Before the prophecies, there was the plague. Michel de Nostredame spent years traveling
southern France treating victims of the Black Death with methods that were, for his time,
remarkably effective. He refused to bleed his patients. He insisted on fresh air
and clean water. He prescribed rose pills he claimed warded off infection. Many of his
patients survived when others did not.
Then the plague took his own wife and two children. He was investigated by the Inquisition.
His first marriage was annulled. He wandered for years. When he emerged, he had become
something different. He began writing almanacs — annual predictions that sold widely
and brought him to the attention of the French court. Catherine de Medici summoned him to Paris.
He became court physician to King Charles IX.
Les Prophéties, published in installments beginning in 1555, contained 942 quatrains —
four-line verses in a deliberately obscure mix of French, Latin, Greek and symbolism.
He said the obscurity was intentional, to prevent the prophecies from causing panic.
Scholars have debated ever since whether the vagueness is prophetic genius or the reason
any event can be mapped to any verse after the fact.
He predicted the date of his own death. On the night of July 1, 1566, he told his secretary:
"You will not find me alive at sunrise." He was found dead the next morning,
exactly as he said.
