Малка школа за пророци или Изкуството на Нострадамус
A Little School for Prophets or the Art of Nostradamus

Summary/Abstract: The current paper tries to examine the mystifications around the life and work of the XVI century French occultist and author Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus. The main questions posed in this study stem from a curiosity about the way Nostradamus shaped his own legendary status through his writings, healings, prophecies, and divinations.By looking into a number of historiographical, biographical and autobiographical sources, among which texts by Nostradamus himself and references by some of his contemporaries, such as Pierre de Ronsard, this inquiry has stumbled upon interesting models and patterns of self-mythologisation present in Nostradamus’s life and work.One of the main conclusions of the investigation would be that the French author’s Jewish background offered him a tradition of and an inclination towards the prophetic – a “prophetic guild” of sorts, in which he could seamlessly position himself. He adopted the lore of old-testament prophets and mixed it with a good dose of what could be considered the trendy teachings of his day - kabbalah, astrology, divination, and alchemy. He followed a path similar to the one laid out by fellow healer and occultist – the physician Paracelsus. Throughout his career as a healer and a “seer”, Nostradamus is known to have used his knowledge of healing potions to treat the very eminent patients seeking his help, some of whom were cardinals and members of the French royal family. In 1554, Nostradamus started writing his Les Prophéties (“The Prophecies”). Over time, his poetic musings on the future of the old continent grew to 942 quatrains and it happened so that they resounded greatly with the collective spirit of XVI century Europe, battered by outbreaks of the plague and terrified by the ongoing Ottoman invasions. By shrouding the message of his “Prophecies” in mystery, or probably never imbuing them with a definite meaning, Nostradamus would leave us insufficient reasons to think they aren’t merely obscure, apocalyptic poetry. Nevertheless, their author has done more than many self-proclaimed mystics to cement his status as one of the world’s most reputed and, at the same time, most disputed prophets, as controversial as the term, in itself, might seem.

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