Centuries - books of prophecies that come true

The young lion will draw blood from the old lion.

In a knightly duel on the Field of Mars;

In a gilded cage he will poke out his eyes;

One of the two features, death in terrible pain

The above quatrain from the first century was fulfilled during Nostradamus's lifetime and refers to a historical event: the death of King Henry II in a jousting tournament. His opponent accidentally pierced the king's golden visor with a spear, fatally wounding him in the eye. However, the event and the century entry were linked after Nostradamus's death. From that moment on, people began to search for hidden meanings in the books.

Nostradamus left behind numerous writings, including a collection of recipes for maintaining a healthy physical body. He also gained popularity through his agricultural calendars, in which he predicted the weather annually based on astrological data and determined the appropriate times for farm work.

However, his principal work, which brought him fame and unprecedented notoriety, was his political prophecies, which, as he himself says, covered a period of 2,000 years and the entire territory of Europe, with particular emphasis on France. These are the so-called Centuries, or books of prophecies.

Each of these books contains 100 stanzas (hence the name "centuria") of four lines (quatrienes). The first seven books were published by Nostradamus himself in Lyon in 1555, supposedly because several of the prophecies referred to the period in which he lived. In 1558, three more centuries were published, with an introduction dedicated to King Henry II.

After Nostradamus's death, other prophecies were found in his papers, which were compiled into books 11 and 12. However, since these prophecies were changed and supplemented over time, they seem to be less valuable. Over the past four hundred years, at least dozens of distinguished researchers have attempted to delve into the secrets of the centuries. Among the best is the French historian Anatole Pelletier, who lived over 100 years ago. He is believed to have calculated the dates of two hundred hidden prophecies. Also highly regarded are the observations of the German C.W. Loog, who, as early as 1920, calculated the 1939 war between Poland and France and England and claimed to have discovered a code that allows for the chronology of the centuries' quatrains, whose arrangement resembles an anthill plowed with a stick or a shattered mosaic. Other renowned interpreters include Alexander Centurio and Mathias Vogt. In the 1980s, the work of Jean Charles de Fontbrune, son of Max de Fontbrune, also a renowned translator of quatrains, gained notoriety.