Let those who read these verses judge them naturally:
Nostradamus
Let the vulgar and stupid rabble not approach them:
And let all Astrologers, fools and barbarians keep away:
May whoever does otherwise be justly accursed.
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The monks reacted with understandable amusement. Nostradamus must have appeared to be a madman. It is assumed this occurred during the six years that he wandered through Europe after the Black Death had taken his family. However, forty years after this chance meeting on the muddy road and nineteen years after the death of Nostradamus, Brother Peretti was elected Pope Sixtus V.
Florinville secretly ordered his cook to prepare the white pig for dinner that night. The cook followed the orders but left the door to the kitchen open while running out on another errand. When he returned, he found the chateau's pet wolf eating the already dressed white pig. Worried about the results of his error, the cook quietly prepared the black pig for the night's meal.
At the dinner table, Lord de Florinville smiled broadly at Nostradamus and announced, "We are not eating the black pig as you predicted. And no wolf will touch our dinner here."
Nostradamus was so sure that this was the black pig that his host summoned the cook to prove him wrong. Of course, Florinville was stunned when the cook delivered the bad news.
The man who opens the tomb when it is found
And who does not close it immediately,
Evil will come to him
That no one will be able to prove.
Soon after he was put to rest, a rumor began that would circulate for centuries. It was said that buried with the famous prophet was a secret document, giving the keys to deciphering the quatrains. In 1700, city officials decided to move his body behind a more prominent wall of the church.
While the tomb door lay open, their curiosity got the best of them, they carefully peeked inside the tomb to only discover there were no secret papers. However, they were surprised to see a medallion hanging from the skeleton's neck. Even more startling, the medallion had been inscribed with the date 1700. It seems Nostradamus had a last laugh by predicting, in 1566, when his tomb would be opened. The tomb was resealed and undisturbed for another 91 years.
In 1791, during the French Revolution, drunken soldiers broke into the church. Using picks and shovels they looted the tomb of Nostradamus. The sound of the commotion alerted the mayor of Salon, who hurried to the church to investigate. He arrived to witness the ghastly scene of soldiers and townspeople tossing the prophet's bones into the air and dancing in macabre drunkenness. One guardsman stood in the center of the group, drinking wine from the skull of Nostradamus. (Local people believed that drinking blood from the skull of the great prophet would bestow psychic abilities.) Nostradamus had warned that anyone who dared disturb his rest would suffer a quick and violent death.
The mayor acted quickly and explained to the soldiers that Nostradamus, in having predicted the French Revolution in supportive tones, should be considered a national hero. Those present collected the bones from the floor and helped to reinter the remains.
According to the legend, these revolutionary soldiers were ambushed by royalists while returning to their base in Marseilles. The soldier who had brazenly drunk from Nostradamus' skull was killed, quickly and violently, by a sniper's bullet.
In Paris, for ten days following the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, visitors to the fortress filed past a table upon which was a copy of The Centuries opened to the page of Nostradamus' predictions describing the French Revolution, written over 200 years earlier.
The young Lion shall overcome the older one,
In a single duel on the playing field,
Shall pierce his eye inside of his golden helmet,
Two tries, then one more of which he dies a very cruel death.
The final bout of the tournament occurred at sunset between Henry and The Earl of Montgomery. The first round ended in a draw, but Henry insisted on a final match. Aware of the prophecy, The Earl resisted, but Henry would not take no for an answer.
Soon after the final match began, a splinter from the Earl's broken lance pierced the king's golden visor and lodged behind his left eye. He lingered for ten days in agony before dying and fulfilling one of Nostradamus' most famous prophecies.
The Earl of Montgomery was then banished for killing the King. Sometime later he was captured in Normandy. Six men sent by the queen caught him off gaurd, he lay asleep and unable to use his sword in order to defend himself. Upon his capture he was taken to Paris where he received an unfair trial. He was tried and convicted by those who were under the queen's orders. He was sentenced to be executed on the guillotine. Through The Earl of Montgomery's misfortune, another of Nostradamus' predictions holds true.
He who is his armour had fought a duel on the playing fields,
Had fought someone greater than himself and won,
While asleep, in his bed at night, will be taken by six opponents,
Was caught naked in his bed, without his sword, he was taken away.
Hogue: Nostradamus may be hinting that the Third Antichrist comes from a modern day region in North Africa or the Middle East; the concept of newspapers was unheard of in the time of Nostradamus; perhaps it refers to terrorism in the headlines.
Could Saddam Hussein be the third Antichrist? Isn't Saddam Hussein from the Middle East? Visit the coming of the antichrist for more interesting facts of Saddam Hussien.
Hogue: "Mabus" is one of Nostradamus' most famous prophetic enigmas; may provide a clue to the name and identity of the third and final Antichrist; it may already be too late to decode and prevent "its" terrible destiny; the final line dates the beginning of his legacy of terror around the time of the appearance of a comet.