The Future Predicted by Nostradamus
In the spring there will be omens, and thereafter extreme changes, reversals of realms and mighty earthquakes. These will be accompanied by the procreation of the new Babylon, miserable daughter enlarged by the abomination of the first holocaust. It will last for only seventy-three years and seven months.
Then there will issue from the stock which had remained barren for so long, proceeding from the 50th degree, one who will renew the whole Christian Church. A great place will be established, with union and concord between some of the children of opposite ideas, who have been separated by diverse realms. And such will be the peace that the instigator and promoter of military factions, born of the diversity of religions, will remain chained to the deepest pit. And the kingdom of the Furious One, who counterfeits the sage, will be united.
The countries, towns, cities, realms and provinces which will have abandoned their old customs to gain liberty, but which will in fact have enthralled themselves even more, will secretly have wearied of their liberty. Faith lost in their perfect religion, they will begin to strike to the left, only to return to the right. Holiness, for a long time overcome, will be replaced in accordance with the earliest writings.
Thereafter the great dog, the biggest of curs, will go forth and destroy all, the same old crimes being perpetrated again. Temples will be set up again as in ancient times, and the priest will be restored to his original position and he will begin his whoring and luxury, and will commit a thousand crimes.
At the eve of another desolation, when she is atop her most high and sublime dignity, some potentates and warlords will confront her, and take away her two swords, and leave her only the insignia, whose curvature attracts them. The people will make him go to the right and will not wish to submit themselves to those of the opposite extreme with the hand in acute position, who touch the ground, and want to drive spurs into them.
The people of the world from this benevolent slavery to which they had voluntary submitted. He will put himself under the protection of Mars, stripping Jupiter of all his honors and dignities, and establish himself in the free city in another scant Mesopotamia. The chief and governor will be cast out from the middle and hung up, ignorant of the conspiracy of one of the conspirators with the second Thrasibulus, who for a long time will have directed all this.
Then the impurities and abominations, with a great shame, will be brought out and manifested in the shadows of the veiled light, and will cease towards the end of the change in reign. The chiefs of the Church will be backward in the love of God, and several of them will apostatize from the true faith. Of the three sects, that which is in the middle, because of its own partisans, will be thrown a bit into decadence. The first one will be exterminated throughout all Europe and most of Africa by the third one, making use of the poor in spirit who, led by madmen to libidinous luxury, will adulterate.
The supporting common people will rise up and chase out the adherents of the legislators. From the way realms will have been weakened by the Easterners, it will seem that God the Creator has loosed Satan from the prisons of hell to give birth to the great Dog and Dogam, who will make such an abominable breach in the Churches that neither the reds nor the whites without eyes or hands will know what to make of it, and their power will be taken from them.
Then will commence a persecution of the Churches the like of which was never seen. Meanwhile, such a plague will arise that more than two thirds of the world will be removed. One will be unable to ascertain the true owners of fields and houses, and weeds growing in the streets of cities will rise higher than the knees. For the clergy there will be but utter desolation. The warlords will usurp what is returned from the City of the Sun, from Malta and the Isles of Hyhres. The great chain of the port which wakes its name from the marine ox will be opened.
And a new incursion will be made by the maritime shores, wishing to deliver the Sierra Morea from the first Mahometan recapture. Their assaults will not all be in vain, and the place which was once the abode of Abraham will be assaulted by persons who hold the Jovialists in veneration. And this city of “Achem” will be surrounded and assailed on all sides by a most powerful force of warriors. Their maritime forces will be weakened by the Westerners, and great desolation will fall upon this realm. Its greatest cities will be depopulated and those who enter will fall under the vengeance of the wrath of God.
The sepulcher, for long an object of such great veneration, will remain in the open, exposed to the sight of the heavens, the Sun and the Moon. The holy place will be converted into a stable for a herd large and small, and used for profane purposes. Oh, what a calamitous affliction will pregnant women bear at this time.
For hereupon the principal Eastern chief will be vanquished by the Northerners and Westerners, and most of his people, stirred up, will be put to death, overwhelmed or scattered. His children, offspring of many women, will be imprisoned. Then will be accomplished the prophecy of the Royal Prophet, Let him hear the groaning of the captives, that he might deliver the children of those doomed to die.
What great oppression will then fall upon the Princes and Governors of Kingdoms, especially those which will be maritime and Eastern, whose tongues will be intermingled with all others: the tongue of the Latins, and of the Arabs, via the Phoenicians. And all these Eastern Kings will be chased, overthrown and exterminated, but not altogether, by means of the forces of the Kings of the North, and because of the drawing near of our age through the three secretly united in the search for death, treacherously laying traps for one another. This renewed Triumvirate will last for seven years, and the renown of this sect will extend around the world. The sacrifice of the hole and immaculate Wafer will be sustained.
Then the Lords of “Aquilon” [the North], two in number, will be victorious over the Easterners, and so great a noise and bellicose tumult will they make amongst them that all the East will tremble in terror of these brothers, yet not brothers, of “Aquilon” [the North].
By this discourse, Sire, I present these predictions almost with confusion, especially as to when they will take place. Furthermore, the chronology of time which follows conforms very little, if at all, with that which has already been set forth. Yet it was determined by astronomy and other sources, including Holy Scriptures, and thus could not err. If I had wanted to date each quatrain, I could have done so. But this would not have been agreeable to all, least of all to those interpreting them, and was not to be done until Your Majesty granted me full power to do so, lest calumniators be furnished with an opportunity to injure me.
