Do Not Believe Nostradamus

❧ [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified], MDCLVI. [1656]. In French. 141 × 81 mm (5.625 × 3.25 in.). 12mo. 9, [1], 408, 405–426, 437–458, [2] pp. Engraved portrait of Nostradamus inserted between the first and second leaves of the first gathering, signed: ​“L’armessin, feci.” Final leaf is an errata leaf. Several errors in pagination. Cancelled ink inscriptions on front flyleaf. Ink stamp on page 33: ​“P.R.S.” Good. Bound in old vellum, slightly stained but sound. Loss to corner of leaves N11-12 but not affecting text. Damp-staining on pages 386 and 391.

Study of Nostradamus’s poetic quatrains, in which were supposed to be predicted events in the future. The present volume analyses those predictions made for the period between 1555–1560, during the reign of Henry ii of France. Nostradamus was an apothecary who later rebranded himself as an astrologer, diviner, and healer. His Prophecies made some suspicious that he was involved in witchcraft, but it inspired admiration in others, such as Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry II.

The present volume opens with a message to the reader, warning of ten reasons to not believe the predictions. The first is that all the predictions are written to have double, and often opposing, meanings. Another reason given is that knowledge of the future is the domain of God. The final reason given is that knowledge of the future, should it exist, would be a particular interest of the state; anyone who did have knowledge of the future, the anonymous editor advises, would best keep it to themselves.

The suggestion that the state and a divine power both have exclusive privilege over the future echoes the absolutism of the then reigning King Louis XIV, the so-called Sun King. This warning to the reader is undermined by the long section that follows, ​“Apologie pour Nostradamus.”