Nostradamus: Who Was He?

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He was once a simple boy from St. Remy, France. His real name is Michael de Notredame but he was most commonly known as Nostradamus. His most famous masterpiece is the book “Centuries”. Scholars, experts and critics from around the world referred it as a compilation of perfect predictions of future events. Undeniably, Nostradamus was brilliant because his works have continued to win curiosity even centuries after his death. However, for me he was far from being a prophet.

            At the early age, he had already dealt with mathematics, astronomy, Greek, Hebrew and Latin subjects. He got his license in medicine while he was in his mid 20’s. He traveled to many places and helped patients especially the bubonic plague victims. During those years of traveling, he developed his interest in subjects in the occult, alchemy, and magic. His keen curiosity led him to spend most of his time in the library of Avignon.

His fame might have gone before him and his ability could never be denied but despite of that he pursued his doctoral degree in Montpelier. Nostradamus was never afraid to try new things, even which seemed fictional during his time. As a physician, he refused the methods of other medical professionals. Like for instance, he strongly protested against the use of Bleeding as a method of treating illnesses like migraine, pneumonia, etc. Instead, he suggested the use of sunlit bed to sure the sick. This idea caused many frowned reactions since it did not exist in his place during his time. And nothing could have seemed to stop him from exploring new things. Most of his medical practices were unorthodox.

 “Centuries” was the greatest achievement of Nostradamus. It is composed of a thousand four-lined verses called quatrains. When it was published in his place, people including those from Royalties and people with great influence had been quoting his ideas during rallies and campaigns. The reason could probably be that his quatrains are written with deep sense of meaning.

Some critics told that “Nostradamus wasn’t a great poet”. Their main reason is the only fact that his quatrains disobeyed the technicalities of poetry. However, I could say that his unconventional style of poetry was exceptional. And that caught the attention from lots of people around the world even today. Mixing different languages and fascinating rhymes in each quatrain made it seemed peculiar but appeared to me as scholarly and more interesting masterpieces.

“Not all of his predictions came true.” In fact, none of his writings on the “Centuries” did come precisely true. Everything, which many believed to have come true, was absolutely based from assumptions made by several acclaimed scholars who interpreted the quatrains. They were absolutely made by making logical analogies. The interpretations could not really be what Nostradamus had originally meant.

He was a poet. A brilliant poet could magnificently put anything “under the sun” into writing, which could appear to be real. Nostradamus mentioned submarines and other medical gadgets, which did not exist during his time, and this was not really a prediction. It was rather a wish of having a more advancement that later coincidentally came true. “Landing on the moon” was also mentioned in one of his quatrains. This was his dream-like metamorphic idea that he expressed through his words but he could have really not literally meant landing on the moon. However, years after that someone had actually landed on the moon. It was a pure coincident. Nostradamus was really brilliant in playing with words. Thus, he was an excellent poet rather than a prophet. If he were a real prophet, then all of his “predictions” would have come true. Some could be referred to as if it had come true; but they were actually only halfway close to the truth.