Name = Fauzan Ali Ghofur (09)

M. Faizal Asqi Ardiansyah (19)

Class = XI IPA 3

Nostradamus
Michel de Nostredame (depending on the source, 14 or 21 December 1503 – 2 July
1566), usually Latinised as Nostradamus,[1] was a French apothecary and reputed seer, who is
best known for his book Les Propheties, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains[a] allegedly
predicting future events. The book was first published in 1555 and has rarely been out of print
since his death.

Nostradamus's family was originally Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism before he
was born. He studied at the University of Avignon, but was forced to leave after just over a year
when the university closed due to an outbreak of the plague. He worked as an apothecary for
several years before entering the University of Montpellier, hoping to earn a doctorate, but was
almost immediately expelled after his work as an apothecary (a manual trade forbidden by
university statutes) was discovered. He first married in 1531, but his wife and two children were
killed in 1534 during another plague outbreak. He fought alongside doctors against the plague
before remarrying to Anne Ponsarde, who bore him six children. He wrote an almanac for 1550
and, as a result of its success, continued writing them for future years as he began working as an
astrologer for various wealthy patrons. Catherine de' Medici became one of his foremost
supporters. His Les Propheties, published in 1555, relied heavily on historical and literary
precedent and initially received mixed reception. He suffered from severe gout towards the end of
his life, which eventually developed in edema. He died on 2 July 1566. Many popular authors
have retold apocryphal legends about his life.

In the years since the publication of his Les Propheties, Nostradamus has attracted a
large number of supporters, who, along with much of the popular press, credit him with having
accurately predicted many major world events.[3][4] Most academic sources reject the notion that
Nostradamus had any genuine supernatural prophetic abilities and maintain that the associations
made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are the result of misinterpretations or
mistranslations (sometimes deliberate).[5] These academics argue that Nostradamus's predictions
are characteristically vague, meaning they could be applied to virtually anything, and are useless
for determining whether their author had any real prophetic powers. They also point out that
English translations of his quatrains are almost always of extremely poor quality, based on later
manuscripts, produced by authors with little knowledge of sixteenth-century French, and often
deliberately mistranslated to make the prophecies fit whatever events the translator believed they
were supposed to have predicted.