3.  The Life of Nostradamus

Michel de Nostradame, more commonly known as Nostradamus, was born on December 14, 1503, in St. Remy de Provence, which by the way makes him a Sagittarius (something this astrologer would find important to be conveyed to you.). His parents were of the Jewish faith but converted to the Catholic faith when he was nine to avoid the wrath of the Spanish Inquisition who were wary of Jewish wealth and influence.

Nostradamus was the oldest of four brothers. After displaying the intelligence of a child prodigy, his grandfather Jean de Nostradamus (who had converted from Judaism to Christian) home schooled him in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Mathematics and Astrology. After the death of his grandfather in 1522, Nostradamus was sent to Montpellier University to become a doctor.

After he obtained his bachelor’s degree in Medicine he went out into the countryside to assist impoverished victims of the black plague. Four years later, he returned to Montpellier to complete his doctorate where he aroused suspicion for refusing to bleed sick patience. His refusal to cut patients or use leeches to draw the blood out of them eventually led him to be expelled from the university. Many biographers have noted that Nostradamus also raised eyebrows by maintaining that the earth circled the sun and not the other way around. He upheld the Copernican theory that the world was round and circled around the sun more than 100 years before Galileo was prosecuted for the same belief.

While practicing medicine Toulouse he received a letter from Julius-Cesar Scaliger, a philosopher considered second only to Erasmus in eminence throughout Europe. Scaliger invited him to stay at his home in Agen. Scaliger became the mentor in metaphysical and esoteric studies that Nostradamus badly needed to replace his deceased grandfather.

During this happy time in Agen where he was largely supported by Scaliger, Nostradamus met and married a young very rich and beautiful girl (nobody knows her name but it is probably scrambled in the quatrains somewhere.) He married her in 1534 and they had a son and daughter.  Unfortunately he only enjoyed three years of domestic bliss with the love of his life as the very Black Plague that he had fought so hard against in the countryside slunk into the city and killed his wife and two children. 

To add to his woes, his late wife’s family tried to sue him for the return of her dowry and then in 1538, he was accused of heresy because of a chance remark made some years before. Unfortunately, Nostradamus informed a workman casting a bronze statue of the Virgin Mary that he was “making devils.” This was exactly the type of remark that was considered to be typical of a Satanist. His defense was that he didn’t like the likeness of the Virgin that was being created and that the remark was merely meant to bean aesthetic objection to the look of the statue. Sensing his own popularity and a growing opinion that he was odd and a heretic he left Agen.

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