Mysteries of History

Ruth Petit-Homme
April 17, 2010
English 10 Honors
1AB
Mysteries of History: Do Nostradamus’s prophecies come true?
What if there was a person who could predict the future with total promise? What if he could not only predict the course of events in his lifetime, but in the lifetime of others who would follow, decades, and even centuries after his own death? A man by the name of Michel de Nostradame, better known know to us by his pseudonym Nostradamus (Hogue 7), believed that his prophecies were evidently going to come true. He seemingly had a great affect on humankind, not only through prophecies, but also through his medicine. He was a practicing physician, astronomer and astrologer who lived in the mid 16th century who turned his hand to prophecy later in life (Sanghavi). After spending most of his time from 1521-1529 in school, studying medicine and astrology, he had gone to Provence, to heal those stricken with the plague (Ovason 22). Nostradamus had many prophecies; all varying in topics, from tragedies to natural causes, and even royal deaths. Do Nostradamus’s predictions really come true? Many people have believed Nostradamus’s prophecies for many centuries. The death of Nostradamus led to an even greater fascination about what he had accomplished in the course of his life. According to many current and ancient astrologers, the prophecies of Nostradamus remain a total mystery, and to many others, decoding these prophecies just takes a couple years and possibly decades of work. In the year 1555, Nostradamus published the first part of his Prophéties (Ovason 17). Due to the book, Prophéties, decoding these exact prophecies have seem to catch the eye of many, and because so many years have been given up by many astrologers, philosophers, and the Western Hemispheric eye, Nostradamus becomes even more renowned for his prophecies.
Nostradamus is quite well-known due to his four-line prophecies. Nostradamus’s most renowned quatrain that would have given...