Prodigiorum ac ostentorum
chronicon
Conrad Lycosthenes'
huge and influential Latin anthology of omens entitled 'Prodigiorum ac
ostentorum chronicon... ab exordio mundi usque ad haec nostra tempora'
['Chronicle of Omens and Portents ...
from the beginning of the world up to these our present times'] was
published in Basel, Switzerland, in 1557, when Nostradamus was in the
very midst of writing his Prophecies. Rare and little-known today, it
reproduces literally hundreds of omen-reports spanning the whole of
known history, including the particularly important collection by
Julius Obsequens (4th century AD) and the almost contemporary
collections by Peucerus (1553), Frytschius (1555) and Fincelius (1556)
-- all four of which, it is clear from simple inspection, were freely
borrowed by Nostradamus as a basis for his own 'omen'-predictions
(mainly in his first three Centuries), though in his case without
acknowledgement. [He seems not to have borrowed more than a handful of
omen-reports directly from Lycosthenes's book itself, however, since
he seems rather to have lost interest in omens by 1557.]
Better still, Lycosthenes' book illustrates many of his reports with
magnificent woodcuts (some of them used more than once), as well as
indicating their dates in the margins -- though Lycosthenes' Roman
dates BC are all two years out. The omens surrounding the
assassination of Julius Caesar on 44 BC, for example, are listed as
for 42 BC (pages 221-5, and faithfully reflected by Nostradamus at
II.41, II.43 and elsewhere), apparently thanks to a faulty formula for
converting the original Roman dates based on that of the foundation of
Rome.
Much of Lycosthenes' 'Chronicle' was subsequently translated into
contemporary English by Dr Stephen Batman in his hugely popular 'The
Doome, Warning to All Men' of 1581, which supplemented it with further
reports gleaned by Batman mainly from England, especially during the
24 years that followed the publication of Lycosthenes' book.
Eccentric though its page-numbering is, you can now consult the part
of it covering Nostradamus's lifetime and the period just beforehand
at
http://www.propheties.it/batman/batman.html.
Its wonderfully unpredictable spelling and punctuation give a good
idea of just how much importance should be attached to Nostradamus's
own!
--
Thank you to Peter Lemesurier
A.M.
1-3747
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A.M. 3749-3923
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A.M. 3923 A.D. 870
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A.D. 871 A.D. 1439
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A.D. 1440 A.D. 1557
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