629 



NOSTRADAMUS, MICHEL. 



NOUREDDIN. 



30 



upon record a curioua instance of the modesty of the women of Aix, 

 who, as soon as they perceived themselves attacked by the contagion, 

 be^an to sew themselves up in their winding-sheets, in order that their 

 naked bodies might cot be seen after their death. 



The next year (1547) he was sent for to Lyon on a similar occasion, 

 and appears to have succeeded equally well. On his return to Salon, 

 where he was less esteemed than elsewhere, he employed part of his 

 leisure time in composing some medical works, chiefly consisting of 

 receipts and preparations. It was about this time that he first began 

 to represent himself as divinely inspired, and endued with the gift of 

 prophecy. His predictions were first written in prose ; but, upon 

 revising them afterwards, he thought they would look better if 

 expressed in verse, and accordingly he threw them all into the form 

 of quatrains, and then arranged them in three Centuries. When this 

 was done, he was in some doubt about the safety and propriety of 

 publishing the work ; but as the time of many of the events foretold 

 in his predictions was near at hand, he at last resolved to print them. 

 The first edition was published at Lyon (155.")), and appeared with a 

 dedication to his son C'fesar, then an infant. As might be expected, 

 the work was very differently received by different pereoris : at home 

 he was generally considered an impostor, but in other parts of France 

 he was looked upon either as a person really and truly inspired by 

 God, or else as one who held communication with the devil. However 

 Henri II. and big superstitious mother Catherine sent for him to Paris, 

 received him at court very graciously, made him a present of 200 

 crowns, and sent him to Blois to eee the king's children there, and to 

 try to find out their future destinies. The result of this visit is not 

 known, but it is certain that Nostradamus returned to Salon loaded 

 with honours and presents. Encouraged by his success, he increased 

 his quatrains to the number of a complete thousand, and published a 

 new edition of them, with a dedication to the king, in 1558. The 

 next year that prince received a wound at a tournament, of which he 

 died, and it was thought that so unusual an accident could not have 

 been omitted in Nostradarnus's predictions ; accordingly his book was 

 immediately consulted, and in the thirty-fifth quatrain of the first 

 Century were found the following lines : 



" Lc lion jeune Ic vieux suimontcra, 



En champ bellique par singulier duel 

 Dans cage d'or les jeux lul crcvera. 

 Deux pUics une, puis mourir ; mort cruelle." 



So remarkable a coincidence greatly increased his fame, and he was 

 honoured shortly after with a visit from Emanuel duke of Savoy, and 

 his wife the princess Margaret of France. Charles IX. on a progress 

 through I'rovence, sent for him, and upon his complaining of the 

 flight respect in which he waa held by his fellow-townsmen, publicly 

 declared that he should hold the enemies of Nostradamus to be his 

 own. He afterwards presented him with a purse of two hundred 

 crown.", together with a brevet constituting him his physician in 

 ordinary, with the same appointment as the rest. 



Nostradamus died about sixteen months after, July 2, 1566. He 

 was buried at Salon, in the church of the Cordeliers, under a monument 

 inscribed with an epitaph asserting in the most confident terms his 

 prophetic skill. After his death two more Centuries were collected 

 from his papers, &c., and added to his quatrains, and the whole work 

 was translated into various, foreign languages. Since that time his 

 pretensions to the gift of prophecy have been variously estimated ; 

 most persons probably consider him to havo been either an impostor 

 or a lunatic, and attribute the fulfilment of some of his predictions to 

 chance ; others have accused him of magic, from which charge ho is 

 defended by Naudd, in hU ' Apologie pour les grands Homines soup- 

 jonnes de Magie ;' while some of the believers in animal magnetism 

 have classed him among other "criaiaques" who exercised "la facult<5 

 physique de provision somnambulique et de preVoyance ou clair- 

 voyance instinctive." (' Archives du Magnctisme Animal,' t. viii.) 



Even in 1806 there appeared at Paris a work by Theodore Bouys, 

 with the following singular title : ' Nouvelles Considerations surNostra- 

 damns et sur ses Predictions concernaut : 1, la Mort de Charles I., lioi 

 d'Angleterre ; 2, celle du Duo de Montmorency, sous Louis XIII.; 3, 

 la Percc'cutiou centre 1'Eglise Chr<Stienne en 1792; 4, la Mort de 

 Louis XVI., cello de la Reine, et du Dauphin; 5, 1'Eldvation de Napo- 

 leon Buonaparte ?i I'Ernpire de France ; 6, la Longueur de son Regne ; 

 7, l.i 1'aix qu'il doit procurer a tout le Continent ; 8, sa puissance, qui 

 doit <''tn: mi jour aupsi grande sur mer qu'elle Test actuellement sur 

 tenv; 9, enfin, la Conquute que ce Hcros doit faire de 1'Angleterre.' 

 The (so called) prediction of the death of Charles I., mentioned in the 

 above title-page, is one of the most singular in the whole collection ; 

 it occurs in the forty-ninth quatrain of the ninth Century, and is as 

 follows : 



" Gand ct Uruxcllcs marchcront centre Anvcrs ; 

 Senat <\i Londrcs mettront a mort leur Hoi ; 

 Le sel et le Tin lui scront a reavers; 

 Pour cux avoir le regnc en dcsarroi." 



In the dedication of his work to Henri II. he predicts that the 

 Christian church will suffer from a cruel persecution : " et durera ceste 

 cy jusques a 1'an mille sept cent nonante deux, que ton cuidern eslre 

 wie renovation de titcle :" the latter part of this sentence is certainly 

 remarkable when we recollect that the French republic dated its 

 .. I. iv. VOL. IT. 



existence from September 22, 1792 ; and that in all public acts time 

 was reckoned from that day as from the commencement of a new era. 



The ' Centuries ' of Nostradamus have been frequently reprinted, 

 and numerous commentators have endeavoured to explain his predic- 

 tions. The best editions are those of Lyon, 1568, 8vo, and Amsterri., 

 1668, 12uio. Of Commentaries (besides that of M. Bouys, already 

 noticed) the most celebrated are : ' Commantaire sur les Centuries de 

 Nostradamus,' par Chavigny, Paris, 1596, 8vo ; ' Concordance des 

 Prophe'ties de Nostradamus avec 1'Histoire,' par Guynaud, Paris, 1693, 

 12mo; 'La Clef de Nostradamus," par un Solitaire. Paris, 1710, 12mo, 

 and an English translation, with notes, by Theophilus de Garnncieres, 

 Lond., foL 1672. 



Before he wrote his ' Centuries ' Nostradamus had published during 

 several years an almanac, containing predictions about the weather, 

 &c., besides a few other works, of which only the names are now 

 remembered: 'Traite 1 des Fardements," Lyon, 1552; ' Des Confitures,' 

 Anvers, 1557; both contained iu 'Opuscule de plusieura exquises 

 Receptes, divisd en deux parties.' Lyon, 1572, 16mo; ' Le Remede tres 

 utile centre la Peste et toutea Fievres pestileutielles,' Paris, 1561, 8vo ; 

 'Paraphrase de Galien, sur 1' Exhortation da MduoJote aux Etudes des 

 Beaux Arts,' Lyon, 1588, 8vo. 



For more particulars of the life and works of Nostradamus see 

 ' AbrtSge* de la Vie de Michel Nostradamus, par Palamede Trone de 

 Condroulet, de la Ville de Salon,' 4to, no date ; his ' Life,' by Haitze, 

 Aix, 1712, 12mo; and ' Nostradamus,' by Eugene Bareste, Paris, 1810. 

 Adelung has given him a place in his 'Histoire de la Folio Humaine,' 

 vii. 105. 



NOTTINGHAM, EARL OF. HENEAGE F:Ncn, whose father was 

 recorder of the city of London, and a member of the family of the 

 earls of Wincuelsea, was born in 1621. He was educated at West- 

 minster school, and was afterwards removed to Christchurch, Oxford. 

 After leaving the university he became a member of the Society of 

 the Inner Temple, London. Ou the restoration of Charles II. he was 

 appointed solicitor-general, and distinguished himself in the prosecu- 

 tion of the regicides. He published ' An exact and most impartial 

 Account of the Indictment, Arraignment, Trial, and Judgment of 

 (according to law) Twenty-nine Regicides,' 4to, 1660; Svo, 1679. In 

 1661 he was made member of parliament for the University of Oxford, 

 and about the same time was created a baronet. In 1665 the diploma 

 of LL.D. was presented to him by the University of Oxford. He took 

 a prominent part in the impeachment of the Earl of Clarendon in 

 1667 ; and in 1670 was appointed attorney-general. He succeeded tho 

 Earl of Shaftesbury as lord-keeper of the great seal in 1673, and in 

 1675 was made lord-chancellor of England. He presided as lord high 

 steward on the trial of Vlscoun^ Stafford, in 1 680, and pronounced 

 judgment against that nobleman iu a speech of extraordinary eloquence. 

 He was created Earl of Nottingham in 1681, and died in 1682. 



Besides the account of the trial of the Regicides, he published 

 ' Speeches in both Houses of Parliament,' 1 679 : ' Speech at the Sentence 

 of William Viscount Stafford,' 1680 : 'Arguments upon the Decree in 

 the Cause between the Hon. Charles Howard, Esq., Plaintiff; Henry, 

 late duke of Norfolk ; Henry, lord Mowbray, his son ; Henry, marquis 

 of Dorchester ; and Richard Harriot, Esq., Defendants; wherein the 

 several ways and methods of limiting a trust of a term for years, are 

 fully debated,' LooA, 1685, fol. : 'An argument of the Claim of tho 

 Crown to Pardon on Impeachment,' fol.; and Svo, 1791: there is a 

 volume of ' Reports of Cases decreed in the High Court of Chancery 

 during the time Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards earl of Nottingham, 

 was Lord Chancellor,' 1725. Some valuable Chancery Reports, written 

 with his own hand, were left by him. Lord Nottingham had a high 

 reputation for eloquence, sound judgment, and integrity. His character 

 is drawn by Drydeii, in his 'Absalom and Achitophul,' under the name 

 of Amri 



" To whom the double blessing docs belong, 

 With Hoses' inspiration, Aaron's tongue." 



NOUREDDIN, (MALEK-AL-ADEL NOOH-ED-DEEN MAHMOOD), one 

 of the moot celebrated and powerful of the Moslem rulers of 

 Syria in the age of the Crusades, born A.o. 1117, A.H. 511, was a 

 younger son of Amad-eddin Zenghi, the second of the dymisty of the 

 Atabcks of Irak and Syria. At the death of his father, who was 

 murdered by his own Mamlukes at the siege of Jabbar, A.D. 1146, 

 A. 11. 541, Noureddiu, hastening to Aleppo with the signet of the 

 deceased prince, secured the possession of that city and of his father's 

 Syrian dominions; while Mesopotamia, with Moossool for a capital, 

 fell to the lot of the elder brother Seif-ed-deeu ; and the feeble 

 attempts of Alp-Arslan, a prince of the house of Seljuk, to assert his 

 ancestral claims to the dominion of these provinces, were easily 

 frustrated by the combined power of the two brotht rs. The earliest 

 exploits of the reign of Noureddin were in continuance of the 

 Holy War which his father had assiduously waged against the Latin 

 Christians of Palestine : Josceline de Courtenay, whose capital of 

 Edessa had been taken by Zenghi a few years previous, was signally 

 repulsed in an attempt to recover it, and the Christian inhabitants, 

 who had aided the enterprise, were put to the sword without mercy 

 by command of Noureddin, who even levelled the fortifications of 

 the town to prevent its ever again becoming a bulwark to the king- 

 dom of Jerusalem. The recovery of this important fortress was tho 

 avowed object of the second crusade, undertaken A.I). 1148, under 



2 M 



