Born Michel de Notredame on 14 December 1503 in St Remy, France, he was the oldest of five sons. His grandfather, Jean, taught him Latin, Greek, Hebrew, mathematics and astrology at an early age. Nostradamus received a medical degree in 1529 and became physician-in-ordinary to Charles IX during the bubonic plague. He is said to have had extraordinary healing abilities.
Nostradamus was in his late 40s when, it is told, he frequently went into a meditative state and had visions of the future. He began to document the visions in a mixture of Lain, French, and Greek quatrains, publishing his famous “Centuries” in 1558.
Nostradamus was married twice, losing his first wife and two children to the plague. He died on 2 July 1566. “Centuries” was translated into English in 1672. In 1781 it was banned by the Roman Catholic Church. Ironically, in 1553, when Nostradamus encountered a group of Franciscan monks he threw himself on his knees, clutching at the garment of one of the monks, Felice Peretti. When asked why he had done this he replied that he must yield “before his Holiness.” Nineteen years after the death of Nostradamus, Peretti became Pope Sixtus V.
See: Nostradamus predictions
