Arts and Humanities Commons^™

How Poetry Saved Nostradamus From The Pope, Alexis Julander

Fall Student Research Symposium 2022

I came across the work of Nostradamus as part of a curatorial team working with books housed in special collections. Instantly, I was intrigued by the background of the man who's most enduring work is an attempt to calculate the events of the future based off the mathematics of astrology. Nostradamus was a doctor and astrologist living in France from 1503 to 1566. He wrote his first prophesies in 1550 after a visit to Italy sparked his interest in the occult. In order to keep his predictions from seeming to close to biblical prophecies, they were written using poetic forms.