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More than five hundred years after his birth, the prophesies of Nostradamus continue to intrigue, fascinate, and confound. Should we label him a prophet or a fraud? Was he the greatest psychic known to man, or a charlatan, whose verses can be too easily manipulated?

His supporters maintain that he predicted the French and Russian revolutions, two World Wars, the rise and fall of Nepoleon, the dominance of Hitler, and many other catastrophic world events. His detractors claim that his mixed language quatrains are so ambiguous that they can be used by the credulous to fit the facts after the event.

Is it possible that his four-line verses, written in a mixture of French, Hebrew, and Latin, deliberately obscured by the use of anagrams and abbreviations, could predict events in countries unknown during the middle ages?

Michel de Nostradame was born on 10th December 1503 in St. Remy de Provence. Although Jewish, his family took the wisest course during a time of religious intolerance, and converted to Catholicism. His great-grandfather encouraged him to study astrology, celestial sciences, and Hebrew, in addition to Greek and Litin.

At the age of fourteen he left home to study at Avignon, and five years later, in 1522, he enrolled at the University of Montpellier to study medicine. Shortly after his graduation, bubonio plague struck Montpellier, and the young doctor had his first opportunity to practice his skills.

Nostradamus could not claim to cure plague, but it appears that outbreaks were less virulent when he was the physician, and his fame as a plague doctor spread. For the next four years he traveled all over southern France, treating Plague victims. Eventually, when the outbreak had finally runs its course, he returned to Montpellier to obtain his doctorate.

He only practiced as a doctor for a year before setting off on his journeys again. During his travels he received a letter from Julius Caesar Soalinger, one of the foremost physicians and scholars of the day, inviting him to visit the Bishop of Agen, who was intrested in some of his ideas. Whilst in Agen he married, his wife's name is unrecorded, but we know that she bore Nostradamus two sons.

Sadly in 1537 plague struck, and although he saved many, his wife and children died. Older doctors ridiculed him for his arrogance in believing his methods superior to standard practice, when he could not even save his own family. Shortly afterwards charges of heresy were brought against him, concerning a remark he had made some time previously about a religious statue. Clearly Agen was no longer a comfortable place to be, and for several more years he wandered throughout Europe.
===> To be continue in next post (part2)