2^ S. No 96., Oct. SL '67.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



353 



rature. (See Hock, Ih., p. 164.) It is nevertheless 

 a mere fiction, without any more pretension to 

 historical truth than the stories of speaking heads 

 constructed by Virgil, Albert the Great, and 

 Friar Bacon, which are to be found in other 

 writers of the same stamp. (See Bayle, Diet, art. 

 " Albert," note r ; Bacon, Roger, note a, who is, 

 as usual, copious on the subject of magic heads.) 



A story is likewise told of a deceptive pro- 

 phecy relative to the death of Henri II. of 

 France, though the equivocation does not lie in a 

 proper name. It is stated that Luca Gaurico, 

 the celebrated Italian astrologer, at the request of 

 Catherine of Medici his wife, or some other as- 

 trologer, predicted that he would be killed in a 

 duel. This prophecy was disregarded, because it 

 was thought that the king was protected by his 

 station from fighting duels ; but he in fact met 

 his death at the early age of forty-one, by the 

 accidental blow of a lance in a tournament, which 

 entered his eye and reached his brain. He was 

 struck on the 30th of June, 1559, and his death 

 took place on the 10th of July following. Thu- 

 anus, who was born in 1553, and was therefore 

 six years old at the time of the king's death, thus 

 relates the story of the prophecy : 



"Genus ac tempus mortis a Luca Gaurico mathematico 

 Pauli III. perfamiliari praadictum constat, cum Catharina 

 uxor futuri anxia foomina cum super viri ac filiorum fato 

 consuleret : fore nimirum ut in duello caderet, vulnere in 

 oculo accepto: quod irrisum a raultis ac pro tempore 

 neglectum fuit, quasi regis conditio supra duelli aleam 

 posita esset." — Hist, lib. xxii. ad fin. 



Lord Bacon, in his Essay on Prophecies (Essay 

 35.), gives a similar account of this prediction, 

 which he says that he heard in France ; and as he 

 resided in this country between 1576 and 1579, 

 he must have heard it within twenty years of the 

 king's death. Bacon does not mention Gaurico ; 

 but states that Catherine de Medici caused her 

 husband's nativity to be calculated under a false 

 name, and the asti-ologer announced that he would 

 be killed in a duel ; " at which the queen laughed, 

 thinking her husband to be above challenges and 

 duels." (Compare "N. & Q.," P* S. viii. 166.) 



Luca Gaurico, a celebrated mathematician and 

 astrologer of the sixteenth century, whose works 

 were collected after his death, and published at 

 Basle in 1575 in three folio volumes, was born in 

 1476, and died on March 6, 1558. His death, 

 therefore, preceded that of Henri II, ; and if he 

 had made any such announcement as that ascribed 

 to him, it must have been a true prediction, and 

 not a fabrication after the event. Bayle, how- 

 ever, who, in notes U and X to his Lifd of Henri 

 II., has minutely investigated the story of this 

 prophecy, has shown that the astrological pre- 

 dictions which Gaurico really made respecting 

 Henri IL were wholly different, and quite incon- 

 sistent with the event. The falsity of this story 



is likewise pointed out by Niceron, in the life of 

 Gaurico, in his Memoires des Hommes lUnstres 

 (Paris, 1734, tom. xxx. p. 148.), and by Adelung, 

 in his Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit, vol. ii. 

 p. 260. It appears from the citations of Bayle, 

 that Gaurico made two precise astrological pre- 

 dictions respecting the death of Henri II., one 

 published in 1552, the other in 1556. According 

 to the former horoscope, Henri was to attain a 

 prosperous and green old age ; and, if he passed 

 his fifty-sixth, sixty-third, and sixty-fourth years, 

 he would attain the age of sixty-nine years, tea 

 months, and twelve days. According to the lat- 

 ter and amended version, if he passed the un- 

 healthy years sixty-three and sixty-four, he 

 would live happily for seventy years, minus two 

 months. Neither of them contains any allusion to 

 a duel ; and the age which they fix for his death, 

 after a prosperous life, was completely erroneous. 

 Gaurico had doubtless learned to be careful how 

 he dealt in unlucky predictions respecting princes. 

 For, having predicted that Bentivoglio, Lord of 

 Bologna, would be expelled from his states, he 

 was condemned by this tyrant, for his temerity, to 

 five inflictions of the strappado : from the effects 

 of this torture — which consisted in suspending a 

 person by the hands, and throwing him from a 

 height on the ground — he suffered for a long time. 



There are moreover material variations in the 

 story of this prediction. Another version of it 

 represents the celebrated Cardan as having fore- 

 told a melancholy termination of the king's life ; 

 it appears, however, that the prophecy which he 

 really made was of a directly opposite tendency. 

 A third version was, that the Cardinal of Lorraine 

 brought from Rome a letter from a Jew, warning 

 the king against a single combat. The king is 

 farther related to have given this, or some similar 

 prophecy, to AL d'Aubespine to preserve ; and it 

 is added, that the latter had shown it to some 

 grandees after the king's death. The authorities 

 for these latter stories are Pasquier and Brantome, 

 the former of whom was born in 1529, and the 

 latter in 1540. We may safely agree with Bayle 

 in rejecting the vague report about the prophecy 

 of the Roman Jew, not less than the fictions 

 respecting Gaurico and Cardan. 



It may be added that Montluc, in his Memoires, 

 tom. xxi. p. 488. ed. Petitot, states that he had a 

 prophetic dream respecting Henri II. three days 

 before the fatal tournament. He dreamed that he 

 saw the king sitting on a raised seat, with drops 

 of blood streaming down his face. There is no 

 reason for disputing the truth of this dream ; 

 which was doubtless a casual coincidence, partly 

 suggested by apprehension. Tlie writer, however, 

 betrays no knowledge of Hie astrological predic- 

 tion. 



In the case of the alleged prediction of the death 

 of Henri II., we are able to compare the real 



