THE LIFE AND WORKS OF NOSTRADAMUS

Nostradamus (1503 - 1566), a French physician and prophet, is believed by many to have foretold, among other things, the death of Henry II in 1599, the London Fire of 1666, the onslaught of the French Revolution in 1789, and the discovery of penicillin, the rise of dictator Francisco Franco and the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Some believe he predicted the fall of King Louis XVI, the rise of Napoleon and even the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

His modern followers see him as a prophet and believe his prophecies have a magical quality for those who study them. His detractors suggest they are muddled and obscure before the predicted event, and only become crystal clear after the event has occurred. In short, skeptics consider the "prophecies" of Nostradamus to be mainly gibberish.

What about the attack in America on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Did he have something to say about this event? Well, some say that he certainly did. Before we get into that, here's a bit of background:

Nostradamus, was born Michel de Notredame on December 14, 1503, in St. Remy, France, the oldest of five sons. He showed such a great intellect at a very early age that his grandfather, Jean, began teaching him Latin, Greek, Hebrew, math and astrology. Nostradamus went on to study medicine and astrology and received a medical degree in 1529. His work as a physician in France, during the years of the bubonic plague, was renowned, and he is said to have had extraordinary healing abilities.

His early publications appearing in 1550 included writing about astrology and medicine. Beginning in the early 1550s it is said that Nostradamus frequently entered into meditative states and had visions of the future. He began to document these visions in 1554 and published them in 1555.

Nostradamus' writings were like poetry, in four-line verses, called "quatrains," and appeared in groups of 100, called "Centuries." His first edition of "Centuries," made up of these rhyming poems, contained prophetic messages. By 1558, he had completed his composition, a work meant to forecast events taking place within the next two thousand years of humanity.

The verses are written in an obscure style, with a mixture of vocabulary in French, Italian, Greek and Latin. Nostradamus writes that he deliberately confused the time sequence of the Prophecies in order to avoid being prosecuted as a magician, and so that their secrets would not be revealed to the "non-initiate."

Nevertheless, his prophecies became all the rage, and his fame spread throughout Europe. He was regarded as a genius by many, and an instrument of Satan by others. Catherine de Medicis, queen of Henry II of France, even invited Nostradamus to court. She also provided the financial means for him to complete his work.

In 1672, "Centuries" was translated into English, and by 1781, the Roman Catholic Church had condemned the prophecies of Nostradamus as blasphemy and listed "Centuries" on its Index, a list of forbidden books.

Nostradamus married twice in his life, losing his first wife and two children to the plague. He died July 2, 1566 of either heart failure or gout (according to various sources), an event which he himself had predicted.

Nostradamus has appeared to predict so many of the world’s greatest calamities with such uncanny clairvoyance that his prophecies continue to be given enormous credence and never cease to spark a great deal of controversy.

It seems that one thing Nostradamus didn't predict was that he would become a one-man industry into and past the 20th century. The Internet has certainly helped spread the myth and reality of Nostradamus. The quatrain currently circulating on the Internet, some believe has an eerie similarity to the events of September 11, 2001.

It reads: "In the year of the new century and nine months, from the sky will come a great king of terror. The sky will burn at 45 degrees... fire approaches the great new city... there will be thunder. Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures. The great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin when the city is burning."

Okay, New York sits on the 45th parallel. Are the two brothers the Twin towers? Is the fortress the Pentagon? Scholars disagree about the interpretation of the quatrain because this is actually two different verses combined.