Nostradamus by Crouzet Denis Greengrass Mark

Author:Crouzet, Denis,Greengrass, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2017-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

17

All the Sins of the World

All human affairs are subject to sudden reversals and one of Nostradamus’ aims is perhaps to catalogue, with or without astrological or prodigal signs, the potential for being plunged into evil and misfortune, in order to heighten readers’ awareness of the uncertainty that accompanies all human life. Universal peace, to begin with, is not destined to endure for long, says Quatrain 1:92, because soon enough there will come the time of pillage and rebellion, a third of a million people dying or being imprisoned in a city holding out in a siege by land and sea.1 In 5:5 there is a man who steals a march on others through the promises he makes and the hopes engendered by his engagements. ‘Feigning’ to put an end to their servitude, he usurps the liberty of the people and the city. His duplicity is worse than that of a young prostitute, abandoned ‘by the wayside’ reading ‘a false prologue’.2 Appearances are always deceptive and, in 5.34 Nostradamus indirectly calls for prudence when he says that, from the far west of England, where the English ‘chief’ resides, a fleet will enter the Gironde estuary, passing before Blaye, and it will be loaded not with wine and salt in its cargo barrels but gunpowder, presumably for nefarious purposes.3 Salt and wine are, no doubt, two commercial cargoes that were often associated with one another, but they also signify two elements of human life that embody divine power. Salt is what God sends, if He wishes, to make the land infertile and represents, thus, misfortune. Wine is a symbol of plenty; produced in the Lord's vineyard by His people, it is a sign of contentment. In 5:94, it is a man's word that is worthless, it being a matter of someone who will undertake an expedition, passing into ‘greater Germania’ through Brabant and Flanders, via Ghent, Bruges and Boulogne. Feigning to accept the truce, the Grand Duke of Armenia, another person whose title evokes the Lower Empire, or perhaps the Crusades, will come to besiege Vienna and Cologne.4 The message seems to be that human words are the stuff of illusions.

Pacts never last very long in the face of self-interest. Nostradamus cites a ‘feigned alliance’ in 6:20 which will not be destined to last long, for those who had agreed to change their mind, will change it back again later.5 No one can know the course of his life, any more than the date of his death. At the end of the year 1554 Nostradamus predicts that there shall be a monarch who desires his own death; but his presumptuousness will be rewarded by the opposite of the destiny he dreams of: ‘He wanted death to come to him as it did to Alexander (in conquering battle) but he shall die like Marius or Pompey (the architects of civil wars)’. In January, buildings will be demolished by a storm, states will totter, and there will be someone from low down in

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