The Prophecies

by Nostradamus

  The second in age, accompanied by the Latins, shall launch a distant campaign, until a second furious & trembling path shall be beaten to the Mount of Jove, descending from which he shall drive up into the Pyrenees which shall not, however, be transferred to the ancient crown, & there shall be a third human bloodbath & for a long time war shall not occur during Lent.

  And the daughter shall be married off for the preservation of the Christian Church, with her lord falling into the paganism of the new infidels, she shall have two daughters, one in matrimony, one out of it, confirmed by the Catholic Church.

  And the other one, to her great confusion & belated remorse, shall decide to ruin her, & there shall be three regions due to the extreme differences among the leagues, that is to say, Romania, Germany, Spain, which shall create divers sects by military means, starting from the 50th & 52nd degrees of latitude & all the distant religions paying homage to the regions of Europe north of the 48th parallel, the latter who shall be the first to quake in foolish fear, then the Westerners, the Southerners & Easterners shall tremble in their turn, their power such that what they bring about through concord & union shall prove to be insuperable by military conquest.

  They shall be equal in nature, but most different in faith.

  After this, the Barren Lady, greater in power than the second one, shall be received by two nations, by the first one rendered stubborn by him who was once all-powerful, by the second, & by the third which shall extend its forces toward the perimeter of Eastern Europe, toward the already slaughtered & subdued Pannonia, & shall by sea spread its sway to Adriatic Sicily with its Myrmidons & thoroughly battered Germans, & the Barbarian sect shall be mightily afflicted & chased away by all the Latins.

  Then the great Empire of the Antichrist shall commence in Attila, & Xerxes shall descend upon the earth with a great & innumerable host, such that the coming of the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the 48th degree, shall undergo transmigration, chasing out the abomination of the Antichrist, making war on the prince who is the great vicar of Jesus Christ, & against his church, & his reign shall be for a time & to the end of time,

  & this shall be preceded by a solar eclipse more dark & gloomy than any between the creation of the world & the death & passion of Jesus Christ, or from that time to now,

  & it shall be in the month of October that some great translation shall take place, such that one shall think that the gravity of the earth has lost its natural movement & that it is to be plunged into an abyss of perpetual darkness & during the previous spring & thereafter there shall be extreme changes, transformations of kingdoms, with great earthquakes & with the sprouting up of the New Babylon, that wretched daughter, augmented by the abomination of the first holocaust,

  & this shall last for only seventy-three years, seven months, then there shall burgeon from that branch which has for long lain barren, proceeding from the fiftieth degree, one who shall renew the whole Christian Church.

  And great peace & union & concord shall be established between children who turn their faces away from each other, separated by different kingdoms, & such a peace shall be made that the promoter & sustainer of military factions shall remain chained in the deepest pit by the various religious movements, & the Kingdom of the Rabid One, playing the sage, shall be united.

  And the countries, towns, cities, realms & provinces which shall have abandoned their original ways in order to gain liberty (only to find themselves more ensnared), shall be secretly grieved by the loss of their freedom & their perfect religion, & shall start striking out to the left, then return to the right,

  & reestablishing their long-abandoned holiness with their original scriptures, so that the great dog, the huge mastiff shall then go forth & destroy everything, even that which has previously been perpetuated, & the temples shall be rebuilt as in ancient times, & the priesthood shall be restored to its former state, & shall start whoring & luxuriating & committing countless crimes.

  And at the eve of another desolation, when she shall have attained her highest & most sublime dignity, military potentates & their forces shall rise up against her, & her two swords shall be removed & only her banners shall remain, & from the crooked path that so attracts them, these forces shall be placed back on the straight path by the people, unwilling to submit themselves to those of the opposite extreme with their wrists cocked, touching ground, spurring things on until from a branch of that long-barren Lady shall be born one who shall deliver all the nations from their meek & willing enslavement, placing himself under the protection of Mars, robbing Jupiter of all his honors & dignities, for the sake of that free city set up & located in another narrow Mesopotamia.

  And the chief & governor shall be cast out from the middle & hung up high, ignorant of the conspiracy mounted against him with the help of the second Thrasybulus, who shall have been plotting all this for some time,

  & all the shameful impurities & abominations shall be laid to the charge & consigned to the shadows of the veiled light, which shall cease toward the end of the overthrow of his regime, & the chiefs of the Church shall fall short of the love of God, & several of them shall renounce the true faith, & of the three sects, the middle one shall be allowed by its members to fall somewhat into decline.

  The first shall spread throughout Europe, most of Africa shall be exterminated by the third, profiting from those poor in spirit whom madmen shall encourage into extravagance & luxury, & corrupt.

  The common people shall rise up in support, chase out the backers of the legislators, & from the way realms shall have been weakened by the Easterners, it shall seem that God the Creator has loosed Satan from the prisons of hell to give birth to the great Dog & Dogam, who shall create such an abominable breach within the Churches that neither the reds nor the whites (being without eyes or hands) shall know what to make of it, & their power shall be taken from them.

  Then more persecutions shall be visited upon the Church than ever before.

  Meanwhile, there shall arise a plague so great that more than two-thirds of the earth shall be wiped out.

  So much so that it shall be impossible to ascertain the true owners of fields & houses, & the weeds in the city streets shall rise higher than the knees.

  And the clergy shall be completely wiped out & the warlords shall usurp all the revenues from the City of the Sun, from Malta & the Isles of Hyères, & the great chain of the port which takes its name from the sea-calf shall be opened.

  And the beaches shall see a new invasion from the sea, hoping to deliver the Sierra Morena from its first recapture by the Muslims.

  And all their assaults shall not be in vain, & the place which was once the abode of Abraham shall fall to the blows of those who hold the Jovialists in veneration.

  And this very city of Ashem shall be surrounded & assailed from all sides by a most powerful host.

  And the Westerners shall weaken their great fleets at sea, & great desolation shall be visited on this kingdom, & its grandest cities shall be emptied of people & those who enter into them shall be subject to the wrathful vengeance of God.

  And the sepulcher, long an object of immense veneration, shall remain there in the open, under clear skies, visible to the eyes of heaven, the Sun, & the Moon, & the holy place shall be converted into a stable for herds large & small, & put to profane uses.

  O what calamitous afflictions shall befall women with child at this time, & then shall the principal Eastern chief be vanquished by the Northerners & the Westerners & most of his people, stirred up, shall be put to death, overwhelmed & the rest put to flight, & his children by several women shall be imprisoned, & then shall be fulfilled the prophecy of the Royal Prophet: That he hear the groaning of the prisoners & deliver the children of those doomed to die,

  what mighty oppression shall then be visited upon the Princes & Governors of kingdoms, especially those maritime & Eastern ones whose tongues are commingled with all the others (the tongues of the Latins & the Arabs, through communication with the Punic), & all these
Kings shall be chased off, overthrown, exterminated,

  not at all because of any action on the part of the forces of the Kings of the North, or because of the drawing near of our own age through the three secretly united in their search for death, plotting ambushes against each other,

  & the renewal of this triumvirate shall last seven years, & the renown of their religion shall spread through the world, & the sacrifice of the Holy & Immaculate Host shall be maintained,

  & then the Lords of the North (two in number) shall be victorious over the Easterners, & such a great noise & tumult of war shall they make that all the East shall tremble in fear of these brothers (although not brothers) of the North.

  And because, Sire, in this address I am presenting these predictions almost confusedly, both in respect to when they shall take place & to the amount of time which shall elapse before they occur, which conforms very little (if at all) with that which has been set forth above, yet it was determined by astronomy & other means (including the Holy Scriptures), which can in no way fail, & had I wanted to give a date to each quartile, this could be done: but would not be agreeable to all, still less were I to interpret them, at least until, Sire, Your Majesty had fully authorized me to do so, lest slanderers be provided the occasion to nip at me.

  However, counting the years from the creation of the world until the birth of Noah, there passed one thousand five hundred & six years, & from the birth of Noah to the completion of the Ark, at the approach of the universal deluge, there passed six hundred years (whether the years were solar or lunar or a mixture of the two, though I maintain that the Holy Scriptures hold them to be solar).

  And at the end of these six hundred, Noah entered the Ark to be saved from the flood, & this flood was universal on earth, & lasted one year & two months.

  And from the end of the flood to the birth of Abraham there passed two hundred ninety-five years.

  And from the birth of Abraham to the birth of Isaac there passed one hundred years.

  And from Isaac to Jacob, sixty years, & from the time he entered Egypt until he left there passed one hundred thirty years.

  And from the entry of Jacob into Egypt until he left it there passed four hundred thirty years.

  And from the exodus from Egypt until the building of the temple by Solomon in the fourth year of his reign there passed four hundred eighty (or fourscore) years.

  And from the building of the temple to the birth of Jesus Christ, according to the calculations of the sacred writings, there passed four hundred ninety years.

  Thus, according to my calculations (gathered from sacred scriptures), this all comes to about four thousand one hundred seventy-three years & eight months, more or less.

  But given the diversity of sects, from the time of Jesus Christ to now, I shall say nothing, & having calculated & computed the present prophecies, all according to the order of the chain which contains its own revolution, all according to astronomical doctrine & natural instinct, & after a while, finding the time when Saturn shall go retrograde beginning on the seventh of the month of April until August 25, Jupiter on June 14 until October 7, Mars from April 17 to June 22, Venus from April 9 to May 22, Mercury from February 3 to February 27.

  And after that, from June 1 to June 24, & from September 25 to October 16, Saturn in Capricorn, Jupiter in Aquarius, Mars in Scorpio, Venus in Pisces, Mercury for a month in Capricorn, Aquarius & Pisces, the Moon in Aquarius, the Dragon’s head in Libra :

  its tail in the opposite sign following a conjunction of Jupiter with Mercury, with a quartile aspect between Mars & Mercury, & the head of the Dragon alongside a conjunction of the Sun with Jupiter, the year shall be peaceful without any eclipse whatsoever, & it shall mark the commencement of everything that shall endure,

  & beginning with that year the Christian Church shall be persecuted more fiercely than it ever was in Africa, & this shall last until the year seventeen ninety-two, which shall be considered the beginning of a new age :

  after this the Roman people shall begin to reestablish itself & to chase off certain dark shadows, recovering a bit of its original brilliance, but not without great divisions & continual upheavals.

  Thereafter Venice shall with great force & power raise its wings very high, not short of the might of ancient Rome, & at that time great ships from Byzantium, allied with the Ligurians, & with the support of the Northern powers, shall somehow prevent the two Cretans from keeping their promises.

  The arks built by the Warriors of ancient times shall sail in company through Neptune’s waves, & in the Adriatic there shall be mighty discord, what was united shall be torn asunder, to a mere house shall be reduced that which was (& is) a major city, including the Pampotania & Mesopotamia of Europe on the forty-fifth parallel & others on the forty-first, forty-second & thirty-seventh,

  & at that time, & in these countries, the power of Hell shall set against the Church of Jesus Christ the power of the enemies of its creed, which shall be the second Antichrist, who shall persecute this Church & its true Vicar, by the means of the power of the temporal Kings, who in their ignorance shall be seduced by tongues that shall cut more deeply than any sword in a madman’s hands :

  the said reign of the Antichrist shall last only to the death of him who was born at the beginning of the age, & of the other one in the city of Plancus, accompanied by the elected ruler of Modona Fulcy, by Ferrara, supported by the Ligurians of the Adriatic, & the proximity of greater Sicily.

  Then the Gallic Ogmion shall pass the Mountain of Jove, accompanied by such a vast host that the Empire of his great law shall extend very far, & at that time & for some times thereafter the blood of the Innocents shall be shed profusely by villains of middling station, then, because of great floods, the memory of the things contained in such documents shall suffer an incalculable loss, even the memory of writing: this shall befall the People of the North by the will of God, & Satan shall be bound again.

  And universal peace shall be established among mankind, & the Church of Jesus Christ shall be delivered from tribulation, however much the Philistines might want to meld the honey of their malice with their pestilent seduction,

  & this shall come to pass near the seventh millennium, when the sanctuary of Jesus Christ shall no longer be trampled underfoot by the infidels from the North, the world approaching a mighty conflagration, although according to my calculations in my Prophecies the course of time runs much further.

  In the Epistle that several years ago I dedicated to my son César Nostradamus, I declared a number of points fairy openly, without making predictions.

  But here, O Sire, are contained many great & marvelous events which those who come after shall see,

  & during the period of these Astrological calculations, devised in accordance with the sacred writings, the persecution of the clergy shall find its origin in the power of the Northern Kings, allied with the Easterners,

  & this persecution shall last eleven years (or somewhat less), whereupon the chief Northern King shall fall,

  & at the end of these years, his Southern ally shall intensify the persecution for three years, thanks to the seductive apostasy of one who shall hold absolute power within the Church Militant,

  & the holy people of God who observe his law, & all the religious orders, shall be fiercely persecuted & afflicted, so much so that the blood of the true church people shall flow far & wide,

  & one of the horrible temporal Kings shall be covered with great praise by his followers for having spilled more of the blood of innocent church people than anyone could spill of wine,

  & this King shall commit incredible crimes against the Church, & blood shall flow in the public streets & temples, like water after a violent rain, & the nearby rivers shall run red with blood, as shall the seas in the wake of another naval battle, causing one King to say to another: The sea blushed red with warring ships.

  Then during the same year & those following there shall ensue a most horrible plague, all the more stupendous beca
use of the famine which shall precede it, & there shall be tribulations throughout the Latin nations greater than any that have occurred since the foundation of the Christian Church, leaving traces in various regions of Spain.

  Thereupon the third King of the North, hearing the laments of the people of his principal domain, shall raise a mighty army, & crossing the straits once traversed by his ancestors recent & remote, shall restore almost everything to its former state,

  & the great vicar of the cope shall be restored to his original state, but abandoned of all comfort & company, he shall return to find the Holy of Holies destroyed by paganism, & the old & new Testaments thrown out & burned,

  & thereafter the Antichrist shall be the Prince of Hell, & again (for the last time) all the Kingdoms of Christianity & those of the infidels shall tremble for the space of twenty-five years, & there shall be even more terrible wars & battles, & towns, cities, castles & all the other buildings shall be burned, sacked, & destroyed with great shedding of virgin blood, wives & widows raped, suckling babes dashed & shattered against city walls, & so many evils shall be committed through the influence of Satan, Prince of Hell, that almost the entire world shall find itself undone & abandoned,

  & before these events a number of fabulous birds shall cry out Huy huy in midair & then swiftly vanish,

  & after this has gone on for a long time, there shall be a virtual renewal of another reign of Saturn, or Age of Gold,

  & God, hearing the afflictions of his people, shall order Satan to be bound & thrown deep into the pit of the bottomless abyss,

  & then a universal peace shall commence between God & man, & Satan shall remain bound for about the space of a thousand years, & turning all his might against the power of the Church, shall then return unleashed.

  That all these figures accurately adapt the Sacred Scriptures to visible celestial bodies, namely, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars & others conjoined, as might be seen at more length by applying various quartiles.

  I could have gone more deeply into my calculations, & adapted the ones to the others.