Nostradamus: Les premieres centuries ou propheties (Edition Mace Bonhomme de 1555).Edition et commentaire de l'epitre a Cesar et des 353 premiers quatrains. by PierreBrind'AmourReview by: Larissa Juliet TaylorThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 145-147Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2544424 .

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Book Reviews 145

neither the French nor Latin text contains footnotes. If the reader wishes to know about the meaning of a word in, say, book 1, line 11, "Ambiguos, auidumque reple ambrosia Aga- nippe," then s/he must turn to the notes following book 1 and hope to find some commen- tary. Such a hit-and-miss method is undesirable and could have been rectified without much ado. As it happens, Chomarat explains that Aganippe is the source of Mount Helicon, a mountain in Boethia consecrated to Apollo and the Muses; he reasons that "ambrosia" is an adjective for Aganippe in the ablative and carries nuances of"'immortal,"divine' or 'ambro- sial perfume"'; and he directs the reader to book 6, line 24. In the notes to book 6, line 24, one is then directed back to book 1, line 11. So, in effect, once one has located a word or passage of particular interest and found an explanatory note, one may also find that Choma- rat provides extremely useful cross-references. But such is not always the case. For example, in the notes to book 2, line 49, one learns that "Titan est le Soleil" and that one may refer to Virgil's Aeneid 4, 119. One keeps learning that "Titan est le Soleil," though without the Virgilian reference, in the notes to book 3, line 3; to book 4, line 346; to book 7, line 6; to book 9, line 368 (where one finally reads "Titan, on l'a deja vu, est le Soleil"); to book 10, lines 189-90; and to book 11, line 236.To cite one final example, in a note regarding book 7, line 523, one learns that "the" Sibyl was a prophetess and, as corroborating evidence, "c.f. Dies irae:'Teste David cum Sibylla' et le plafond de la Chapelle Sixtine." Since Chomarat finds internal evidence to conclude that Palingenius knew the Rome of Leo X, it is not unreasonable to point to the Rome of Julius II and Michelangelo's Sistina (albeit literary sources, such asVirgil or the Fathers of the Church or Filippo Barbieri's late-fifteenth-cen- tury treatise on the Sibyls, might prove more useful to Palingenius' readers). But what is one to do with the "Teste David cum Sibylla"?

Chomarat avoids the issue of why Palingenius' Zodiacus Vitae was placed on the index (aside from a brief comment in his introduction on the poet's departure from orthodox Catholicism vis-a-vis determinism and liberty in book 8, and an excerpt, in appendix 1, from an excerpt in Franco Bacchelli's 1990 article to the effect that Palingenius did not believe in Christ's divinity). He also takes the path of least resistance regarding Palingenius' possible relationship with Duke Ercole II's "Protestant" wife, Princess Ren6e of France, by putting the possible onus on the court physician, Antonio Musa Brasavola, who had recom- mended Palingenius to Ercole II in the first place. Chomarat is at his best in the editing of the Latin text and in the French translation, no mean feats, to say the very least. His inclu- sion of a section on grammatical anomalies, "Quelques anomalies grammaticales" (which he indexes as "Quelques particularites grammaticales") and his inclusion, at the end of each book, of variables in the three Latin texts used for his own Latin version, are indispensable for a proper understanding of the poem. Finally, for those who have had occasion to use Tuve's edition of the Zodiake of Lfe, Chomarat's text will no doubt serve as a welcome alter- native to her presentation of often arduous sixteenth-century script. Corinne Mandel ............ University ofWestern Ontario

Nostradamus: Les premieres centuries ou propheties (EJdition Mace Bon- homme de 1555). E'dition et commentaire de 1'epitre 'a Cesar et des 353 premiers quatrains. Edited by Pierre Brind'Amour. Geneva: Droz, 1996. lxxii + 595 pp. n.p.

Dead for more than four centuries, Nostradamus continues to exert a fascination on people all over the world seeking clues to the future and explanations of modern events in his prophecies. Since his lifetime, critical and ingenuous commentaries alike have prolifer-

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146 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXIX / 1 (1998)

ated; along with films and television programs they number in the hundreds. Michel de Nostradame (1503-1566) came from a family of converted Jews who had

served as physicians and advisors in the Provencal court of Ren6 the Good. Michel studied at Avignon and then at Montpellier, one of Europe's leading medical faculties. In a career that would include the preparation of cosmetics and plague remedies, Nostradamus showed an early interest in prophecy, although he only published his first almanac in 1550. As Denis Crouzet has shown in his Les guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion (1990), France at this time was eager for prognostications that would illuminate the unfold- ing of history. Although French interest in the subject had lagged considerably behind that in the Empire, increasing religious tensions and violence now led many to seek answers wherever they could be found. By midcentury this provided fertile ground for his works, although they did not go unchallenged.

Pierre Brind'Amour died early in 1995, having largely completed his editorial work on the earliest published edition of the Centuries. The work was completed and redacted by Pierre Kunstmann. The present work reproduces the edition published in 1555 at Lyon by Mace Bonhomme, the first of over 170 editions, many repeating and multiplying transla- tional and orthographical errors.This carefully edited volume, containing the first four cen- turies, shows Nostradamus to be (or not to be) a prophet, but also a classicist and poet who borrowed freely and without attribution from both the ancients and contemporary astrolo- gers.

The text is based on two extant copies, 1555A from Albi and 1555V from Vienne. The latter, printed from the same galleys, has numerous corrections, probably by the author him- self. Brind'Amour uses a fifty-seven-page introduction to lay out his methodology and show how the text was corrupted from the beginning. For example, the similarity of the early printed "s" and "f" led to distortion of the following sort. An editor turned "l'oyseau de proye volant a la senestre" into "l'oyseau de proye volant a lafenestre" (emphasis added). Later still, an editor in search of meaning changed "volant" to "voiant," and others since, some with their own agendas, have added to the textual corruption, making this edition critical for scholars studying the man and his work.

But a correction of the text was only one of Brind'Amour's goals. In the search for pro- phetic meaning, scholars and amateurs alike have often ignored the language and poetry that was an intrinsic part of Nostradamus's oeuvre. In addition, the editor uses his considerable knowledge and expertise to detail the sources referred to in the quatrains. Brind'Amour also offers information on actual events in Nostradamus's lifetime that signaled the worsening state of France. For example, Nostradamus made reference to the monsters and prodigies that could also be found in contemporary chroniclers such as Jehan Glaumeau. Indeed, two- headed goats and rains of frogs were a real part of Nostradamus's mental and physical uni- verse.

Brind'Amour demonstrates how closely Nostradamus followed his [usually Latin] sources, in some cases without understanding. Other times, Nostradamus used specific ref- erences to contemporary French cities and regions as a means of seducing readers. Jean de Chavigny, a longtime associate and secretary of Nostradamus, began the prophetic scrutiny of his work in 1589 when he gathered together extracts from his master's numerous alma- nacs: "Chavigny thus inaugurated a long tradition in which... the slightest turn of a phrase, the smallest verse, the simplest half-verse, taken out of context, announces a major future event that preoccupies the inspired interpreter."

The actual text begins with Nostradamus's letter dated March 1555 to his young son C6sar, born in 1553, to explain his rationale for the obscure collection.There is no humility

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Book Reviews 147

evident as Nostradamus tells C6sar that the gift of prophecy will die with him, making it of supreme importance to pass his visions on to posterity. He states that he has for some time, with divine assistance, predicted events that later happened. But because he does not wish to cast pearls before swine, he must couch his auguries in obstruse and perplexing sentences, in "nebulous figures." He tells Cesar that his prophecies extend to the year 3797 (thought to be nine thousand years from the creation of the world in 5204 BCE).

Each of the quatrains in the four centuries provided in the text is accompanied by a list- ing of variants in later editions, a discussion of the prosody and vocabulary, a paraphrase, and in some cases, a commentary.There are also extensive footnotes that analyze the sources used by Nostradamus in great detail. It can be asked whether the paraphrase is necessary since it is often very close to the original. Since the volume will be of most interest to scholars, it adds little.The prosody is more important, as it illustrates how a rhyme scheme sometimes superseded meaning in Nostradamus's writing. The commentary is probably the most important part of each section, offering information that is essential to the serious student. For example, in the commentary on quatrain 1.6, which begins "L'ceil de Ravenne sera des- titu6," Brind'Amour explains that an eye was symbolic of a king or prince.The editor often uses the commentary to show Nostradamus's reliance on dramatic effect at the expense of any pretensions to historical reality. He also shows how Nostradamus directly borrowed phrases, including some from near-contemporary astrologers such as Richard Roussat.

Brind'Amour is not a partisan of Nostradamus the prophet, and this very much informs his commentary. He almost never refers to how some of the quatrains were interpreted in their own time or later. But while such skepticism is valid, it would have provided a far greater service to his readers if he had mentioned some of the more famous and common interpretations in the commentary, especially those that related to sixteenth-century France. About the only instance in which he has done so is in the famous quatrain 1.35: "Le lyon jeune le vieux surmontera,/En champ bellique par singulier duelle:/Dans cage d'or les yeux luy crevera:/Deux classes une, puis mourir, mort cruelle."This has often been seen as a pre- diction of Henri II's freak death as a result of a jousting accident in 1559. Brind'Amour totally dismisses the interpretation, despite the fact that courtiers at the time believed Nos- tradamus had predicted it. Nor does he mention a similar prediction made by the pope's astrologer, Luca Gaurico, which had reached the French court before the accident. Skepti- cism is well and good, but ignoring what contemporaries believed does a disservice to the reader. In another case, a reader who knows sixteenth-century French history will want to know if the first two lines of quatrain 3.51, "Paris conjure un grand meurtre commetre:/ Bloys le fera sortir en plain effet," were taken by Frenchmen in 1588 or after to refer to the murder of the duc de Guise by King Henri III at the meeting of the Estates at Blois.Whether this was actual prophecy or not is immaterial; the scholarly reader wants to know whether people at the time remarked on it. But instead, Brind'Amour offers no commentary on this or many other tantalizing quatrains.

These concerns notwithstanding, Brind'Amour has rendered an important service to all students of sixteenth-century France and Nostradamus by providing a corrected text as well as a wealth of information about the sources used by Nostradamus, information on how he used or copied them, and detailed explanations of sixteenth-century meanings and symbols. One can wish Brind'Amour had gone a bit further, if only to show why popular interpre- tations leave so much to be desired. Larissa Juliet Taylor ............................................................Colby College

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