NOSTRADAMUS (Michel de Nostredame, dit). Les Vrayes centurie - Lot 57

NOSTRADAMUS (Michel de Nostredame, dit). Les Vrayes centuries et propheties. ALyon, chez Antoine Besson, [1700 or shortly after]. In-12, (32)-218pp, marbled brown basane, ribbed spine with partitions and fleurons and garnet-red title, decorated edges, red edges; upper headband restored (contemporary binding). Rare edition, including a biography of Nostradamus by his son César de Nostredame. The printed commentary, which here offers an interpretation of the prophecies, cites an event that took place in 1700 (p.195). Born into a Jewish family from Avignon who had converted to Catholicism, Michel de Nostredame was a doctor of medicine at the Faculty of Montpellier, and practiced his art in various places, including Agen, where he frequented Jules-César Scaliger, Salon, Aix-en-Provence and Lyon. Like François Rabelais, he wrote "almanacs" and "pronostications", under the signature Michel Nostradamus, in the form of enigmatic quatrains grouped in hundreds ("centuries"). In 1556, Catherine de Médicis called upon him to write her sons' horoscopes, and HenriII's death occurred in 1559 more or less as he had foretold in the 35equatrain of the first centurie. In 1564, he was appointed physician ordinary to CharlesIX. Praised by Ronsard, denigrated by Jodelle and Scaliger, he published his prophecies for the first time in 1555, and continued to enrich this work, whose definitive expanded edition only appeared posthumously in 1568. The fortunes of this unparalleled collection of poems continued unabated throughout the following century.