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- Herausgeber: Passerino
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Nostradamus, whose full name was
Michel de Nostredame, was a French astrologer, physician, and reputed seer who lived in the 16th century. He is best known for his book "
Les Prophéties" (
The Prophecies), which contains a collection of cryptic and often vague quatrains that are believed by some to predict future events. Nostradamus is a historical figure who has gained significant fame and notoriety for his supposed ability to foresee future events, including some with apocalyptic significance.
His writings have been the subject of much speculation, interpretation, and debate, with both skeptics and enthusiasts offering various interpretations of his work.
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Lee McCann
Nostradamus, The Man Who Saw Through Time
The sky is the limit
Table of contents
Foreword
PART ONE
Chapter One. A Prophet Is Born
Chapter Two. The Education Of A Genius
Chapter Three. Personages And Politics
Chapter Four. Garlands Of Fame
Chapter Five. The Plague Returns
Chapter Six. A Prophet's Eyry
Chapter Seven. Purpose
Chapter Eight. On To Paris
Chapter Nine. The Court Of The Valois
Chapter Ten. Towards Familiar Country
PART TWO
Chapter One. The Cycle Of Valois-Navarre
Chapter Two. Claude De Savoie
Chapter Three. In The Twentieth Century
Foreword
THE RICH, ACTIVELY FULFILLED LIFE of the French prophet, Michel de Nostradame, is the story of genius not only in its rarest but its most modern form. His ability foreshadowed a hope, now gaining a first hearing in this our day, that science may, in some not too remote tomorrow, discover principles of mental forces which will permit every man to realize within himself a reflection of the powers of Nostradamus.
Many prophets have crossed the brightly lighted stage of history and paused to utter some astounding bit of prescience. But they are seldom remembered for more than a single episode, some ray of strange illumination that for a moment spotlighted the fate of a throne or a battle. Actually there exist but two written documents of prophecy which have pictured a grand-scale continuity of history, and unfolded a tapestry of world futures. One of these is, of course, the mighty word of Scripture. The other is that cryptic romaunt of Europe's fate, the Centuries, written by Nostradamus, Provençal troubadour of destiny.
No one knows as yet what forces shape a prophet, nor how it is that to "remembrance of things past," he adds "remembrance of the things that are to come." Perhaps the Red Queen knew more about it than most.
When Alice asked her why she cried out before, instead of after, she had pricked her finger, her majesty sagely observed that it is a poor rule which doesn't work both ways. Nostradamus would have enjoyed that bit of wit, so like his own, and pertinent to prophecy.
What is "before" and "after"? What is up or down when considered outside the limited, inaccurate criteria of the five senses? The fourth-dimensional vision of Nostradamus, like the Red Queen's cry, transcended the meanings which we give these words. The man who saw through time watched, as through a telescope, the distant stars of future events rise and set, beyond the eye of the present, over a period of four hundred years.
"Heaven from all creatures hide the book of Fate, All but the page prescrib’d, their present state."
Pope was within his sceptical rights when he penned that couplet, because the vaticinating exceptions among heaven's creatures have always been so few that for people as a whole his words were true. Another Englishman, the modernist Dean Inge, had however a better perspective. As a churchman he accepted prophecy. As an intelligent modern he said that the phenomenon of prevision was quite possibly part of an evolutionary process which would one day become a developed faculty general to man. Considered in this light, Nostradamus, astounding as are his prophecies, is himself, the man, of even greater fascination than his work, because he attained in its completeness the faculty to which it is at least a possibility that all may eventually aspire.
It was only a few years ago that several thousand New Yorkers unhinged one of the bronze doors of the American Museum of Natural History in an effort to hear a talk that few could understand when heard. The lecture was on the mathematics of the strange, and to them, new, fourth dimension which they had visualized, confounding it with the psychic world, as opening exciting secret vistas and miraculous powers. Such an incident is indicative of a dawning intensity of popular interest in the world of unseen forces, physical and metaphysical. Vitamins and visions, telescopes and telepathy, all go together as part of the thrilling new universe expanding within the consciousness of the twentieth century.
Science works always first with physical properties and objectives. Our breakfast newspapers tell of atoms cracked and a new element found, and radio serves us up freshly discovered planets with the evening meal. In all this inrush of knowledge nothing has been of such captivating interest as the new discoveries about time which are giving rise to a new point of view as significant for layman as for scientist. Einstein has substituted new time-concepts and time-mechanics for old in the study of the universe. For half a century new inventions in communications have been telescoping time, bringing true Mother Shipton's words:
"Around the world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye."
Now, doctors are timing and graphing the electrical thought impulses of the human brain. And universities are experimenting in psychology departments with a kind of time-sense to which may be linked the phenomena of the psyche.
We are so accustomed to thinking of time as the straight road separated by present experience into its two parts, yesterday and tomorrow. But the scientist is beginning to perceive what the mystic has always known, that time is an unknown country stretching boundlessly in all directions. Nostradamus, in whom awareness of this set him apart from his fellows, was the Marco Polo of time's uncharted land, in which he traveled the future as we travel a continent. From these transcendental voyagings, like Polo, he returned with incredible stories of strange sights. The prophet's rare okapis were a vision of events to come.
Both of these men, whose discoveries were beyond the comprehension of their age, have come late into their own. Archaeology and exploration have verified the narrative of Polo's travels. History, not only since the sixteenth century, but daily, is verifying the time-travels of that other and greater explorer, Nostradamus. He is of yesterday, today, and still a long tomorrow. By virtue of what he was, and of our own hopes, he deserves the distinguished position today which he had in the Renaissance, and serious study in the light of what science is teaching us of the power and forces of the mind.
It is an old and tenaciously held popular idea that interest in and concentration on extra-dimensional qualities of the mind tend inevitably to some form of imbalance which may run the gamut from credulity to insanity. Too often in the past superstition has added to this its dark aura of witchcraft and abnormal rites. Nostradamus was, throughout his life, a striking refutation of such beliefs. His intellectual achievements and emotional balance, his social adaptation and vigorous health show him as the pattern of the well-rounded man. Considering his unique gift, he may be said to have had, besides his genius for prophecy, a veritable genius for normality. Had he never written the Centuries, his title to fame would still be clear. The brilliant skill and self-sacrificing devotion which made him the greatest physician in France of his day would alone keep his memory green. Physician, linguist, scholar, diplomat, writer, teacher, religieux and prophet, his life touched all phases of Renaissance thought and activity from the hovels of France, where he fought the plague, to the court of the Valois, where he was honored beyond any seer in history.
The Book of Joel, which seems to have made a strong impression upon Nostradamus, contains within its grim forecast the lovely, well-known passage:
"and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." Nostradamus was the greatest of all who since Biblical ages have given to these words the substance of fulfillment. And perhaps his life was prelusive to the "clear seeing" which may be the glory of the coming age.
The major facts of the life of Nostradamus are known and fully attested. Much confusion, however, exists concerning a number of biographical details. Such questions as which one of the prophet's grandfathers it was who educated him, what was the year of his second marriage, and which of his sons was the eldest born are matters of conflicting opinion. Some commentators have assumed that his son, César, was born in 1555 simply because Nostradamus dedicated his prophecies to him in that year. It is impossible to find out the exact truth about these and other discrepancies because of the loss or destruction of old documents which would provide the proof. In such instances, the author has chosen from old accounts the story which has seemed in her opinion to be best supported by inference and available evidence.
The fictional treatment employed to present certain incidents is used in an attempt to give more vitality to the faded colors of time, but each has underlying facts or substantial inference. There is one exception to this, the attributed purpose in the writing of the Centuries. Other commentators besides the author believe, however, that this theory is true. It agrees with what is known of the prophet's character and type of mind, and is supported by indications from within the prophecies.
L. M.
June 1941
PART ONE
Chapter One. A Prophet Is Born
IT WAS NEARLY CHRISTMAS, of the year 1503. San Rémy, ancient Provençal town, namesake of the Saint who baptized Clovis on Christmas Day, was astir with preparations for the coming activities. Everywhere in town and countryside people stopped in the sunshine to greet and talk of plans for Calèndo, the Romance word which Provençals still use for Christmas. Great ladies in silken finery, blithe young knights attended by their squires riding down from châteaux in the hills, peasant women in full skirts and bright-colored bodices, jolly monks, dark-eyed girls and sober town fathers, all were preparing for the year's greatest celebration.
In the town square men talked about yule-logs. Some who owned groves were going to cut down an olive or an almond tree that was too old to be worth keeping. But more would go to the forest to cut their logs, and drag them home behind uncoupled oxen as men had done since the days of the Druids. San Rémy housewives crowded the market-stalls, buying almonds and honey to make Christmas nougat. They chatted of New Year's gifts in the making, and gossiped about holiday masques at the Governor's palace at Aix. Troubadours tuned their harps and memorized romaunts. Through church windows drifted the voices of choir-boys practicing Christmas music, chanting their welcome to the Son of Man, singing of peace on earth which then as now seldom prevailed.
The ancient town, gay with the season, little imagined, least of all the expectant parents, that this child, born in their midst that day, would bring to his birthplace a fame enduring for centuries. Who then could foresee that a future Europe would search his words for an answer to the grim riddle of its fate? Over the Midi town the stars had taken stance to endow this infant with stranger wisdom than prophet had held since the faraway years of those who foretold the coming of the Christ.
On this the 14th day of December by the Julian calendar, "near to the twelve hours of noon," so the chronicle runs, the son of Jacques and Renée de Nostradame was born. The voice of the bronze bell speaking the hour from the town belfry was carried on breezes fragrant of meadows. In the hearts of the parents the bell-notes chimed the olden gratitude: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given."
How long the family of baby Michel de Nostradame had been settled in Provence is not known. But long enough for them to be assimilated into the annals of the country, to have made their contribution of science and service, and to reap the rewards of prestige.
The statement that Michel was of Jewish birth has been insistently asserted by most commentators. There seems to be no warrant for this outside of unverified rumors after his lifetime. His race is not important except in relation to his prophecies. But it is of essential interest to know whether he was the last inheritor of the grand Hebrew tradition of prophecy. Or, has the Gentile race, lacking such tradition, really produced one prophet of distinction in whom they can take pride, and whose forecasts are concerned with their destiny? One who, if not comparable to the sublime poetry and exaltation of the prophets of Israel, can be compared with them in the accuracy and authority of his vision.
Nostradamus, in his letter of dedication to King Henry II, speaks of the Biblical computation of years. He says: "I hold that the Scripture takes them to be solar." To a scholar this should be proof enough that Nostradamus did not have Jewish background; if he had, he could not have escaped knowing that the Jewish calculations were always according to the lunar calendar.
Jean-Ayme de Chavigny, doctor of theology, magistrate of Beaune, presumably dependable, was the close friend and pupil of Nostradamus. His biographical sketch of the prophet is the only first-hand account, still available, that has been handed down. He makes no mention of Jewish descent. He writes:
"His grandfathers, maternal and paternal, had a reputation as great savants in mathematics and medicine, one being physician to René, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, and Count of Provence, the other, of Jean, Duke of Calabria, son of King René. This closes the mouth of the envious who, because they are misinformed, have reflected upon his birth."
The sixteenth century was a period of bitter anti-Semitism and general intolerance. Jews, it is true, were not persecuted in Provence, and many of them rose to wealth and secure standing there. Had Nostradamus been a Jew, his reputation might not have suffered from it in the place of his birth. But it would have suffered as his fame spread to larger fields, particularly Paris. During his lifetime his enemies called him charlatan and sorcerer. Had he been vulnerable to the accusation, he would certainly have been branded as a Jew by attackers overlooking no point that could be raised against him.
Doctor Theophilus Garencières, one of the early commentators, who states that all his life he had been in contact with people who either knew all about Nostradamus or thought they did, likewise makes no mention of Jewish descent. His concern was how God could reveal himself to a man of merely average social position. He says that this wonder agitated the minds of many people who admired Nostradamus as a prophet. This was not because the caste-conscious Renaissance had forgotten the birth of the Son of the Carpenter, but because they had reconciled His origin with their own social standards. Ferne's Blazen of Gentry, a sixteenth-century work on heraldry, is at pains to inform its readers that the twelve apostles were all gentlemen of blood, reduced to servile work only through misfortune.
It may have been wishful thinking that led some writers who favored Nostradamus to assert that he was of noble birth. But it must be inferred from the events of his life that he was at least gently born of people whose standing was excellent.
When Nostradamus visited the court of Henry II, as the king's guest, he was accorded almost the honor of a ranking personage, and lodged in the palace of a prince-cardinal of the blood. Henry would have known through his Provençal governor, a lifelong friend of the prophet, the history and standing of the de Nostradame family. It is to be feared that he would not have received the prophet with such public acclaim if the family position had not met with his approval.
It has been argued that the learning of Nostradamus’ grandfathers was in advance of Gentile culture, and was therefore Jewish. It is true that the Jews in France had a fine record in the scholarly professions, and particularly in medicine. But there is another theory which, while it cannot be proved, would account for much.
A king of Provence went with Saint Louis to the Crusades, and shared his imprisonment in the Orient. The Saracens, marvelously advanced in medicine and mathematics, showed the Crusaders many wonders. Some of their knowledge found its way back to Europe in this manner. Ancestors of Nostradamus may have been of those who benefited by Arab learning in its own great centers; there may even have been a strain of Arab ancestry. Either or both would account for the prestige which the prophet's grandfathers enjoyed at the court of King René of Provence. It might also account for some ancient, inherited medical recepte which crusading ancestors brought back from. the Orient, and which Nostradamus may have used to conquer the plague; something older than the known, standardized Arab remedies of his own times.
King René had a curious Turko-Arab complex. He preferred people of such blood and customs above all others. Consequently his court for half a century attracted every one who had a drop of the blood or any of its associations and culture. Every Levantine and Arab who had something to sell and the price of the trip came there with his wares. If a subject wanted to put anything across, he had to make the king an Eastern present. René dressed himself and the court in Oriental costume, and his Turkish and Arabian masques were famous.
One amusing incident of Rene's feeling in such matters concerns a grandfather of Nostradamus. René's queen had a laundress, Charlotte the Turk. In some way Charlotte injured her leg. Anywhere else, she would have been too far below the salt to rate attention from the royal physician. But because of Charlotte's Turkish blood, the king thought nothing too good for her. His own doctor, none other than Doctor de Nostradame, was ordered to attend her with all care, which presumably he did. It is logical to suppose that the learned grandfathers of Nostradamus contributed in some way to the king's passion for Turks and Arabs, and held his patronage to some extent through superiority in the kind of lore and training he most respected and valued.
The grandfathers had long been friends and associates at the court of Provence. When Jacques, the son of Pierre de Nostradame, married Renée, the daughter of Jean de Rémy, it had cemented more closely their existing ties of affection and mutual interest.
Jacques de Nostradame, the father of Michel, was a notary public. This occupation, dwarfed in importance today, had then a scholarly and important rating when so many of the population, even among the upper circles, could not so much as write their name. They depended on the notary, who was called on for services that ranged from writing a love-letter to arranging a transfer of property. His field was a wide one, and included nearly everything in business and property matters that did not require the actual practice of law.
Jacques' income would have provided a comfortable home in keeping with good standards of Provençal living. Through his doors passed the active flow of town affairs, personal, business and civic. Many would seek him out because, through his father and father-in-law, his contacts at the capital were somewhat influential. His house was probably near the center of the town, easy of access to his clients.
Young Michel's earliest recollections of his parents’ home would center about its cheerful, fragrant kitchen which, typical of all Provençal homes in the sixteenth century, was the room where both the domestic and the social life was carried on. The center and symbol of the room's activity was the great fireplace, majestic, cavernous, holding a banked fire that had never gone out since first his father and mother came there to live. Shining pots and pans of brass hung low from the mantle shelf, convenient for his mother to bake her delicious bread, cook thick nourishing stews or roast a fowl. At either angle of the fireplace was an oak settle where the grandfathers liked to laze and talk when they came to visit. Across the room stood the buffet. Atop this was the long, flaring wooden trough in which his mother mixed and kneaded the bread. In one corner was a cupboard with shelves and drawers holding all manner of household goods. This, like the buffet, was of strong, deep-toned oak. Michel knew every line of the severe carving in geometrical design which caught the firelight on its mellow wood.
On the walls hung light cabinet shelves holding salt and spice boxes, small pieces of gay earthenware, and special treasures. Perhaps there was an enamel cup or a vase of cunning workmanship, a present from grandfather who had got it at a bargain from a Levantine merchant come to sell his wares at court.
Michel could remember the deep, embrasured windows of his home, and the narrow stoop at the door, points of vantage from which he got his earliest pictures of the life of the town as it streamed by in colorful show on fête days and market days. The charm of the procession was unending, rich merchants on ambling mules with silver bells on the harness, carts piled up with the reds and yellows of oranges and pomegranates for the market, peasants bringing in butter and cheeses from the country, shepherds with their droves, knights and ladies with feathers in their hats, riding on prancing horses.
Unforgettable, too, the first time his mother took him to Mass at the ancient church. Through the great doors, older than the Gothic spire, into the lofty vastness of dim light, he had clung affrighted to his mother's hand, staring into the rich mystery of dusk and gold and stained-glass saints. Kneeling, he had looked up to the carved Virgin and the tapers like flowers at her feet. The notes of the organ and the high clear chant of the choir-boys enfolded him, drew him with ecstasy as if to his mother's breast. It was source and beginning of his passionate, unswerving observance and devotion -to the Roman ritual from which he never deviated throughout his life. Such observance was to him never a duty, it was the sacred embroidery of his delight in God.
Another ritual that captivated young Michel was that which pertained to his father's business. He could not remember the time when he had not been fascinated by the things on his father's writing-table. The pewter ink-well with the long quills standing at attention in the small side holes, the little bowl of clean sand, and the rolls of white sheepskin neatly disposed, called to his hands to touch and try them.
He early listened to all that he could of his father's talk of the goings-on in San Rémy. With the big ears for which little pitchers are proverbial he placed together scraps which the grown-ups thought he was too young to take in. He was as curious as a cat about the news from Aix, the capital, and the rumors from Paris, that faraway city, no more than a name to him. He wondered what levies were and why his father said the people grumbled about them; he wondered if the King would go to war with Italy, and what war was like. He found out about the new elections to the town council, and who was traveling to Aix to see the Governor.
His mind observed and pigeonholed with childish literalness all that went on about him. It was his initiation, the beginning of his interest in affairs of state that were so to enchant his later years. Here was the acorn that grew into the tree of the Centuries.
It was the charm of these early recollections that kept Nostradamus, the man, always a small-town boy by inclination as he was by birth. In his day as in ours most people were the bits of steel pulled upon by the glamour-magnets of the great cities. The complex brilliance of cities and their mirage of opportunity were woven into the dreams of youth and the ambitions of manhood, and in France all roads led to Paris. Michel remained curiously immune to this lure. He learned early to prize the smaller world of the town, that can be compassed in its entirety, its figures known and studied against their background of the generations. Here in Provence were his personal interests; these were his people.
Michel was a strong boy, quick and active, full of the eager vitality of youth. His grandfathers set him early at his tasks of learning, but being physicians they wisely allowed him plenty of leisure for boyish adventure in ranging the countryside under the Midi sunshine. There was a deeply-felt bond between him and this lovely Provençal country. Boy and man he never wanted to be away from it for long. The breath of its perfume and past drew him always back to its ancient, fertile valleys watered by winding streams below the lift of Alpine hills. As a child he learned the seasons by the pink bloom of almond trees, the dun green of the olive, the gold of harvests and the blood-purple of vineyards. And always there was music accompanying the beauty of Nature's drama, harp and lute, dancing and song. For Provence is a land set to music by the Troubadours.
The genius of the Troubadours made an early and lasting impression on Michel and his brother. The famous lays which told of the honor, the chivalry, the high adventure of the heroes of Provence were captivating to the imagination of the romantic youngsters. Nor had it been long since these poets had gone their way, singing, into the past. Their patron, the minstrel-monarch René, had been the last to go. Their memory was ever green through the treasure of their songs, intimately known and sung by all of high and low degree. Michel and Jean heard them with their nursery rhymes. Le Roman de Renart seems to have made the deepest impression on Michel, perhaps because it is an allegory in which the characters are animals and the plot tells of their struggle for forest leadership. Cunning and hypocrisy are pitted against force, and weakness as usual loses out. Nostradamus, in the Centuries, uses the same animals, denoting the same qualities, as symbols of the contending powers of Europe. The Wolf, the Bear, the Lion, the Fox, the Eagle, the Stag, all play their parts again, in his minstrelsy of destiny.
Michel's brother was gifted with a great voice. The home rang with Jean's singing of the Roman de la Rose, the Chanson de Roland and other celebrated lays et fabliaux. Jean, in later life, followed the prosaic though profitable career of attorney for the parliament of Arles. But as his real contribution he left behind him a history of the Troubadours, a monumental tome entitled: "Lives of the Most Famous Ancient Provençal Poets Who Flourished in the Times of the Counts of Provence."
Some say that the songs of the Troubadours weakened the spirit and resistance of Provence. If so, it was in the sense in which today the more sensitive standards of civilization are at the mercy of aimed force. "If God would only send peace!" cries Nostradamus in the Centuries. He learned his ideals of peace and honor and gentle manners from the minstrels of old Provence.
Sir Walter Scott, in Anne of Geierstein, gives a delightful glimpse of the influence of the Troubadours on this land.
He sketches a scene which was familiar to Michel's boyhood:
"The shepherd literally marched abroad in the morning piping his flock to pasture with some love sonnet of an amorous Troubadour. His 'fleecy care' seemed actually under the influence of the music. Instead of being driven before the shepherd, they followed him, and did not disperse to feed, until facing them, he executed variations on his air. His huge wolf-dog, guardian of the flock, followed his master with ears pricked like the chief critic of the performance. At noon the shepherd's audience would be increased by comely matron or blooming maiden who joined her voice to his as they rendezvoused beside some antique fountain. In the cool of the evening there was dancing on the village green or concert before the hamlet door. Travellers were invited to share the little repast of fruits, cheese and bread. Everything gave charm to the illusion and pointed to Provence as the Arcadia of France.
"The greatest singularity was the absence of aimed men and soldiers in this peaceful country. In England, no one stirred without his long-bow, sword and buckler. In France, the hind wore armor even betwixt the stilts of the plough. In Germany you could not look along a mile of road without seeing clouds of dust from which emerged waving feathers and flashing armor. But in Provence all was quiet and peaceful, as if the music of the land had lulled to sleep all wrathful passions. Now and then a mounted cavalier would pass, harp at saddle-bow or carried by an attendant, attesting his character as Troubadour. The short sword, worn on the left thigh, was for show rather than use."
Besides its "dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth," there is in this country another kind of life, silent but no less vital. One that touched profoundly the spirit of young Michel, and which permeates the Centuries. It is the life of the ancient past. Provence is an old land where people and races have come and gone, yet not passed utterly away. Long-dead creeds and customs, rooted deep in antiquity, survive entranced. Celts, Romans, Phoenicians, Greeks, Goths, all have left their traces, blended now in the Christian race.
Nostradamus refers particularly to the long influence of Greece upon Provence in one of his quatrains:
IX-75
From the regions of Epirus and Thracia People in misfortune shall come by sea seeking help of France, The same people who have left in Provence their perpetual trace In the survivals of their dress and laws.
Across the countryside and in the cities rises the pallor of marble ruins and monuments. Triumphal arches, crumbling amphitheaters, delicate fountains, ghost-peopled by the shades of their builders. In such memory-haunted spots, the whispering speech of the past reaches only ears that are attuned to its mysterious language. Michel, sensitive even in childhood to the enigma of past and future held in the eternal now, felt the spell of these remnants of a mighty past. He grew up in the midst of two worlds, the living present of his own day, and the majestic dead of the long ago. The first gave him its earthy warmth, its gayety, its sturdy common sense. The other opened to him its secret realm, serene, imperiously aloof, where within its twilight lay dreaming the sword of Caesar, the sails of Greece and Carthage, and the golden bracelets of the Goth.
When Michel was old enough to be curious about the history of the ruins, he liked to go on rambles of discovery with one or other of the grandfathers who could tell him the story of what he saw. It is easy to picture him at the side of the old man stately in his physician's robe and four-pointed cap, a uniform which the boy would later wear with honor. Michel was a little under height, but vigorous, with rosy-apple cheeks, color he kept so long as he lived. His hair was brown above a high, square forehead. His straight, determined features were lighted by large, extremely keen gray eyes.
On a day when the two are rambling through San Rémy they stop to admire the noble arch of triumph which Julius Caesar built to the memory of Marius and his mighty victory there. Michel is curious about the carvings on the arch. What do they mean, he asks his grandfather.
"They record how long ago the Roman general, Marius, once saved our land. You see," the old man tells him, "the barbarians had poured over the country. Nearly half a million fierce fighting men they had, besides all their families."
"Did the Romans come here to fight on our side?"
"Yes. But longer ago than that, Hannibal had crossed here with three thousand elephants on his way to conquer Rome. Our Celtic folk had fought for the Romans then, and Rome remembered. She sent us Marius, her finest general, in our time of peril."
"Did he bring a great army, grandfather?"
"No, lad, he didn't need a great army. He had great soldiers, the legions of Rome. And he had with him the prophetess Marta, a Syrian woman who had a familiar spirit and could foretell the future. She promised Marius a victory."
"What, sir, is a familiar spirit? How could the prophetess tell that Marius would win?"
"There are such people, Michel. I myself have some slight gift at mind-reading. Some day I will open your eyes a little. But prophecy is, of course, a greater faculty. The Romans called such prophets sibyls, and set great store by them. Marius did. He paid Marta high honor. Even had his wife Julia come on from Rome after the battle just to meet her. Sometime I will show you the marble stela carved with their meeting."
"Tell me more about the prophetess, please."
"There is not much to tell. Foolish folk believe she still speaks from the cavern of Lou Garagoule where a hundred of the barbarians were thrown to death at her bidding."
"Why? Surely many were killed in the battle."
"Yes. But you see, lad, she was a pagan. Before the coming of our Lord who forbade cruelty, men worshipped gods who, so they thought, must have a special sacrifice of blood to pay for their favors. Marius, no doubt, thought it cheap at the price."
"Grandfather, where is Lou Garagoule? Is it far?"
"Too far for your short legs," grandfather chuckles. "’Tis some miles beyond Aix, near to the top of Mont Saint Victoire. There is a deep cleft in the rock, with the monastery perching across it like an eagle. Under it runs a cavern so far down that it has never been plumbed. It has a secret passage leading down. ’Tis said the monks unlock it for fools who pay them enough to expiate their sin of consulting Marta, or what they think is Marta."
"But does she really speak to them?"
"Of course not. She is long dead. But they go through heathenish incantations and wait six hours in the darkness. Then all they hear is the howl of the wind in the mountain passages. Never try it, ’tis contrary to the spirit of God, and the monks do ill to allow it."
"Still, I should like to see it, grandfather."
"That you shall. When your mother thinks you are old enough to be up the night, you will go to Mont Saint Victoire on the twenty-fourth of April, the anniversary of the battle. You will see where the legions of Marius stood. You will march in the great celebration of the victory they hold there every year, for folk in these parts will never forget."
"Will there be dancing and music?"
"Drums and trumpets, tambourines and singing. They build big bonfires on the Mont, and all night long they dance the farandole, and shout 'Victory, Victory.'"
"Did you go, grandfather?"
"In my youth. Many times. At dawn there is Mass, and everyone goes to give thanks for the saving of our land."
"Tell me about the battle." Youth is never weary.
"Well, the Roman legions were posted on Mont Saint Victoire, ’tis called so after the battle. Here were the barbarians in San Rémy and stretching all the way across the plain to Aix. Between them and the Mont, Marius had dug a great line of deep ditches, the Fossa of Marius, as men still call them--"
As the story proceeded, the little boy listened enthralled until the final overthrow of the last barbarian.
"The Greek historian, Plutarch, has set down the story of the battle of Marius better than I can tell it, Michel," Grandfather finished. "You will read about it for yourself, and many other interesting happenings, when you have mastered classic language. ’Twill be an incentive to your study. Now, the hour grows late."
One wonders if the tale of ancient battle, heard in childhood, returned in age to mingle its memory of victory with the seer's bitter foresight of the ruin of France, making more desolate the vision by contrast. In the prophet's verses which tell the story of 1940 is a quatrain describing the Maginot Line. In this he uses the word fosse, French for ditch, from the Latin fossa. Perhaps his vision compared the futility of the greatest defensive ditch ever built with the primitive, victorious one of the Roman general.
IV-80
Near the great river the earth will be excavated to construct a huge Line ( fosse) Divided into fifteen parts according to the lay of the waters. The city (Paris) will be captured, there will be the fires of battle, bloodshed and hand-to-hand fighting, The greater part of the nation will be involved in the shock.
Alas that Marius should be so long time dead. Gone, too, the ancient Roman friendship. Left, but the sadness which cast its gloomy shadow backwards and touched the mantle of the prophet writing those words four hundred years ago.
But such foreknowledge was yet a long way off from Michel's joyous boyhood. After such adventure with his grandfather, he would go home with his head full of battle and wonder. He would dream over it by the fireside where the sleepy flames burnished the copper cooking-pots like a legionnaire's helmet. When night fell in his small, starkly furnished room, and he felt the straw of his pallet beneath him, he would pretend, like boys the world over, that he was Marius on the hillside. The moon, slanting in on the tall wardrobe in the corner, transformed its dark shape mysteriously into the outlines of the prophetess Marta.
There were a thousand such fascinating stories that the grandfathers could tell, out of which Michel and Jean wove their own picture of the ancient splendor of Provence. Tales of emperors, of lost kings and queens and popes who had built their castles there. Stories, too, of the mysteries of the Camargue where giant flame-colored birds flew high in the mists. Stories of gladiatorial games, of bullfights, of crusaders who were sovereigns in the land of Christ. Legends of all the heroes who had laughed under blue Provençal skies, and feasted at Pan's rose-wreathed board which perpetually invites in this land of classic beauty.
As for grandfather's promise to Michel to show him something of the secret marvels of the mind, it is written in the record that he kept his word. Michel would have given him scant rest until he did. "One day, by way of diversion," it is said, grandfather gave a little demonstration of the workings of hidden mental forces. What kind of demonstration is not known, but it was probably a simple experiment in mind-reading. It was, however, a perfect introduction to such mysteries for the boy who was to become an adept in their use. Given casually and naturally by grandfather, it robbed the subject of the superstitions and ideas of devil's magic which permeated the age. It gave the boy an opportunity for a normal attitude toward extra-sensory experience. The incident could take its place, without distortion or disproportion, in Michel's active gathering of assorted knowledge. Its naturalness held a protective significance toward the later development of the prophet's gift, and its influence can be traced in the honesty and fearlessness of his attitude toward his own mysterious power.
Chapter Two. The Education Of A Genius
DOCTOR DE RÉMY, Michel's maternal grandfather, took upon himself the early education of his elder grandson. Even today such an education as Michel received from him would be considered out of the ordinary. It was for that period perhaps unique in France. Doctor de Rémy's scholarly prestige and the liberal intelligence with which he guided and inspired his pupil provided an opportunity not often found in any home, ancient or modern. The response of the boy's genius and native love of learning made the relationship between them easy and delightful. How different this was from the usual instruction in the sixteenth century can be appreciated from Rabelais’ account of Pantagruel's pilgrimage of learning.
"My will," said Gargantua, concerning the education of Pantagruel, "is to hand him over to some learned man to indoctrinate him according to his capacity and to spare nothing to that end."
"Indoctrination," in the early sixteenth century, meant stuffing the young mind like a Strasbourg goose. Lack of humane, intelligent methods of teaching was eked out with sadistic technique. Education was driven into the memories of tough-skulled, resistant youngsters with blows and floggings. Rabelais, writing of what boys had to endure for the rudiments of knowledge, said of one especially cruel master:
"If for flogging poor little children, unoffending schoolboys, pedagogues are damned, he, upon my word of honor, is now on Ixion's wheel, flogging the dock-tailed cur that turns it."
There was no idea of home instruction, and public education lacked range and had little that was useful. Fruitless, prolonged study of words, followed by equally fruitless study of interminable subtleties, made a drawnout, bewildering misery of the boy's path of knowledge. Doctor Garencières, telling of his own education in France a century later, says that he and the other children, as soon as they had learned the primer, were set to studying the Centuries of Nostradamus. "This book was the first after my Primer, wherein I did learn to read, it being then the custom of France about the year 1618 to initiate children by that book; first because of the crabbedness of the words; secondly that they might be acquainted with the old and obsolete French; and thirdly for the delightfulness and variety of the matter." The picture of babes learning like puzzled parrots the stanzas that have challenged the wits of how many scholars is poor immortality for the man whose own training was so different.
Printing had so recently introduced the curse of schoolbooks to the young that there had not been time to create a pedagogic tradition. Before printing, children had grown up as free and untrammeled as Adam. They learned only to fish, hunt, roam, handle a bow and arrow and, if of good family, to buckle on a knight's armor. If the ways of doing these things improved, the pursuits were still those of the Stone Age. There was, of course, always a class of churchly scholars and a certain amount of mannered culture among the top social families. As a national development, however, few could read and write. But when printing brought books within popular reach, parents everywhere wanted their children to have this strange, new accessibility to knowledge which had been denied to them. So began the painful era of mental discipline for the young.
Doctor de Rémy and Rabelais, almost alone in their period, seemed to have envisioned the kind of education which today is taken for granted. Both believed that youth should be interested, and the book of knowledge unfolded in wonder and delight. Pantagruel, you will remember, spent years learning to say the alphabet backwards, and still more years and years on volumes of Latin commentaries, until Gargantua saw that he was turning out just a daft dreamer. So he chose a master of a different sort who taught Pantagruel the observation of nature and the examination of facts. Eventually Pantagruel returned to his father with a rounded development and an understanding of the relationship of knowledge to living. Rabelais knew this the hard way, Nostradamus learned it the easy way. He had an early joyousness toward study, he never needed spurring, nor had to shrink from what was for most boys a physically and emotionally painful experience that left its mark indelibly on a sensitive nature.
Doctor de Rémy grounded his grandson thoroughly in Latin, mathematics and astronomy, and gave him a general knowledge of nature facts. Ease and fluency in writing and speaking Latin were then of prime cultural importance, for it was the language employed by scholars and public orators. It was much used at court, too, through the reign of Francis I. It is said that the royal family, in hours when they gathered informally, enjoyed chatting affably together in Latin--an accomplishment that is perhaps as difficult for moderns to imagine as anything in the sixteenth century. But children then were put to this study very young to gain the required proficiency. The Provençal tongue still retained more of a Roman heritage than of northern France. This made the study of Latin easier for boys born, as Michel, in the Midi than in other sections of the country. Mathematics went hand in hand with astronomy. Patrons, amateurs and profound scholars of "the celestial science" were very numerous and they had to be able to prepare their own ephemerides, and to make elaborate, difficult mathematical calculations which today are available in published, labor-saving tables. Both of Michel's grandfathers were ranked as savants in mathematics and astronomy. Their teaching and his interest soon carried his knowledge far beyond his years.
For frosting on the educational cake, there were, from both grandfathers, endless memories of brilliant doings at King René's court, the little Athens of its day. History and geography took on romantic meanings from these stories. The boy never tired hearing of the gorgeous pageants and dramas which King René had never wearied of producing.
"The most splendid of them all," said grandfather, "was The War of The Seven Chiefs. It was a play out of Greek legend, about gods and men, and all the gods had golden faces. The king summoned one of the greatest artists in France to Aix to design the golden crown, the masque and the sceptre for the sun-god. The night the play was given, the King and Queen and all the court had dressed like the ancient Greeks. ’Twas like a country long gone, come back with all its music and soldiers and ladies and gods."
Another time grandfather would say, "When you are a man, Michel, you will travel. You will go to Italy, perhaps you will even see there such a singular man as Great Beard who came from Florence. Here, I will show you Florence on this map."
"--and Great Beard, grandfather?"
"A rich merchant who came to trade, and brought the king a Persian manuscript for a gift. To please the king Great Beard had gotten himself up in a splendid Turkish dress. He had on a robe of Eastern silk over a broidered chemise. And about his middle were girt three belts studded with little jewels. But the joke of it was the king couldn't see his splendid dress unless Great Beard turned his back, and that is never done to a king. His beard was so thick and so long that it covered up the front of him. None of us had ever seen the like before. Amazing vain he was of it too."
Nostradamus sometimes uses the word étranger in the Centuries, but more often the foreigner is le barbe, les barbares, and if a foreign tyrant, Ahenobarbus. Perhaps his memory kept a picture of the Florentine merchant seen through grandfather's eyes, and gave him a preference for the older, Latin-derived word.
Doctor de Nostradame did not live to see the young prodigy whom he had so lovingly trained grow up. He died when Michel was still in his ’teens. His passing was one of two deaths that marked the closing of Michel's young boyhood. The loss of his grandfather was a personal grief. The other passing was impersonal, remote, yet it ended a period to which he was to look back in later years with nostalgic longing. This was the death of Louis XII, which closed an epoch in the life of France, one which Michel would recall in sadder days as a never-returning patriarchal age of gold.
Michel's life-span saw the rulership of five kings of France. Under the reign of Louis XII, which ended in 1515, France had been ideally united. Never had the country a more popular king than Louis the Well Beloved, twenty-second king of the grand line of Capet. Louis had guided the government with fewer mistakes than most monarchs and no infringement of the people's liberties. But he was the last king of France whose reign expressed the national unity of a free people. The security of France had seemed at last firmly established. The powerful, one-pointed nationalism for which people and king had worked so long appeared near to realizing the French dream of continental leadership, a dream never to be fully realized, but persisting to Sedan. France never again in after periods reattained this early combination of apparently limitless possibilities combined with balance and simplicity of life, as just before the brook of Mediaevalism became the torrent of the Renaissance.
