SOURCE: "Seer, Scientist, or Biblical Scholar?" in Nostradamus: Prophecies of Present Times? The Aquarian Press, 1984, pp. 13-32.

In the following excerpt, Pitt Francis engages the question of Nostradamus's legitimacy as a prophet of future events, focusing upon factors that may account for Nostradamus's successful predictions.

The Man, and the Enigma

For over four hundred years, with the sole exception of Bible prophecy, no set of predictions has stimulated such an infectious interest as those credited to Nostradamus. They were consulted with religious fervour by some members of the French monarchy, and held in high regard by them until 1781, when they were officially condemned by the Church, by being placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, only eight years before the French Revolution. In the nineteenth century, Nostradamus's ten Centuries (sets of a hundred verses each) were denounced as Satanic by Protestant religious fundamentalists, and Nostradamus himself was regarded as...