Denis Crouzet 
Nostradamus [EPUB ebook] 
A Healer of Souls in the Renaissance

One of the most enigmatic figures in history, Nostradamus – apothecary, astrologer and soothsayer – is a continual source of fascination. Indeed, his predictions are so much the stock-in-trade of the wildest merchants of imminent Doom that one could be forgiven for forgetting that Michel de Nostredame, 1503-1566, was a figure firmly rooted in the society of the French Renaissance.

In this bold new account of the life and work of Nostradamus, Denis Crouzet shows that any attempt to interpret his Prophecies at face value is misguided. Nostradamus was not trying to predict the future. He saw himself, rather, as ‘prophesying’, i.e. bringing the Word of God to humankind. Like Rabelais, for whom laughter was a therapy to help one cope with the misery of the times, Nostradamus thought of himself as a physician of the soul as much as of the body. His unveiling of the menacing and horrendous events which await us in the future was a way of frightening his readers into the realisation that inner hatred was truly the greatest peril of all, to which the sole remedy was to live in the love and peace of Christ.

This inspired interpretation penetrates the imaginative world of Nostradamus, a man whose life is as mysterious as his writings. It shows him in a completely new dimension, securing for him a significant place among the major thinkers of the Renaissance.

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Translator?s Preface

Introduction. Fragments of History

1. The Place Beyond Words

2. A Self-Contradictory Utterance

3. Treasures Beneath an Oak Tree

4. A Would-Be Astrophile

5. Thresholds Dependant on Subjectivity

6. An Evangelist Cogito

7. ?For the Common Profit of Mankind?

8. ?A Burning Mirror?

9. Divine Light

10. From the All to the One

11. The Word of Creation

12. An Episteme of Reason

13. Sacredness and Nothingness

14. The Energetics of Obscurity

15. Powers of Evil

16. Man Against Man

17. All the Sins of the World

18. The Horror that Invites Horror

19. Faith: Trial and Tribulations

20. From Alpha to Omega

21. The Philology of Angst

22. The Panic Paradox

23. The Eschataology of the Rainbow

24. The Ontological Turn

25. Liberty in Christ

By Way of Conclusion: Why Nostradamus?

Notes

Chronology

Sources and Bibliography

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Denis Crouzet is Professor of Modern History at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne. His work focuses on the French Wars of Religion and the use of violence in the Renaissance.