MONTPELHIÈR, FROM JAUME I TO FRANCESCO PETRARCA

Joseph de De Ca'th Lon, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma are visiting Montpelhièr, the beautiful Occitan city where Jaume I was born. 

For The Grandma, visiting Montpelhièr is very special because of all the memories she has of living there while studying the Occitan poets for her Literature degree. In addition to learning Occitan, a very important language also in Catalunya where it is an official language, The Grandma shared wonderful moments with her Occitan colleagues and friends and visiting them again is always something very special and emotional.

Montpelhièr is a city in Occitània near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region, is the prefecture of the department of Hérault. Montpelhièr is the third-largest city near the Mediterranean coast, behind Marselha and Nice, and the seventh-largest city of France overall.

In the Middle Ages, Montpelhièr was an important city of the Crown of Aragon (and was the birthplace of Jaume I), and then of Mallorca, before its sale to France in 1349. Established in 1220, the University of Montpelhièr is one of the oldest universities in the world and has the oldest medical school still in operation, with notable alumni such as Francesco Petrarca, Nostradamus and François Rabelais. Above the medieval city, the ancient citadel of Montpelhièr is a stronghold built in the seventeenth century by Louis XIII.

Since the 1990s, Montpelhièr has experienced one of the strongest economic and demographic growths in the country. Its living environment, with one of Europe's largest pedestrian areas, along with its rich cultural life and Mediterranean climate, explains the enthusiasm for the city, which is nicknamed the Gifted. It is ranked as a Sufficiency city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.

In the Early Middle Ages, the nearby episcopal town of Maguelone was the major settlement in the area but raids by pirates encouraged settlement a little farther inland. In 737, Charles Martel destroyed Maguelone.

Montpelhièr, first mentioned in a document of 985, was founded under a local feudal dynasty, the Guilhem, who combined two hamlets and built a castle and walls around the united settlement. The name is from medieval Latin mons pisleri, Woad Mountain referring to the woad (Latin pastellus, pestellus) used for dyeing locally. There is no real mountain in the area, with the mons referring to a pile of stones.

In 986, the Lords of Montpelhièr begin with William I of Montpelhièr. In the 10th century the town consisted of two portions, Montpelhièr and Montpelliéret.

In 1160, the law school was active.

The two surviving towers of the city walls, the Tour des Pins and the Tour de la Babotte, were built later, around the year 1200. Montpelhièr came to prominence in the 12th century -as a trading centre, with trading links across the Mediterranean world, and a rich Jewish cultural life that flourished within traditions of tolerance of Muslims, Jews and Cathars- and later of its Protestants. William VIII of Montpelhièr gave freedom for all to teach medicine in Montpelhièr in 1180. The city's faculties of law and medicine were established in 1220 by Cardinal Conrad of Urach, legate of Pope Honorius III; the medical faculty has, over the centuries, been one of the major centres for the teaching of medicine in Europe. This era marked the high point of Montpelhièr's prominence. The city became a possession of the Kings of Aragon in 1204 by the marriage of Pere II of Aragon with Marie of Montpelhièr, who was given the city and its dependencies as part of her dowry.

Montpelhièr gained a charter in 1204 when Pere and Marie confirmed the city's traditional freedoms and granted the city the right to choose twelve governing consuls annually. Under the Kings of Aragon, Montpelhièr became a very important city, a major economic centre and the primary centre for the spice trade in the Kingdom of France. It was the second or third most important city of France at that time, with some 40,000 inhabitants before the Black Death. Montpelhièr remained a possession of the crown of Aragon until it passed to James III of Mallorca, who sold the city to the French king Philip VI in 1349, to raise funds for his ongoing struggle with Pere IV of Aragon.

From the middle of the 14th century until the French Revolution (1789), Montpelhièr was part of the province of Languedoc.

In the 14th century, Pope Urban VIII gave Montpelhièr a new monastery dedicated to Saint Peter, noteworthy for the very unusual porch of its chapel, supported by two high, somewhat rocket-like towers. With its importance steadily increasing, the city finally gained a bishop, who moved from Maguelone in 1536, and the huge monastery chapel became a cathedral.

In 1432, Jacques Cœur established himself in the city and it became an important economic centre, until 1481 when Marseilles overshadowed it in this role.

At the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, many of the inhabitants of Montpelhièr became Protestants (or Huguenots as they were known in France) and the city became a stronghold of Protestant resistance to the Catholic French crown. Montpelhièr was among the most important of the 66 villes de sûreté ('cities of protection' or 'protected cities') that the Edict of Nantes granted to the Huguenots. The city's political institutions and the university were all handed over to the Huguenots.

Increasing tension with Paris led to King Louis XIII besieging the city in 1622. The city surrendered after a two-month siege. Peace terms called for the dismantling of the city's fortifications and the building of the royal Citadel of Montpelhièr to secure the city for the government. The university and consulate were taken over by the Catholic party. Even before the Edict of Alès in 1629, Protestant rule was dead and the ville de sûreté was no more.

Louis XIV made Montpelhièr capital of Bas Languedoc, and the town started to embellish itself, by building the Promenade du Peyrou, the Esplanade and a large number of houses in the historic centre.

After the French Revolution, the city became the capital of the much smaller Department of Hérault.

During the 19th century the city thrived on the wine culture that it was able to produce due to the abundance of sun throughout the year. The wine consumption in France allowed Montpelhièr's citizens to become very wealthy until in the 1890s the phylloxera induced fungal disease had spread amongst the vineyards and the people were no longer able to grow the grapes needed for wine.

During the repression of January and February 1894, the police conducted raids targeting the anarchists living there, without much success.

After this the city grew because it welcomed French repatriates from Algeria and other parts of northern Africa after Algeria's independence from France. In the 21st century Montpelhièr is between France's number seventh and eighth largest city. The city had another influx in population more recently, largely due to the student population, who make up about one-fourth of Montpelhièr's population. The school of medicine kickstarted the city's thriving university culture, though many other universities have been well established there. The coastal city also benefited in the past 40 years from major construction programs such as Antigone, Port Marianne and Odysseum districts.

More information: Montpellier Tourism

A mièja-votz
cal parlar de l'amor.
A bramals de la tèrra raubada,
a ponhs sarrats amb nòstre pòple,
a dents copadas, a contra-jorn,
de la lutz que de còps endevinhi.

In a half-voice
we need to talk about love.
To cries of the robbed land,
hand in hand with our people,
to teeth cut, to counter-day,
of the light I sometimes guess.

Ives Roqueta

MICHEL DE NOSTREDAME, OCCULTISM & 'LES PROPHÉTIES'

Michel de Nostredame

Today, The Grandma is under the effects of a second heat wave in Barcelona. It is terrible. She has decided to stay at home, continue studying her Ms. Excel course, and read about Michel de Nostredame, the famous Provençal astrologer and physician also known as Nostradamus, who wrote the famous Prophecies and died on a day like today in 1566.

Before reading about this incredible scientist, The Grandma has continued studying a new chapter of her Ms. Excel new course. It is easy to start with Ms. Excel and she has been reading the theory carefully. In a few days, she is going to start practising with Ms. Excel exercises, but before, she has to know the theory perfectly.

Chapter 1. Introductions. Elements of Ms. Excel (Spanish Version)

Michel de Nostredame (depending on the source, 14 or 21 December 1503-1 or 2 July 1566), usually Latinised as Nostradamus, was a Provençal astrologer, physician and reputed seer, who is best known for his book Les Prophéties, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains allegedly predicting future events. The book was first published in 1555 and has rarely been out of print since his death.

Nostradamus's family was originally Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism before he was born. He studied at the University of Avignon, but was forced to leave after just over a year when the university closed due to an outbreak of the plague. He worked as an apothecary for several years before entering the University of Montpellier, hoping to earn a doctorate, but was almost immediately expelled after his work as an apothecary, a manual trade forbidden by university statutes, was discovered.

More information: Live Science

He first married in 1531, but his wife and two children died in 1534 during another plague outbreak. He fought alongside doctors against the plague before remarrying to Anne Ponsarde, who bore him six children. He wrote an almanac for 1550 and, as a result of its success, continued writing them for future years as he began working as an astrologer for various wealthy patrons. Catherine de' Medici became one of his foremost supporters.

His Les Prophéties, published in 1555, relied heavily on historical and literary precedent, and initially received mixed reception. He suffered from severe gout toward the end of his life, which eventually developed into edema. He died on 2 July 1566. Many popular authors have retold apocryphal legends about his life.

Michel de Nostredame aka Nostradamus

In the years since the publication of his Les Prophéties, Nostradamus has attracted a large number of supporters, who, along with much of the popular press, credit him with having accurately predicted many major world events.

Most academic sources reject the notion that Nostradamus had any genuine supernatural prophetic abilities and maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations, sometimes deliberate.

These academics argue that Nostradamus's predictions are characteristically vague, meaning they could be applied to virtually anything, and are useless for determining whether their author had any real prophetic powers. They also point out that English translations of his quatrains are almost always of extremely poor quality, based on later manuscripts, produced by authors with little knowledge of sixteenth-century French, and often deliberately mistranslated to make the prophecies fit whatever events the translator believed they were supposed to have predicted.

More information: Express

Nostradamus was born on either 14 or 21 December 1503 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, where his claimed birthplace still exists, and baptized Michel. He was one of at least nine children of notary Jaume or Jacques de Nostredame and Reynière, granddaughter of Pierre de Saint-Rémy who worked as a physician in Saint-Rémy.

Jaume's family had originally been Jewish, but his father, Cresquas, a grain and money dealer based in Avignon, had converted to Catholicism around 1459–60, taking the Christian name Pierre and the surname Nostredame (Our Lady), the saint on whose day his conversion was solemnised. The earliest ancestor who can be identified on the paternal side is Astruge of Carcassonne, who died about 1420.

Michel's known siblings included Delphine, Jean (c. 1507–77), Pierre, Hector, Louis, Bertrand, Jean II born in 1522 and Antoine born in 1523. Little else is known about his childhood, although there is a persistent tradition that he was educated by his maternal great-grandfather Jean de St. Rémy -a tradition which is somewhat undermined by the fact that the latter disappears from the historical record after 1504, when the child was only one year old.

At the age of 14, Nostradamus entered the University of Avignon to study for his baccalaureate. After little more than a year, when he would have studied the regular trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic rather than the later quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy/astrology, he was forced to leave Avignon when the university closed its doors during an outbreak of the plague.

After leaving Avignon, Nostradamus, by his own account, traveled the countryside for eight years from 1521 researching herbal remedies. 

Les Prophéties, Nostradamus

After another visit to Italy, Nostradamus began to move away from medicine and toward the occult, although evidence suggests that he remained a Catholic and was opposed to the Protestant Reformation. But it seems he could have dabbled in horoscopes, necromancy, scrying, and good luck charms such as the hawthorn rod.

Following popular trends, he wrote an almanac for 1550, for the first time in print Latinising his name to Nostradamus. He was so encouraged by the almanac's success that he decided to write one or more annually.

Taken together, they are known to have contained at least 6,338 prophecies, as well as at least eleven annual calendars, all of them starting on 1 January and not, as is sometimes supposed, in March. It was mainly in response to the almanacs that the nobility and other prominent persons from far away soon started asking for horoscopes and psychic advice from him, though he generally expected his clients to supply the birth charts on which these would be based, rather than calculating them himself as a professional astrologer would have done. When obliged to attempt this himself on the basis of the published tables of the day, he frequently made errors and failed to adjust the figures for his clients' place or time of birth.

More information: Business Insider

He then began his project of writing a book of one thousand mainly French quatrains, which constitute the largely undated prophecies for which he is most famous today. 

Feeling vulnerable to opposition on religious grounds, however, he devised a method of obscuring his meaning by using Virgilianised syntax, word games and a mixture of other languages such as Greek, Italian, Latin, and Provençal.

The quatrains, published in a book titled Les Prophéties (The Prophecies), received a mixed reaction when they were published. Some people thought Nostradamus was a servant of evil, a fake, or insane, while many of the elite evidently thought otherwise. Catherine de' Medici, wife of King Henry II of France, was one of Nostradamus's greatest admirers.

By 1566, Nostradamus's gout, which had plagued him painfully for many years and made movement very difficult, turned into edema.

On the evening of 1 July, he is alleged to have told his secretary Jean de Chavigny, You will not find me alive at sunrise. The next morning he was reportedly found dead, lying on the floor next to his bed and a bench.

 

Nostradamus

In The Prophecies Nostradamus compiled his collection of major, long-term predictions. The first installment was published in 1555 and contained 353 quatrains. The third edition, with three hundred new quatrains, was reportedly printed in 1558, but now survives as only part of the omnibus edition that was published after his death in 1568. 

This version contains one unrhymed and 941 rhymed quatrains, grouped into nine sets of 100 and one of 42, called Centuries.

Given printing practices at the time, which included type-setting from dictation, no two editions turned out to be identical, and it is relatively rare to find even two copies that are exactly the same. Certainly there is no warrant for assuming -as would-be code-breakers are prone to do- that either the spellings or the punctuation of any edition are Nostradamus's originals.

The Almanacs, by far the most popular of his works, were published annually from 1550 until his death. He often published two or three in a year, entitled either Almanachs, detailed predictions, Prognostications or Presages, more generalised predictions.

More information: Sacred Texts

Since his death, only the Prophecies have continued to be popular, but in this case they have been quite extraordinarily so. Over two hundred editions of them have appeared in that time, together with over 2,000 commentaries.

Their persistence in popular culture seems to be partly because their vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote them selectively after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claim them as hits.

Many of Nostradamus's supporters believe his prophecies are genuine. Owing to the subjective nature of these interpretations, however, no two of them completely agree on what Nostradamus predicted, whether for the past or for the future. Many supporters, however, do agree, for example, that he predicted the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, and the rises of Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, and Donald Trump, both world wars, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Popular authors frequently claim that he predicted whatever major event had just happened at the time of each book's publication, such as the Apollo moon landings in 1969, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. 

This movable feast aspect appears to be characteristic of the genre.

Download The Compleat Works of Nostradamus

Indeed, the hereditary gift of prophecy

will go to the grave with me.

Nostradamus