50 Fun Facts About Nostradamus

What was Nostradamus's real name?

He first Latinised it in print in his almanac for 1550.

In which country was Nostradamus born?

He was born in Saint-Remy-de-Provence in December 1503.

What is the title of the 1555 book of prophecies for which Nostradamus is best known?

Its first instalment contained 353 quatrains.

How many poetic quatrains does the book of prophecies contain in its surviving form?

He planned a thousand, but the last 58 verses of the seventh Century were never printed.

A 'Century' in Nostradamus's book is a group of how many verses?

The name has nothing to do with periods of a hundred years, a common misunderstanding.

How many lines does a quatrain have?

Nostradamus's were mainly in French, mixed with Greek, Latin, Italian and Provencal.

Which of these was NOT one of Nostradamus's professions?

He was also a reputed seer, and made money writing almanacs and horoscopes.

What was the original religion of Nostradamus's father's family?

His grandfather Cresquas converted around 1459-60 and took a new surname honouring the Virgin.

Why did Nostradamus have to leave Avignon after just over a year of study?

He had studied only the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic by then.

Why was Nostradamus expelled from the University of Montpellier's medical school in 1529?

He had also been slandering doctors; the expulsion document still exists in the faculty library.

What remedy made Nostradamus famous during his apothecary years, supposedly protecting against plague?

His medical cookbook also recommended bloodletting, none of which apparently worked.

Which Renaissance scholar invited Nostradamus to Agen in 1531?

He married there, but his wife and two children died in 1534, presumably of plague.

In which Provencal town did Nostradamus settle in 1547, marrying the rich widow Anne Ponsarde?

They had six children, three daughters and three sons, and the house still exists.

Which of Nostradamus's publications were by far the most popular in his lifetime?

He published two or three a year from 1550 until his death, as Almanachs, Prognostications or Presages.

Which French queen summoned Nostradamus to Paris to explain hints of threats to the royal family?

She also had him draw up horoscopes for her children.

What position had the queen given Nostradamus by the time of his death in 1566?

He had once feared he would be beheaded for his verses.

Which king's death in 1559 is said to have been foretold by quatrain I.35, a claim first printed in 1614?

That is 55 years after the event, a typical example of the retrospective hit.

Why was Nostradamus briefly imprisoned at Marignane in 1561?

A recent royal decree required prior clerical approval for such publications.

What condition, which plagued Nostradamus for years, turned into edema and killed him in 1566?

He was reportedly found dead on the floor beside his bed on 2 July.

What is Nostradamus alleged to have told his secretary on the evening before he died?

The secretary, Jean de Chavigny, later edited a Presage to fit the way he died.

During which upheaval was Nostradamus's body moved to the Collegiale Saint-Laurent?

He had first been buried in the Franciscan chapel in Salon, part of which is now a restaurant.

Per a legend Samuel Pepys recorded in 1667, what was found on Nostradamus's chest when his grave was opened?

He had supposedly made the townsfolk swear his grave would never be disturbed.

Which 1522 compilation of prophecies was evidently one of Nostradamus's major sources?

His preface contains 24 biblical quotations, almost all in the order used by Savonarola.

Why did Nostradamus deliberately obscure the meaning of his verses with word games and mixed languages?

He mixed Greek, Italian, Latin and Provencal into a Virgilianised syntax.

What underlying theme runs through the quatrains, reflecting the Ottoman invasions of his day?

The same expectations appear in the earlier Mirabilis Liber.

Which Nazi minister had booklets of spurious Nostradamus verses airdropped over the Low Countries in 1940?

His wife Magda had shown him a 1921 book by a German postal worker; the Allies dropped Nostradamus leaflets of their own.

Which Swiss astrologer did the Nazi propaganda ministry hire to write Nostradamus material?

He had supposedly used Nostradamus to predict an assassination attempt on Hitler in November 1939.

Which Hollywood studio made a series of short Nostradamus films to boost American morale in World War II?

They were part of the Allied response to German Nostradamus propaganda in the war.

Which sceptic coined 'retroactive clairvoyance' for how Nostradamus's words are fitted to past events?

The technical term is postdiction.

Nostradamus's notorious '1999' prophecy is found in which quatrain?

Commentators have failed to match it to any event; Li Hongzhi claimed it foretold the Falun Gong persecution.

Which city's great blaze of 1666 is on the standard list of events supporters say Nostradamus predicted?

The list also includes the Revolution of 1789, Napoleon, Hitler, both world wars and Hiroshima.

Which 1969 event have popular authors claimed Nostradamus foretold, shortly after it happened?

Challenger in 1986, Diana in 1997 and 9/11 in 2001 all got the same treatment.

According to scholars, what is the general quality of English translations of the quatrains?

Some are intentionally altered to make them fit whatever event they are being applied to.

Which manuscript on Egyptian hieroglyphs by Nostradamus survives in the Lyon municipal library?

Like every text of its day, it was ignorant of what the hieroglyphs really meant; Champollion cracked them in the 19th century.

In which large engineering project did Nostradamus and his wife buy a one-thirteenth share?

Adam de Craponne's canal irrigated waterless Salon and the Crau from the river Durance.

How much money, roughly, did Nostradamus leave in his will, alongside his property?

That is around US$300,000 today, left to his wife pending her remarriage.

How many quatrains did the first 1555 instalment of the prophecies contain?

A third edition with 300 new quatrains was reportedly printed in 1558 but survives only in the posthumous 1568 omnibus.

What does the last quatrain of the sixth Century specifically attack?

Astrology is mentioned only twice in his preface, though far more often in his dedicatory letter to the king.

Nostradamus's references to a 'bronze tripod' liken his methods to which ancient site of prophecy?

They are usually preceded by 'as though', which undermines the legend that he actually gazed into flames or water.

With which prominent physician did Nostradamus fight a plague outbreak in Marseille in 1545?

He then tackled further outbreaks alone in Salon and Aix-en-Provence.

How many children did Nostradamus have with his second wife?

He himself was one of at least nine children of a notary.

What does the surname adopted by his converted grandfather, Nostredame, mean?

It honoured the saint on whose day the conversion was solemnised.

In which Provençal town was Nostradamus born in December 1503?

His claimed birthplace still stands there; he was one of at least nine children.

What was the profession of Nostradamus's father, Jaume de Nostredame?

The grain and money dealing was his grandfather Cresquas's trade, in Avignon, before his conversion to Catholicism around 1459.

For which year did Nostradamus write his first almanac, the first print use of his Latin name?

Its success led him to write one or more every year, and the nobility soon began asking him for horoscopes.

Roughly how many prophecies did Nostradamus's almanacs contain in total?

Their calendars all began on 1 January, not in March as is sometimes supposed.

How many quatrains of the seventh 'Century' are missing from every surviving edition?

The publisher of the third instalment apparently refused to begin in the middle of a Century, so the gap was never filled.

Which ancient physician's Protreptic did Nostradamus very freely translate?

His other medical book, the Traité des fardemens, was a cookbook of borrowed remedies and cosmetics recipes.

In which source is Nostradamus's only description of his trance-like working method found?

The legend that he gazed into flames or water rests on a naive reading of his first two verses.

Which of these languages did Nostradamus NOT mix into his verses to obscure their meaning?

He also used 'Virgilianised' syntax and word games, feeling vulnerable to religious opposition.