Michel Nostradamus, considered by many to be the foremost prophet of all time, made predictions which have proved to be astonishingly accurate.
One of the most remarkable prophets of all time, Nostradamus, lived in southern France over 400 years ago. His predictions, couched in crypric verses, brought him renown in his lifetime and have proved uncannily accurare.
He was born Michel de Nostradame in St Remy de Provence on 14 December 1503 and from boyhood he was fascinated by astrology. His family thought medicine was a more respectable career and he became a skillcd physician, far ahead of his time with his concern for sanitation. Despite his skills, he was unable to save his own wife and children when they were stricken with bubonic plague and, disillusioned, he took to wandering through Europe, exercising his gift for prophecy.
His predictions were received sometimes with wonder, sometimes with scepticism. On a road near Ancona, in Italy, he was passing a group of Franciscan monks when he suddenly knelt in the mud in front of one of them, Brother Peretti, until recently a swine-herd. When questioned, Nostradamus explained: 'I must yield myself and bend a knee before his Holiness.' It was 40 years later, 19 years after Nostradamus himself was dead, that Brother Peretti became Pope Sixtus V.
Nostradamus longcd to share his visions of the future but feared persecution as a sorcerer. As a precaution, when he published the first volume of his almanac in 1550, he veiled his prophecies in four-line poems called quatrains. This was an instant success and over the next few years he produced a total of 10 volumes containing 1,000 predictions, called The Centuries
