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Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Menke. Listener discretion advised. France, 1564 and the country is, to be perfectly honest, a bit of a mess. 14 year old King Charles IX has just formally ended his regency, but the young monarch has no real interest in governing. After all, he's just 14 years old. His ineptitude means the former regent, his mother, Catherine de Medici, continues to be the dominant power in French politics. Before the regency's official dissolution, Catherine managed to address the country's increasingly violent religious conflict by brokering the Edict of Amboise, which ended the first stage of the French wars of religion and brought on a brief period of official peace between the Huguenots, or French Protestants and Catholics. In an effort to enforce the edict and to rally support for the crown in the wake of the unrest, Catherine and little Charles set out in March of 1564 for a two year Grand Tour of France. The tour took the pair and their roughly 20,000 person entourage across the country, from Paris to Provence, Brittany to the Bourbonnais. Each stop on the tour was carefully planned to strengthen loyalty in the provinces, but there is one stop stop designated for the King and Queen Mother's personal agenda. In October, the tour reached the quiet southern town of Salon de Provence, home of the famed physician and occultist Nostradamus. That iconic name is likely known by a majority of modern listeners, but even at the time of the royal visit, Nostradamus infamy had already spread throughout the country and beyond its borders. In fact, the validity of his predictions had become another point of contention in the religious conflict. Protestants were arguing he was a fraud. Catholics believed he had a divine gift. Catherine, a devout Catholic, came to Ceylon seeking a message from the stars delivered through Nostradamus. Later, writing to the Constable of France, Catherine happily recounted that the astrologer promised all kinds of good things to the king, my son, and that he shall live as long as you. That prediction would come true, but not in the way Catherine brightly anticipated. Today, more than four centuries after Nostradamus death, his prophecies continue to be a subject of discussion. Have they predicted major world events or are they simply vague enough to be easily applicable to any number of situations? But there's one more question perhaps most interesting of Were his prophecies even original? For all of this debate, the man behind the predictions remains to many a mystery. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is Noble Blood. The famous future astrologer was not born Nostradamus the Great and Powerful or Ol Nasty if you've been listening to the Rain recap series over on the Noble Blood Patreon. Instead, his parents called him Michel de Nostredame when he was born in 1503 in St. Remy de Provence. Michel was only the second generation to be born with the last name Nostradam. His paternal grandfather had been a Spanish Jew forced to convert and take a Christian name around 1455 due to hostile new edicts. So his grandfather, Guy Gassonnet, became Pierre de Sainte Marie before settling on Pierre de Nostredame, the surname meaning Our Lady Michel. Nostradam's Jewish heritage will come up later in debates surrounding his legitimacy, so remember that point. It's traditionally believed that Michel started his education young, taught by his maternal great grandfather who was a physician. Those early studies are said to have focused on Latin and yes, some astrology, which at the time was a respected scholarly tradition with a long history. Although the Renaissance period saw increasing skepticism of astrology and those who practiced it later in life, Nostradam would claim to still treasure the astrolabe he inherited from his great grandfather. Sometime between the ages of 14 and 16, Michel left for the nearest major city, Avignon, where he sought higher education at the local university. In Nostradamus day, university curriculum consisted of the trivium which was grammar, rhetoric and logic, followed by the geometry, arithmetic, music and astrology. However, our young scholar never got the chance to advance to the quadrivium's astrology lessons because in 1520 a plague outbreak forced the university to close its doors. Covid era students, I'm sure can relate in a later diary entry, Nostradamus reflected on life following the university closure. I spent most of my young years on pharmaceutics and the knowledge and study of natural remedies across various lands and countries. Constantly on the move to find out the source and origin of plants involved in the purposes of the healing art. That is a long sentence to say. He became a self taught traveling apothecary Perhaps he was inspired by his close encounter with the plague. Or maybe he was following in his great grandfather's footsteps. By 1529, schools had reopened their doors. We know this because 1529 was the year Michel enrolled in the university at Montpellier to study for his medical doctorate. His written enrollment confirmation, penned in shaky Latin, remains in the university's library to this day, though this may be a point of pride for that university now. The reception Nostradamus received at the time was quite different. In fact, he was expelled shortly after arriving. The confirmation of his expulsion also still exists in library records. Reading. He whom you see crossed out here has been an apothecary, or quack. And through the students, we have heard him speak ill of doctors. This was the first, but certainly not the last time Nostradamus would be called a quack. While being an apothecary was deemed inferior to being a doctor, it was also forbidden for university students to have practiced a manual trade. Academic snobbery and Nostradamus overconfidence were a bad mix. So Nostradamus returned to the life of a traveling apothecary for the next few years, following Hippocrates famous advice to seek out old wives or alternative remedies. In 1531, he settled into a stationary life in a where he was invited to be the personal apothecary of a famed scholar he had befriended. There he married his first wife, Henriette, with whom he had two children. His time there, as his time had been in Avignon and Montpellier, was once again destined to be brief. By 1534, Michel Nostradam faced the triple loss of his wife, son and daughter, all to another plague outbreak. The mortality rate of the 16th century Plague epidemics was still lower than that of the Black death in the 14th century, but the effects were still devastating. Known treatments were, in effect, effective. And a famous piece of advice at the time for doctors was quote, get out fast, stay well away, come back late. I don't remember that part of the Hippocratic oath, but I am no doctor. If you can't find a doctor, you might as well turn to a less respected professional. After two years spent as the aide to a prominent physician, a Montpellier alum, no less, in Marseille, Nostradamus service were procured by the city of Aix en Provence. Our apothecary was likely motivated to aid where others fled for a number of reasons. A chance at renown, certainly, but also the chance for medical discovery. Almost certainly the chance to fight the same disease that took his family away. It was there that he treated residents with his would be famous Rose Pill. I wouldn't recommend trying this at home, but if you're curious as to how a rose pill is made, you can Turn to Nostradamus 1555 Best selling medical Cookbook Wellness Influencers Pumping out a book tale as old as time, the Rose Pill formula calls for one ounce of the sawdust shavings of cypress wood as green as you can find, six ounces of Florentine iris, three ounces of cloves, three drachms of sweet calamus and six drams of aloeswood. Next, take three or four hundred infolded red roses, fresh and perfectly clean and gathered before dewfall. From there, the concoction is to be shaped into a lozenge and left to dry. But as a bonus, he notes that the mixture may also be made into a perfume. Add as much musk or ambergris as you either can or wish. If these two are added, I do not doubt that you will produce a superbly pleasant perfume. This same cookbook, part of a rapidly growing genre of recipe books, often called books of secrets, marketed to DIY minded readers, many of them women, also includes formulas for teeth whitening, hair coloring, and a love tonic so powerful that Nostradamus claimed a few drops placed in a woman's mouth while kissing her would trigger a burning passion. When describing the Rose Pill, Nostradamus dedicates time to recounting the horror horrors he witnessed in X as the plague tore apart families and graveyards overflowed. But he notes that his concoction provided relief, protecting its users from infection. We can't say for certain or with any likelihood that the Pill was an actually effective preventative measure. But as in many cases, what mattered was that people believed in it. That Rose Pill was the catalyst that set Nostradamus on the path to fame, and he soon became known as the Plague Doctor. In reality, it appears that the ex plague naturally subsided after around nine months, which was a typical timeline. While his prowess may have been exaggerated, Nostradamus rightfully deserves credit where it's due for staying where many doctors fled and for trying what hadn't been tried. He continued to help a number of other cities over the next few years before settling in the town that he would call home for the rest of his life, Ceylon. By this point he was in his early 40s, and alongside his new success, it appears he sought another chance at a stable family life. On November 11, 1547, he married his second wife, a wealthy Widow named Anne Ponsard. It was in the years following his second marriage that Nostradamus became interested in the occult. He hadn't formally studied astrology since childhood, but the field was becoming increasingly more popular as well as more controversial. His major influences included 1550's book on the nature of the times and their changes, which used planetary patterns to define the world by cycles, the last of which would conclude with a predicted and notably inaccurate apocalypse, as well as the rising success of annual almanacs, which provided predictions and warnings for the year ahead. Though they were first introduced about a century earlier, almanacs were now so popular that two to three dozen were being published every year. With the country's increasing religious tensions as well as economic and political strife, it was no wonder that people sought guides to the future. Nostradamus wrote his first almanac in 1550 and would continue to write one every year until his death. It was in his first almanac that we see the pen name Michel Nostredame Mus, as opposed to Nostredame. In trading his French surname for a Latin one, he aligned himself with the great thinkers of antiquity, a practice adopted by many scholars of the Renaissance. No copies of his first publication have survived, but the predictions it contained were recorded by his secretary. One reads throughout Gaul, meaning France, there shall be certain uprisings which shall be appeased by Sterne Council. Fairly vague, but pretty predictably likely. Another report in the autumn, heavy rains, which shall be the cause of many setbacks, shall even confound some very great enterprises. A third prediction claims at this time, whether in wars or in illness, love, honor and fear shall be the reason why people shall not be oppressed, but shall live in peace. Those are all decidedly short, vague and reliable. Rain in autumn. Groundbreaking. But as the years progressed, we'll see his predictive style change. Predictions will become wordier, heavier, and increasingly grounded in the movements of the planets. His almanacs sold well, but they didn't particularly stand out compared to the many other successful almanacs. His more lucrative source of income was a new horoscope readings for wealthy clients as opposed to other astrologists. However, he did not draw up these charts himself, instead asking the client to provide the material. His apothecary practice also continued, but you wouldn't be wrong to wonder where the shift from medicine to occultism came from. After his childhood studies, Michel hadn't shown an interest in astrology for his entire young adult and adult life. But now, in middle age, he was a practicing astrologist with visions of the future. This transition wasn't something Nostradamus wrote about in his journals. So we're left to analyze for for ourselves. There's the cynical angle, that he saw the field becoming more lucrative and wanted a piece of the pie. And there's also the more optimistic angle that he was an inherently curious person, constantly seeking new ways to understand the world around him. I would argue it's probably a mixture of both. And indeed many scholars of the time, medicine and astrology as intertwined. 1555 would be the year Nostradamus began to see real success in his new practice. For the 55 almanac, Nostradamus had the idea to write his predictions in verse, which not only set him apart from his contemporaries by calling back to the voices of ancient prophets, but poetic language also helped keep things open to interpretation. It's also in the 1555 edition that Nostradamus first claims to be divinely inspired by divine spirit, soul filled with prophecy. War, famine, plague and upheaval shall come by floods, droughts, while blood shall stick, sustain both land and sea. Peace pacts, prelates be born and princes die. He does not explicitly state his predictions came from God. That would be a step too controversial in certain circles. But any reader who wanted to believe that could certainly sense the true intent behind his words. Besides religious wars, legal lightning strikes and crocodiles, yes, Nostradamus predicted an incident involving a mysterious crocodile. One particular prediction stood out among the others that year. The King, he wrote at the time, still referring to Catherine de Medici's husband, Henry ii, shall beware of some one or many of his court, lest they seek to do which I dare not put in writing, as the stars, in accordance with occult philosophy, demonstrate. A few years later, the astrologer Laurent Vidal, who ironically taught the subject at Avignon, where Michel was forced to abandon his studies before he reached the astrology courses, published a scathing indictment of Nostradamus in which he questioned that very say that you dare not declare what would happen that year. Why did you resort to such ruses, if not so that you should be sent for from the court? You knew perfectly well the King would want the truth. In other words, you're only being coy, so the King will summon you. Whether or not Videl was right about Nostradamus intentions, he was wrong about one thing in it was not the King whose attention he caught, but rather the Queen's. In the summer of 1555, Nostradamus received the Queen's summon to attend court in Paris. According to the contemporary Chronicle and Linnaeus. He apparently feared greatly that harm would have been done to him, for he said himself he was in great danger of having his head cut off. Evidently it was not his head Nostradamus had to worry about, but his feet. He was only at court a short amount of time before he was bedridden with a bad flare up of gout. As later after reported by his son Caesar. Nostradamus actually read the charts of eager nobles right there from his bed. In a letter Nostradamus wrote as a fine reward from the court, I became ill there. The Queen paid me 30 crowns, and there's a fine sum for having come 200 leagues. Having spent a hundred crowns, I made 30. This may seem an oddly irreverent tone from a man who was highly respected by the queen, but that letter was written to a man to whom Nostradamus owed money, and so he sought to downplay his wealth. He does, however, make sure to tell the man how much he sung his praises to Catherine. According to a later account from Nostradamus Son, the seer's duty on that first trip was to examine the birth charts of the three princes who would become Francis ii, Charles IX and Henry iii. The queen was evidently pleased, and Nostradamus Son later reported that his father returned to Ceylon a hero heralded by the people as the most famous prophet in all of France. The next project for for this most esteemed Frenchman was his magnum opus, the prophecies, released in three volumes from 1557 to 1558. Rather than predicting a single year's events as was the task of his almanacs, he would predict thousands of years events. He was certainly not the first to attempt such an undertaking, but he would be the first to do so in French, the language of the people. It was such a major project, in fact, that upon publication it included a dedicatory letter to King Henry ii. Published treatises during this time were frequently dedicated to existing or potential patrons. By addressing his work to Henry, Nostradamus communicated his lofty ambitions to both the King and to his readers. He was making the inaccessible ancient art of prophecy accessible, and I mean that in a more literal sense as well. He was essentially translating the existing work of the ancients into French, as described by Peter Lemusier in his biography the Unknown. No, Nostradamus Michel's writing directly reflected the major events and developments first told by ancient prophets and later reproduced in 1522's Mirabilis Liber, which was a popular collection of predictions from numerous Christian Saints and diviners. In Latin, of course. In his book's preface, Nostradamus writes that his prophecies concerned few future events about which the divine being has granted me knowledge by means of astrological cycles. He contradicts himself in the same preface, however, writing, even though my son, I have used the word prophet, I have no wish to attribute myself a title of such lofty sublimity at present here at present means in the present word. In his biographer's words, the material was certainly not Nostradamus copyright. Only in the matter of detail of the who and where and when was his own hand evident. Even then, his predictions relied on the expectation that history would repeat itself. For example, he wrote numerous times that Europe would be invaded from from the east and south by massive Muslim forces. There are passages fully plagiarized from historical sources, including Livy, Plutarch and other classics. This all sounds rather scandalous to our modern ears. Revealed Nostradamus plagiarized his predictions, but this was actually a very common practice at the time, seen more as paying homage to the greats than infringing on their intellectual property. In one quatrain that would become particularly famous, Nostradamus mirrors the deposition of the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelus. It reads in Nostradamus standard verse style, the young lion shall surmount the old on martial battlefield in a single duel. His eyes he'll put out in a cage of gold two forces joined and then a death most cruel. Nostradamus was right that history would repeat itself, but in a way no one could have expected. In 1559, a tournament was held honoring the marriage of Henry II and Catherine daughter Elizabeth to King Philip II of Spain. King Henry was an avid jouster and decided to participate in a festive triple joust with his captain of the Scottish guard, Gabriel of Montgomery. In the third round, Gabriel's lance splintered and pierced Henry's eye so severely it penetrated his brain. Despite their best efforts, the royal doctors found there was nothing to be done and the king died 10 days later. There are some clear parallels to Nostradamus verse. For example, both jousters had lions as their emblems. While Marshal Battlefield isn't exactly the same as a celebratory joust. Henry did did lose his eye, wearing a gilded helmet and suffering in agony for 10 days before finally succumbing to brain damage. I would certainly qualify that as a death most cruel. At the time, however, those parallels were not drawn. Instead, some people wondered why Nostradamus failed to predict anything about the death of a king. In the letter at the beginning of of his book addressed to Henry, Nostradamus even described the king as most invincible. While Nostradamus had his fair share of denouncers, mainly fellow astrologists who saw him as a hack, this snafu wasn't enough to hinder his rise. Even in England, diplomats discussed quatrains referencing the ascension of Queen Elizabeth and the marriage between Mary Queen of Scots, and Henry's young successor, Francis Nostradamus. Mania officially swept the country. Foreign ambassadors were reporting back to their home countries that it was becoming difficult to conduct any business in France, for the country's collective mind was fixated on one thing. International clients were also rolling in, including the Crown Prince of Vienna and a prominent Duke of Savoy. Catherine herself became a regular client, asking for readings for the new king Francis and for his younger brother Charles Nostradamus. 1560 Almanac allegedly predicted the early death of King Francis II, which occurred in December of that year. If you recall this episode's introduction, the early years of Francis younger brother Charles IX's regency saw the country on the brink of civil war. In the end of 1561, Nostradamus wrote to a friend that the troubles had reached Salon and that he and his family had been forced to rent a safe house in Avignon, as his famed mysticism made him suspect in the chaos. Michel failed to get the required license from a bishop for the publication of his 1562 almanac and he was thrown into prison at the castle of Marnier. The governor of Provence left his sentences to Charles IX and Nostradamus was freed. Thus began his reputation era. He always had his detractors, but upon his release from prison, the movement against him gained more traction than ever. A famous published critique called him, and I will be adding this phrase to my personal vernacular, a 24 carat liar. Another pamphlet sought to discredit him on account of his Jewish origins, while additionally framing him as something of a court. I who was there at the time, know perfectly well that there was nobody there who was not convinced that you had come there expressly in order to receive by way of reward all the mockery that all your poor little treatises and fantastic statements richly deserved. That's such a good takedown, you know, the guy who wrote that would have killed on Reddit. But the heart of this entire revived debate was between Protestants and Catholics. After Pierre de Ronsard, a Catholic poet with royal patronage, composed a flattering portrait of Nostradamus, a Port Protestant pamphlet was published, denouncing Ronsard by appealing directly to Queen Catherine. It read, ronsard, you fool, how dare you take to heart this damned Nostradamus and his art, calling him true and for a maniac's word betray the revelation of the Lord. As a brief aside, takedowns being written in verse feels like the 16th century forebearer of rap battles. Catherine, as we know, paid those detractors no mind, and she soon embarked on her trip with King Charles to Salon, where we began this episode. Michel's son cesar was only 10 at the time, but he would recount that visit in his later years. Apparently, Nostradamus asked to examine Charles's younger brother Henry, to assess his future prospects. He pronounced that according to the placement of the moles on his body, he would not only become king, but rule for a long time. When the young prince did ultimately succeed to the throne, it's said he would often recall the occasion with amusement. As for Nostradamus other prediction, that Charles would live live as long as the constable of France, that also came true, albeit Bleakly. He died three years later in his 70s, and King Charles only lived for another seven years, dying at just 20. Three years before Charles death, however, Nostradamus was called upon to bless the proposed union between the new French king and Queen Elizabeth of England, who was twice his age. Whether or not Nostradamus saw a bright outcome, it appears he had no choice but to say he did. The proposal was sent to England with a copy of Charles birth chart and Nostradamus commentary. Elizabeth delicately refused the proposal and is said to have replied, quote, my lord is too great for me and yet too small. Still, Nostradamus had gained enough acclaim with Catherine de Medici that he was appointed Privy Councillor and Physician in ordinary to the king and awarded a grant and pension. The Spanish ambassador, reporting the lunacy of what is going on here to his king, wrote, he has all the guile in the world and only ever says what is pleasing to whomever it may be. The ambassador, the Queen said to me today, do you know? Nostradamus assured me that in 1566 a general peace would reign across the world and that the kingdom of France would be the most peaceful and that the situation would settle down. And while saying that, she had an air of earnestness, as if somebody had been quoting St John or St Luke at her end quote. Despite what outsiders thought of him, though, Nostradamus had made it to the top. But not long after arriving, his chronic gout became increasingly more painful. In a December 1565 letter to a colleague he wrote at Arles recently, a fiery arrow was seen, a kind of falling star. He believed this meant varied woes were to plague the land, including invasions, drought and famine. But maybe he should have been looking inward. In his final surviving letter, he wrote an update to Catherine predicting a vastly different future than the falling star. I find by various celestial patterns drawn up in this place that all shall be in peace, love, union and concord, even though there shall be some great contradictions and differences, but in the end everybody shall return content of mouth and heart. Perhaps he simply forgot to mention the invasions, drought and famine that the falling star had told him about. But really, a prediction of peace, love and concord is pretty safe, because if you say that everything will be okay in the end and things aren't okay yet, it just means the end hasn't come. Nostradamus completed his final Almanac for 1567 only a fortnight before his end came in the beginning of July 1566. He did not predict his own death, but November 1567's entry was posthumously edited by his secretary to fit the circumstances of his passing. That's the life of Nostradamus, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a bit about how his prophecies have been interpreted in modern times.
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There are numerous events in more recent history that people believe had been predicted by nuns Nostradamus, including the French Revolution, the death of Princess Diana and the rise of Adolf Hitler. The latter is a particularly interesting one. As Nostradamus became a figure of government propaganda, astrology was gaining popularity again in 1930s Europe and publishers were putting out multiple Nostradamus books a year. The New York Times reported reported that men and women of all social stations, including officers at the front, were turning to Nostradamus prophecies for insight. One of his quatrains stands out Beasts wild with hunger shall swim the rivers. Most of the host shall move against Ister he'll have the great one dragged in iron cage when the child the German Rhine surveys Ister, spelled Hister in the old French, was referring to another name for the Danube river, but the 20th century mind saw a clear reference to the name Hitler. On the eve of war, France's propaganda agency sought to publish a favorable interpretation of Nostradamus. Centuries after he was sought out by Catherine, Nostradamus was once again tasked with predicting a hopeful future for France. Seeing the effectiveness of that strategy, the Nazis began to publish their own interpretations of Nostradamus quatrains, and Hitler himself was interested in astrology. That didn't stop the Allies from using him in their propaganda. In fact, their new plan was to make Nostradamus a movie star in the US With MGM producing short films about the Seer. As said by the studio's production supervisor, the vision was to make a given verse say what you wanted it to say in terms of the times and in terms of the interest and in terms of the dramatic value of your interpretation. It's something to keep in mind when you see people making grand predictions on the Internet, people reading into clues and symbols and signs that throughout history vague enough predictions have been used as propaganda, and we've always been looking to the stars for answers. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Nobleblood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hite and Julia Milani. The show is Edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Rima Il Kayali and executive producers Aaron Menke, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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