Michel de Nostredame

 - Better known as Nostradamus -

( 1503 - 1566 )
 


* List of the stories he appears in :
- AR 143 : "The Curse of Nostrildamus", from 1989, by Don Rosa.

 

* His biography :
     Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus, was born at St-Remy de Provence, France, on December 14, 1503, the son of a Jewish-Italian doctor, Jaume de Nostredame, whose family was forced by the Inquisition to convert to Catholicism.
   In 1520, he started his studies at Avignon, but the university closed after plague sweeped Provence, and so he started wandering and doing medicinal research, and eventually became an apothecary.
   In 1529, he enrols in the Medical Faculty, where he met François Rabelais.
   In 1531, he graduated for his doctorate, began a private practice, alongside Jules César Scaliger,  where he succeeded at treating plague victims in Montpellier and the surrounding areas. He married Henriette d'Encausse, with whom he had two children.
   In 1534, the plague which he had been so successful in treating took the lives of his wife and children. He quarrelled with Scaliger, his wife's family, and provoked the interest of the Inquisition of Toulouse with an unwise remark, and so, in 1938, accused of heresy, he had to leave and leaves Agen to wander across Europe. During this time, stories of his prophetic powers began to circulate.
   In 1544, back in France, he studied the plague and its treatment at Marseille, under the eminent physician Louis Serre, and then he was summoned in big cities to fight major plague outbreaks.
   In 1547, he married Anne Ponsarde Gemelle, with whom he had three sons and three daughters, and then, from 1948 to 1949, he travelled in Italy and went back in France.
   From 1550 onwards he produced a yearly almanac. In 1555 the first part of his Centuries, a book of prophecies, was published and made a great impression, resulting in a summons to the French court, in 1556. However, the remainder of the work was not published until 1568, probably because of the dangers of investigation for practising magic. For the same reason, the Centuries were written in a deliberately obscure style. They still exert an influence in occult circles.
   In 1564, he was made Royal Councillor and Physician in Ordinary to the King Charles IX.
   On July 1, 1566, he offered his final prediction to his priest : in response to the priest's farewell of "Until tomorrow," he is said to have answered: "You will not find me alive at sunrise." He died that night.
 

* His place in the Barks/Rosa stories universe :
    In "The Curse of Nostrildamus", a Michel de Nostrildame (Nostrildamus) appears. He isn't the same as Nostradamus, but have a lot of common points : his first name, his dates of birth and death, his French origins, and his prophetics powers. In this story, Scrooge comes in Paris, in Nostrablairus family's crypt, in search for his magic amulet which was said to give him his powers. He finds the magic amulet, but he realizes that it also gives a curse because he entered the sacred crypt, so he brings the medalion back... Actually, there existed a legend which told that you could have Nostradamus' powers if you drink in his skull, but Don Rosa sure wouldn't have been allowed to show this in a Disney story... Another detail which shows that the two characters are different from eachother is the origin of their death : the real Nostradamus was mortally ill with dropsy (oedema), while Nostrildamus died because he went too close to a perfume factory (a pun about his nostrils). The only magic jewel of the real Nostradamus was a magic ring which was left to his son César after his death.
 
 



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