar and piss.
- [10:16]
Peter Frankopan
I only had a co. I only had a cough after, right? What's the hacksaw going to do to me?
- [10:21]
Afua Hirsch
Someone like leaching, leeching your blood. Whereas if you get an apothecary, you're going to get a mortar and pestle, some herbs and leaves and plants, you know, maybe some tinctures and drinks that don't taste great, but I suspect they might be less likely to kill you. Anyway, regardless, there is this class divide because only the very wealthy can afford these elite physicians. Really, most people, if they are sick, if they've got a cough or an upset stomach, it is going to be the apothecary that they go to. And it's important because they're not these fringe lunatics. Which is why I would kind of push back against the RFK comparison. These are. They're like nurses, maybe community nurses. They're people actually treating sick people on the ground day in, day out. And you would think that there would be a level of respectability and appreciation attached to that. But actually, that's not quite how society is structured in this era, Peter.
- [11:18]
Peter Frankopan
But I mean, you know, we've talked. We've talked about that too. You know, and herbal remedies that, you know, for me, with my constant sinusitis, are hugely effective. You know, the ideas of how you use plants and how you experiment and apply and that the same solution doesn't apply for everybody, I think, does speak to a world that is trying to work out how to make sense of both the sciences, but also practical applications. And like you said, Afra, there is that absolute divide between theory and practice, and that's a kind of recognizable one in today's world, too. So I'm not going to push the RFK point, but I think it's the idea of what you can see and what happens on the ground. But we did. We talked a bit Afro in our series on women and healing. How does the gender side fit in with all of this?
- [12:02]
Afua Hirsch
Well, the universities and the elite professional medical profession completely exclude women. Whereas people who are doing this work of empiricism, of gathering herbs of treating people often include women and women actually do very well as apothecaries. And there's also this sense and this kind of ancient belief that's persistent during this era that in some ways women are better at this hands on healing, that this is actually the realm of women. And that's part of the mix as to why the apothecary isn't as respected as this more prestigious world of male dominated medicine. But Nostradamus does enter that world. He is admitted to the University of Montpellier in 1529. This at the time is one of the oldest and most prestigious medical schools in the world. He starts his study for a doctorate in medicine. But it doesn't last very long or go very well.
- [12:57]
Peter Frankopan
Peter he falls out. The student populated guillotine discovers Nostradamus past as an apothecary and he kicks him out. I mean, as you talk, as you mentioned, Afro, that's kind of the gatekeeping. And you'd have thought that there would be an interest to be able to blend these things together. But it's literally strictly established at the medical school that if you have been practicing a manual trade, specifically, actually including being an apothecary, you should be banned from enrolling as medical factory. And I guess it's a bit like being a sort of tradesman in an elite scholars world. It's sort of seen as, as muddy in the waters and it's not sort of not appropriate or suitable too. But I mean it's, I suppose it has its echoes in other times too. I mean, I was talking with Mary Beard yesterday at an event we did together and she was reminding that you weren't allowed to study at Cambridge till 1960 unless you had Latin to O level standard, even if you were going to be a nuclear physicist. Right. So the idea is that you had credentials that always kept the bar moving so that you could exclude people in medical sciences. It was the same too with Nostradamus.
- [14:04]
Afua Hirsch
When I was at the bar, I had a fellow pupil who'd been a magistrates court clerk. And traditionally, you know, in the magistrates court, magistrates aren't lawyers, but they have a clerk who advises them on the law. And it's someone who's kind of worked their way up within the legal profession. So this is somebody who's actually a legal professional. But the idea of a clerk who becoming a barrister was seen as really controversial at the time because it was like, you know, all of these still existing but maybe unspoken rules or like for example, for a policeman to become a prosecutor, which is something I've also seen happen. There's a kind of grudging respect for it. But often the slightly patronizing like, you know, that's unusual, that's an unusual path. And we still have these. I mean these are still the medieval gatekeep professions. They haven't actually changed that much. But it is amazing to think that somebody who has all this experience actually basically practicing, healing and treating illness is rejected from medical school specifically because of that experience treating and healing illness. And for Nostradamus, he sees that system, he loses respect for the medical profession and he rejects the idea that his expertise should be rejected. So he decides to carve out his own path. And this is where I think we can often see this happen. Somebody who's rejected by the establishment kind of gets more motivated to create their own space. And in Nostradamus case, he is going to embark on a path of pursuing astrology, almanacs, the herbalism and medicine that he has learned, becoming something of what we might today call a multi hyphenate. I think because it doesn't fit neatly into any category or books.
- [15:49]
Peter Frankopan
Historian, podcaster, TV producer, you know, all that sort of stuff. I know what you mean.
- [15:53]
Afua Hirsch
I don't relate at all, Peter, but
- [15:56]
Peter Frankopan
you know, I think you're right, that sense of exclusion. But then as we mentioned, this is a kind of world of recurring pandemic diseases and plagues that people are familiar with but suddenly pop up. And in 1534, Nostradamus is married, he's got two children. And then as we mentioned, that world of pandemics and plagues comes back round again. And in this time it goes through agents where Nostradamus is living, kills his wife and both of his. The famous doctor, how he thought of himself couldn't even save his own family.
- [16:24]
Afua Hirsch
It's a profound breaking point for Nostradamus. His medical practice suffers from the loss of credibility that he couldn't save the people he loves most. His in laws then sue him for the return of his wife's dowry, which is humiliating. And on top of that, the church inquisition starts sniffing around because of a passing comment he allegedly made in this atmosphere where he is losing respect and deference for these institutions about a religious statue. And you know, someone else could have cowered or tried to seek more social approval, but that is not Nostradamus. What he does instead is go on the run.
- [17:12]
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- [17:32]
Afua Hirsch
Is it in you?
- [17:34]
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- [17:36]
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- [18:17]
Peter Frankopan
So we're now in the 1540s. Nostradamus spends most of his time traveling and this is where the shift happens. As you mentioned, Afwa. He turns away from medicine and starts leading into astrology, the occult, prophecy. Also slightly weird stuff, even for the time.
- [18:33]
Afua Hirsch
He settles down in Salon de Provence and remarries, this time to a wealthy widow named Anne Ponsard in and sets up a new business model. He starts writing almanacs, which are essentially annual guidebooks that give useful information to navigate the year ahead. So weather predictions, farming advice and astrological forecasts.
- [18:55]
Peter Frankopan
People love that. I mean a people love listicles, right? They love lists. Just look, just look at the Internet. But also it's helpful, you know, it's trying to be predictive and it's better to be having some kind of guest than nothing. And I suppose, not surprisingly, these sell like hotcakes. And it turns out giving people a sense of what to expect next year is incredibly popular, but also it's really profitable. And that fuels his most famous project. In 1555, he publishes a book called Les Propheti or the Prophecies.
- [19:23]
Afua Hirsch
This is the big one. It's a little bit like when an author publishes all these books that are barely noticed and then has a massive bestseller. This is the book that secures Nostradamus legacy. And it's not necessarily the most accessible piece of work. It's a collection of poetic four line verses called quatrains, and he plans to write a thousand of them.
- [19:47]
Peter Frankopan
And it brings him to the attention of his ultimate patron, Catherine de Medici, who's the queen consort of King Henry II of France. She's obsessed by astrology and the occult and she reads his almanacs and summons him to the court in Paris to draw up horoscopes for her children.
- [20:03]
Afua Hirsch
I think it's worth us just taking a moment to Understand why the occult is such a popular subject at the time? Peter because for people who don't know that much about this area, it might sound like a real contradiction. You know, this is peak religious fervor. We've got inquisitions, we've got people being killed or burned at the state because they're witches or because they're Catholic or because they're Protestant. And yet here we have the occult thriving in the most elite spaces of European countries. And I think to understand that, we have to go back to this Renaissance mindset where, you know, today we have this kind of binary, which I personally try to reject all the time. But we have science on the one hand, magic on the other. In the 16th century, there is no distinction between the two. And that puts the occult and the idea of the occult in a different space than it is today.
- [20:51]
Peter Frankopan
PETER well, you know, always go back to the roots of the word, right? So occult, from Latin occultus, which means stuff that's concealed are hidden. And in a way, that's also what science is. You know, all my colleagues in, in their labs, they're trying to work out stuff they don't understand. I mean, that's the whole point of science. I mean, again, the word science means stuff that, you know, actually when you do academic research in science, it's stuff you don't know. I mean, that's the kind of whole point. So the occult is the idea that you're trying to discover stuff that has got hidden patterns. And I guess that's what academic research looks like. It becomes synonymous or becomes taken to mean stuff that's dark or evil or strange or unusual, stuff that's malign, that you're trying to sort of find a way through towards the light. But that's not necessarily what it means. I mean, there's no clear separation between science, magic or occult at the time. And, you know, as you said, it goes right up to the royal courts as well. But I know that in, you know, we've talked about non European societies and how important things like what we would call the occult today still are, and about how people pay a lot of attention not just to astrology, but also to things that they feel rather than can see and prove.
- [22:00]
Afua Hirsch
There's an interesting cyclical nature to this, because when I think about these ideas in the 16th century, I recognise a lot of contemporary discourse. And underneath it all, I think, is this understanding that the universe is deeply connected and that there is a lot about it that we don't understand. And, you know, now we would Kind of call that the mysteries of science, then they would call it divinity. And. And there was a lot of logic underneath this. For example, if the moon can control the tides of massive oceans, it made perfect sense to these Renaissance thinkers that the planets could also influence the humors of the human body or the fate of a kingdom. And mathematics, medicine, stargazing, astronomy, these were all blended together. They were all part of the knowable and unknowable world that scientists, occultists, divine seers were trying to make sense of. And then on top of that, there were some kind of building blocks to this thinking as well. There was this sense that there are these ancient texts that have something to offer contemporary life. Again, I think, very familiar to us, this was the era in which people were looking back to Kabbalah, for example, this ancient Judaic mysticism, hermeticism, Neoplatonism. They were trying to look at knowledge systems that might have been lost and see if they could. Could resurface them in ways that solved their current problems. Something I think is very much a preoccupation today.
- [23:25]
Peter Frankopan
We talked about this Avra as well, that the Age of anxiety. Do you think there's something also about the fact that this is a kind of coping mechanism where you've got wars, you've got plague, you've got disease, you've got infant mortalities, and off the charts you've got people being accused of being witches. Stuff you don't understand. Is one way through this to be spending your time thinking about how you can study, what you could learn, how you could explain things. Do you think there's a coping mechanism here too?
- [23:52]
Afua Hirsch
I think as we do this series on mystics, we're going to see this is the prevailing theme and, you know, it makes me question whether it's just fundamental to the human condition to always feel like you're living in a chaotic time. But by any standards, the 16th century was a genuinely frightening time to be alive. You have these plagues to which there is no such effective medical solution, constantly, randomly, seemingly randomly sweeping the population and killing huge percentages of people. You've got the Protestant Reformation that shattered people's complete faith in the Catholic Church, you know, on which they were willing to stake their souls, you know, the future of the afterlife, now it's all being questioned. So these traditional pillars, medicine and the
- [24:34]
Peter Frankopan
Church Ottomans, you've got the Ottomans and the fear of the Antichrist, you know, that's. That's hugely important too, you know, so you're right, that instability and chaos and I Guess, I mean, when you were just saying, talking just now, it sort of maps a little bit, I guess, into the age of conspiracy theories. Today it's trying to find stuff that makes sense of it. All right, so, but what are the different kind of pillars that Nostradamus hangs his hat on in terms of things like astrology? Talk us through how that all plumbs together.
- [25:00]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah, I think it's easy to talk about the occult as if it's all just kind of woo. But there were lots of space, specific practices and disciplines that were the tools of people like Nostradamus. So a main one was scrying. And this is the physical tools of divination. And Nostradamus had quite a theatrical approach to this. He would do his scrying late at night and he had this tripod stool of brass, on top of which would be a bowl of water, sometimes accompanied by a candle. And he would do a kind of meditation where he would empty his mind of all worries and stare into the water until he achieved this trance like state. This is a technique known in occult practices as hydromancy. And you probably know that from the many TV series that still kind of glamorize and explore in a more contemporary setting these practices. And Nostradamus was heavily educated in classical Greek and Roman literature. So he was deliberately mimicking some of the practices of the ancient oracle of Delphi, for example, by using this brass tripod and by connecting to these ancient practices, he was giving himself historical and mystical credibility. And just like today, you know, people are suspicious of something that seems invented out of thin air, but once you start to kind of ground it in some ancient knowledge system, it sounds a lot more believable. And Nostradamus was very, very savvy about doing that. And then you asked about astrology, Peter, tell us about that. Because he practiced a specific kind of astrology.
- [26:31]
Peter Frankopan
Well, astrology has a long history. I mean, like you said, Afro, this is an age where people are thinking about the past and about learning that has been hidden from them from Mesopotamian cultures, from Babylon, from things from the Islamic world. And so how you kind of integrate all of that together, it's really important. And for Nostradamus, finding a way to do that is also quite careful. So Nostradamus is interested in something called judicial astrology, which is a belief in the Renaissance, that specific movements and alignments of the planets could predict the quality of potential future earthly events like wars and so on. But all of this, Afwa, he's got to Be quite careful, Nostradamus, anybody doing this, because how that fits with the Inquisition, how that fits with hardline Christian thinking, You know, this is a time when you mentioned witches being burnt at the stake. I mean, how does he stay away from being accused of being a Satanist, of practicing dark magic, or being able to do things that are not of this world? Because he's got to be quite careful with that.
- [27:29]
Afua Hirsch
I think this is where we can unequivocally credit Nostradamus with genius, because when it came to branding and strategic positioning of what he was doing, he understood how to offer something that seemed new and revelatory without treading on the toes of the Church, which could carry fatal consequences. So he positioned his skills as very much within the Christian world. He protected himself by talking about divine inspiration. He totally denied that there was any dark magic or summoning of spirits at work. And he made sure that all of the talk of the supernatural was from the Creator. These were gifts from God. They were not competing with God. They were not alternative to God. These were blessings from a Christian God, God that allowed him to use the science of planetary mathematics to make predictions without getting in trouble with the Church. It was a little bit of a fine line, but he managed to stay just on the right side of it.
- [28:31]
Peter Frankopan
So one of the things that he's quite clever at, as well as his branding after, is that he relies on past histories. So he's an avid reader of past collections of Christian prophecies, but also blends back a lot of the stuff he talks about into events from ancient Rome or the Middle Ages, because that gives the kind of. Not just a veneer, but it gives a context for what people are understanding. But also it's quite a safe way of doing things because. Because people in the past, a bit like today, think there are kind of cycles, you know, of what's going on in the world. What must come round, what goes around comes around. So he's. He's good at his marketing, he's good at his branding, he's very astute at how he sort of lands things that he doesn't get himself into too much trouble. And best of all, he's got the interest of the queen involved, which is quite a useful trump card to have up his sleeve. So that elite endorsement is important too. And it's not just Catherine of Medici, is it? Afua.
- [29:26]
Afua Hirsch
European rulers at this time are very receptive to these types of knowledge and predictions. And, you know, many parts of the world, it's completely normal to have an oracle or an astrologer or a seer as part of the royal court. I think we think of Europe as separate from that tradition. But at this time, Catherine de Medici was employing Nostradamus ii. Queen Elizabeth had her own astrologer and occultist, a man named John Dee, who, for example, helped advise her on the date for her coronation to make sure it was as auspicious as possible. The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II practically turned his court in Prague into a basically an alchemist laboratory because he was so interested in mysticism. So occultism was being accepted and embraced by enough rulers that it seemed credible as well. And they were interested because they needed answers. They were navigating these very treacherous times. And so Nostradamus predictions fed into this thirst for prediction, for the ability to read the future. And that is what converted him from quite a savvy marketer and an effective advisor to what would become a legendary. And it's also in the way that he offered his predictions. Peter.
- [30:44]
Peter Frankopan
Well, I mean, we're just talking, you know, I was thinking about how. How unusual this maybe sounds, people listening. But, you know, we've got a president in the White House who's got a kind of pastor called Paula White Cane, who is busy expelling demons from people in her congregation. You know, Nancy Reagan had a astrologer who she's taking advice from. So the members of the royal family in the uk, you know, so these are things that are part and parcel of today's world in the West. And like you said, in many different parts of the world today, astrology and star predictions and thinking about what the future might have in hold, how to prepare for that, are hugely significant. But Nostradamus, he's quite a savvy, lot of gap between the blanks. So you can make things sell what they like. So here's one of Nostradamus quatrains translated into English for you. The young lion will overcome the older one on a field of combat in a single battle. He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage. Two wounds made, one. Then he dies. A cruel death, obviously.
- [31:44]
Afua Hirsch
Obviously.
- [31:45]
Peter Frankopan
God, you've got to tell me exactly what that predicts.
- [31:48]
Afua Hirsch
Obviously. That is predicting to the letter the event that would happen four years after he made it, where King Henry ii.
- [31:54]
Peter Frankopan
Just remind me what that was. Oh, yeah.
- [31:56]
Afua Hirsch
King Henry II is killed jousting in a tournament. And the younger opponents. Lance shatters. Two wounds made, one pierces the king's golden visor and goes right into his eye and brain. He dies a Slow, agonizing death. Or to quote Nostradamus, he dies a cruel death. And Nostradamus's writing is taken as a very literal, accurate, prophetic declaration of exactly what has turned out to happen. And everyone knows, you know, for anyone who claims to have magic powers, the proof is in the pudding. You are nobody until one of you, your predictions, or one of your spells or one of your pronouncements turns out to be true. But when that does happen, Peter, it catapults you into a completely different level entirely.
- [32:53]
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- [33:14]
Afua Hirsch
Is it in you?
- [33:15]
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- [33:28]
Peter Frankopan
So before the break, after we left, Nostradamus, the peak of his fame, rubbing shoulders with the Queen of France, having seemingly predicted the grisly death of King Henry ii. And it would be great to have a think through some of the predictions that he'd been attributed to. Some of his greatest hits. That's what we wanted to call it, right? Nostradamus's greatest hits. To talk us through a couple of
- [33:49]
Afua Hirsch
those, well, we mentioned the fire of London. Let's look at the rise of Hitler, because Monostradamus Franklin, frequently credited with predicting the rise of a Nazi leader. And it's mainly due to the use of a specific word, and I have to say this is for me, one of the most persuasive, although there is, it is spooky. So Nostradamus, and this is in the 1500s, remember, wrote, Beasts ferocious with hunger will cross the rivers. The greater part of the battlefield will be against hista spelt H I S T E R. Into a cage of iron will the great one be drawn when the child of Germany observes nothing. Yeah, I've actually got chills reading that. But the thing that really seals the deal for that is that he even got Hitler's name. I mean, with like one letter out of place. So hister instead of Hitler. And of course, the beasts crossing the rivers and the battlefield are interpreted as the massive mechanized warfare of the Second World War, which nobody in the 1500s really had any business being able to imagine because it had changed so unrecognisably from the kind of warfare they had. But of course, there is another way of explaining how he came to that prediction. Peter Is there?
- [35:06]
Peter Frankopan
I'm just trying to work out what that might be. I mean, I think the bit that jumps out is that you can see that in the 20th century when people read that, they go, oh my God, if he got that right, he must have everything right. And therefore this gift of prophecy in the kind of age of rationalism we sort of think is, is completely bananas most of the time that then Nostradamus became a celebrity all over again in the 20th century. So I'm not sure how else one reads it. I mean, I think gamble, he gets lucky. But you tell us.
- [35:35]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah, so Hista is actually the classical Latin name for the lower section of the Danube. And that was a geographic term that Nostradamus was very familiar with from his classical education. And he does use hister in other writings in a general geographic sense to describe that part of Europe. So you could argue, you know, this is just like vague predictions about Europe and the Danube, but it's the way that he combines hister in this quadrain with Germany and the battlefield. And you can see how, just as you said, with the benefit of hindsight as to what does happen in the Second World War, of course, people look at that and it sounds basically like a perfect prediction. And you know, I think this is where there is always another explanation. But I still find it eerie even just reading that out loud, because I've never actually read it out loud before. I don't know, I guess you have to choose your interpretation. Let's look at some others and see.
- [36:35]
Peter Frankopan
Well, I'll give you one quick one. So we've got the. Currently we're talking at the time where Iran has been under attack and it's a sort of a global confrontation that might still be going on by the time you listen to this in 2050. But you know, before that happened, people got very excited about Nostradamus predicting about the great swarm of bees will arise by night, the ambush. And so of course the Internet went bananas going, there's a great swarm of bees. It's obviously drone warfare. That must be what that's all to do with. And you know, the idea that there's a seven month war, if you're really sure that Monastremas knows what he's talking about, you might want to make your investment decisions, but based on that too. But these things, they can be, you can see whatever you want in them. Tell us about Napoleon Bonaparte.
- [37:16]
Afua Hirsch
Well, Napoleon was another one that Nostradamus is credited with predicting. In this quatrain he goes pownailoron will be more of fire than of blood, to swim in praise the Great One, to flee to the confluence. He will refuse entry to the puces, the depraved ones, and the durants will keep them imprisoned. If you arrange the letters, Pau Ne Laurent, you get Napoleon Roi Napoleon the king. And the verse mentions fireblood and the puces, which believers connect to Pope Pius VI and Pius vii, both of whom were imprisoned by Napoleon. Like all of these, there's another interpretation, because Powell, Ney and Oloron are actually three neighbouring towns in southwestern France. So skeptics will say, well, he's referring to local political and military events in a specific region during his own time, not a future emperor. And it's a clever anagram that we are again, like, gymnastically reinterpreting to fit something we later know happened.
- [38:21]
Peter Frankopan
If you do poor Ne and Oloron rearrange it, it spells legacy plus as well. So, I mean, they can be. I mean, get a pen and paper. It's very close. You know, I think that this is the. This is not close. This is the challenge, right? So, but so people go through these things and they. They see what they want to see. So we have also this one near the gates are within two cities there will be scourges, the like of which was never seen. Famine within plague, people put out by steel, crying to the great immortal God for relief. What do you reckon that one might be about? Aphra?
- [38:53]
Afua Hirsch
Obviously Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Obviously, the two cities are Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The scourges, the like of which was never seen are the atomic bomb, the like of which had never been seen. Famine within plague is a really emotive way of summoning the devastating aftermath of radiation sickness. And people have looked to that quatrain as a prediction of the horrific atomic ends to the Second World War. But then the skeptics would say Nostradamus was living through outbreaks of plague, that those were the scourges he was talking about, and that the two cities that he was talking to were the siege warfare against cities during the Renaissance that he experienced. And, you know, there are lots of examples of two cities being attacked in a war and the people suffering famine and plague and scourges as a result. But there's something about. And we'll talk about the way he's written these, Peter. There's a kind of authority and gravitas that makes it sound that it was definitively and with precision intended to describe something. It doesn't sound like a general phenomenon. It sounds like a prediction of Something of a different order of magnitude. And I think with our desire to see that, that's what we find in his writing. And I think a lot of that does come down to the art of the quatrain and the fact that he wrote Le Propheti in that language. If he'd have just written, you know, in 1666, London will burn down. In 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be blighted by an atomic bomb, there would be like very little to discuss. But he's written it in this actually pretty dense language. If you sit down and try and read Le Prophet, it's pretty incomprehensible. It's very dense. It gives us so much to unpick and decipher. And it's partly in the process that we find all this revelatory truth.
- [40:43]
Peter Frankopan
I think it's called projection. Right. So if you. Because, because he blends French and Greek and Latin, local Occitan, like you've mentioned, therefore he. He doesn't give names, he doesn't give dates, he doesn't give clear geographies. It means that it's. It's very supple and it can be applied to everything. So I think you've got to take the view whether you think it's deliberate sleight of hand and it's a kind of, you know, these quatrains that are specifically designed so that you can let them mean anything, or whether they. We should see this as kind of works of literature or as quatrains of literature which are experimental, they're sort of quite entertaining and they're kind of deliberately left open ended because so much of the world is not known or understood. It's whether you think it's all cynical or whether that's just how we've used all these things in the past too. Because, I mean, there are loads of examples again in the recent time where we are probably more excited about conspiracy theories and the way that those can spread. I mean, there's a whole other episode we could do on that, even things like 9, 11, right, where if you look carefully enough, you could find a quatrain and it says, in the City of God, which I guess means Washington, there'll be great thunder, two brothers torn about by chaos. While the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb. And people thought that must mean Washington, New York, the Twin Towers, the Pentagon. The problem is about that word alpha is that I'm not sure that's absolutely what Nostradamus wrote.
- [42:07]
Afua Hirsch
Nostradamus never wrote that. It was written by a Canadian university student in an essay in which he was trying to demonstrate how easy it is to fake a prophecy that sounds important by writing in that style. So I know, and so it does make the point that you can write in a way that sounds authoritative, yet vague, slightly kind of imbue it with the sense of meaning and we will then retrieve it to make whatever point we need. I think the other thing to point out is the things that he didn't get right because we always obviously dwell on the things that seem to be accurate predictions. So I don't know if you remember, but in 1999 the Guardian ran this very famous headline, nostradamus wrong and in brackets, please ignore this if the world ended yesterday. Because he had predicted 450 years earlier that the world would end specifically on the 4th of July 1999. And he wrote, from the sky shall come a great king of terror. Revive the great king of Angelmoir. Before and after Mars shall reign as chance will have it. And you know, it's pretty hard to see an accurate prediction in that and that, you know, this is the thing about the kind of confirmation bias of seers and prophecies that we basically only spend time on the ones that seem to have something to offer. And even in Nostradamus own lifetime, people were very skeptical about a lot of his predictions. I mean, one of his contemporaries called him a brainless and lunatic idiot who is shouting nonsense and publishing his prognostications and fantasies on the streets. Other people said that he was high on nutmeg, which I have to say
- [43:42]
Peter Frankopan
that this is rose pill. Again, it's quite a flex.
- [43:45]
Afua Hirsch
I didn't know you could get high on nutmeg, but apparently if you take it in large enough doses, it causes hallucinations. There is one more thing that I think is worth mentioning, Peter, and that is that the Institute for Cancer Research, which is not known to be a frivolous or conspiratorial organization, actually credited Nostradamus with predicting what would cure cancer in our era. Because he wrote that after assessment gives the unique frequency to operate on patients. Waves of sound kill the cancers. They become lifeless. Their poisons leave the body. Now that, the Institute for Cancer Research says is a prediction of high intensity focused ultrasound, a non invasive therapeutic technique that uses ultrasound energy for destroying tissue and blasting cancer, which is actually something that has become a really important tool in the fight and against cancer.
- [44:47]
Peter Frankopan
I need to go track down some friends who are cancer doctors. I, I'm, I'm slightly Surprised that they would. That the. The cancer unit would put Nostradamus on their. On their website or give them credit for that. But, I mean, you know, it proves the point. It's. You can. You can find what you want to find. I mean, you know, I. There was a book about Nostradamus that came out about 20 years ago that the week before Queen Elizabeth II died, sold five copies. But because someone figured that Nostradamus was predicted the queen's death accurately, it sold 8,000 copies. The following week, it became a Sunday Times bestseller. So people. People are looking for this stuff all the time. But probably the. The fact you get a fluke one, right, might just be the noise rather than the signal. So it's. It's a. It's a. It's a tricky one. I mean, what do you think? Afwa? I mean, to wrap up about Los Adamis is also selling doom. I mean, he's never. None of his predictions that are the ones that are happy or enlightened or good news, apart from, I guess he maybe shouldn't be working in the cancer departments. I mean, do we understand Nostradamus as a figure of his time? Do we think that he has extraordinary powers, that he's the only person in history who's able to have them? Or do you think he's just very good at marketing?
- [45:51]
Afua Hirsch
I definitely think the most accurate description I've read of him is when he was called the patron saint of anxiety. I think that we are an anxious species. You know, we have consciousness. We're able to see our condition. We know we are all able to predict our own death because we know that we'll all die. And so that gives us this constant yearning for answers, for reassurance, for solutions. And it also gives rise to this psychological phenomenon called apophenia, the human tendency to perceive meaningless patterns in random data. We so want to find answers. We so want to see truths and supernatural revelations, that we look for them. And there's a way that if you look in fragmented or poetic or vague language, you will find it. And I think the genius of Nostradamus was offering that. But I also don't think that that means. It's only that, you know, I think that I'm very open to the fact that sometimes there are forces at work that are beyond our comprehension. And it could be that whatever he was doing, I mean, he was using these practices. He was scrying, he was stargazing, he was getting high on nutmeg. Who knows the universal secrets that might have been disclosed to him in these states of trance or meditation, you know. And I think that the reason that I'm so fascinated by the series on Mystics is that there's a humility in realizing how much there is we don't understand. There are some things we can dismiss as fraudulent or quackery, and there are some things that don't add up, but there's a whole realm of stuff that's just slightly beyond our ability to prove or disprove one way or the other. And it's in that gray space that these characters become such fascinating legacies.
- [47:38]
Peter Frankopan
I think that is all exactly spot on, and I'm probably a bit more on the cynical side than you are. I think that in a way the bit that is most interesting is why he keeps coming up on the bingo card and why Nostradamus, of all of the mystics, is the most famous, certainly in the Western tradition. Why the single individual is taken as seriously as he is. And I think that speaks to our own later ages of anxiety. Perhaps we've replaced the classical Abrahamic Christian Judaic physicians of the apocalypse coming with other things. But the fact that Nostradamus is there and able to lean back and you're bound to find a four line verse about the World cup or about catastrophe or about people dying, it's quite helpful. But the fact he's survived through these 500 years is pretty telling about his enduring appeal, but I guess also about our constant desire to project backwards. That was the first in our series on great mystics, Nostradamus, the most famous. I'm really looking forward to seeing who we've got next. Afwa.
- [48:39]
Afua Hirsch
You will find out in the next episode unless you consult your seer or astrologist or your diviner. And then if you know ahead of time, let us know. Maybe we'll feature you in one of our episodes.
- [48:54]
Peter Frankopan
Thanks for listening to Legacy.
- [48:55]
Afua Hirsch
I'm Afua Hirsch.
- [48:57]
Peter Frankopan
I'm Peter Frankipan.
- [48:58]
Afua Hirsch
Don't forget to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player. You can also watch all our episodes on YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed there too.
- [49:06]
Peter Frankopan
And of course we're on all the socials. All the links are in the show notes for this episode or just search Legacy podcast. I will see you for the next episode of Legacy.
- [49:34]
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