Hallo Taurec,

Ich bin noch auf der Suche nach lateinischen Pseudo-Methodiusversionen, die Nostradamus höchstwahrscheinlich kannte, so daß man den direkten Vergleich anstellen kann.

Richard Smoley meint in "The Essential Nostradamus", dass Nostradamus nicht direkt durch Pseudo-Methodius beeinflusst war, weil erst der Mönch Adso aus dem "König der Griechen/Römer" des Pseudo-Methodius einen "König der Franken" ("emerge from Gaul"), machte, als der er dann in die Nostradamus zweifellos bekannte anonyme Schrift "Mirabilis Liber" übernommen wurde:

"Taking his inspiration from an apocalyptic tradition that goes back to the works of a seventh-century writer named Pseudo-Methodius (so called because his text was originally falsely attributed to one St. Methodius), Nostradamus foresaw a massive Muslim invasion of Europe that would be repelled by a universal Chris tian monarch who, he hinted, would be Henri II or some scion of the House of France.
Pseudo-Methodius refers to this monarch as “the king of the Greeks, i.e., the Romans,” a reference to the Byzantine emperor (the Byzantines spoke Greek but called themselves Romaioi, “Romans”). A tenth-century Monk named Adso changed this “king of the Romans” to the “king of the Franks” to buttress the claims of Charlemagne’s descendants to the legacy of the Roman Empire. Nostradamus knew this tradition from a 1523 compilation called the Mirabilis liber, which speaks of “the king of the Romans” and predicts that the race that will conquer the “sons of Ishmael” (the Arabs, who traced their ancestry to Abraham’s son Ishmael, and more generally the Muslims) will “emerge from Gaul.”
This was an understandable prediction to make in his day, in the light not only of Christian apocalyptic tradition but of constant pressure from the Ottoman Turks in both the Mediterranean and southeastern Europe. As I have already noted, the archetype of the universal monarch was vividly alive in the consciousness of Christendom in that age. It was natural for Nostradamus, a Frenchman, to suggest that this universal “king of the Romans” would come from “Gaul” - that is, France."
Richard Smoley: "The Essential Nostradamus", S. 258

Smoley bezieht sich auf Bernard McGinn: "Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages", McGinn (Kapitel "10. Adso' s Letter on the Antichrist", S. 82-87) stellt den Überlieferungsstrang allerdings weder so simpel noch so verkürzt dar wie Smoley:

"Scholars are now agreed that Adso did not know the Tiburtine Sibyl and hence did not depend upon it for his version of the Last Emperor myth. Did he then make use of the Latin Pseudo-Methodius? The question remains open. There are significant differences between the Emperor of the Methodian Revelations and Adso's ruler. On the basis of this some students are inclined to think that the monk did not know Methodius; others hold that he did, but changed the myth to suit his own purposes. In any case, the future abbot's use of the Last Emperor figure is the first distinctively western adaptation of the Byzantine myth that has survived to us."
S. 83

Die Frage, die sich womöglich nicht vollständig klären läßt: Gehen sämtliche Aussagen des Nostradamus zu Chyren und der Islaminvasion auf christliche Endzeitprophetie zurück oder flossen darin vielleicht echte Schauungen des gegenwärtigen Eindringens des Islams in Europa, künftiger Bürgerkriege und eines europäischen Imperators ein? Nostradamus Aussagen gehen weit über Pseudo-Methodius hinaus, so daß ich die letztere Variante favorisiere.

Peter Lemesurier hat in "Precursors of Nostradamus?" einige Texte aus der Kompilation "Mirabilis Liber" ins Englische übersetzt und nach deren jeweiliger Herkunft geordnet:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080925153651/http://www.propheties.it/nostradamus/mirabilis/mirabilis-en.htm
Der Volltext des "Mirabilis Liber": https://web.archive.org/web/20081221204218/http://www.propheties.it/nostradamus/mirabilis/mirabilis.html

"Astrologie iudicielle" hatten wir (von einer der Wortbedeutungen, nämlich "rechtmäßig" ausgehend) als "ordentliche Astrologie" übersetzt, wobei eigentlich gemeint ist, was zu Deutsch als "Menschenastrologie" zu übersetzen ist.

ähnliche Schwierigkeiten bereitete mir die Bezeichnung "astrophile", die oft mit dem nichtssagenden Begriff "Sternenfreund" übersetzt wird.
Eine Interpretation die mich überzeugt fand ich nun bei Mark Greengrass: "Nostradamus’ Prefaces are elaborate exercises in fashioning a distinction between being an ‘astrophile’ (a star-gazer, who believes that nature and the stars contain a semiotics of knowlede about God) and an ‘astrologer’."

Die Frage ist, ob "Schomerus" das Kind nicht mit dem Bade ausschüttet und Nostradamus Aussagen zu vor 1555 liegenden Ereignissen als Fälschung zum Vorwurf macht, die von Nostradamus vielleicht gar nicht als Vorhersagen gedacht waren.
Ich halte es für möglich, daß Nostradamus die Geschichte insgesamt erzählen wollte, deren Handlungsbögen bisweilen in der Vergangenheit begannen.

So oder so ähnlich deutet ihn auch Denis Crouzet in "Nostradamus: A Healer of Souls in the Renaissance" (Der Titel trügt: Crouzet ist kein Eso-Zausel sondern Historiker mit Schwerpunkt französische Religionskriege während der Reformation):

"In this bold new account of the life and work of Nostradamus, Denis Crouzet shows that any attempt to interpret his Prophecies at face value is misguided. Nostradamus was not trying to predict the future. He saw himself, rather, as 'prophesying', i.e. bringing the Word of God to humankind. Like Rabelais, for whom laughter was a therapy to help one cope with the misery of the times, Nostradamus thought of himself as a physician of the soul as much as of the body. His unveiling of the menacing and horrendous events which await us in the future was a way of frightening his readers into the realisation that inner hatred was truly the greatest peril of all, to which the sole remedy was to live in the love and peace of Christ.
This inspired interpretation penetrates the imaginative world of Nostradamus, a man whose life is as mysterious as his writings. It shows him in a completely new dimension, securing for him a significant place among the major thinkers of the Renaissance."

Kathryn Banks in "Apocalypse and Literature in the Sixteenth Century" (in: Leona Archer und Alex Stuart (Eds.): "Visions of Apocalypse") zieht einen Vergleich zu Nostradamus Tätigkeit als Mediziner:
"According to Crouzet, Nostradamus understood the future by examining past and present just as a doctor would anticipate the future of a human body by observing past and present symptoms."

Wenn "Dess Schomerus" das geahnt hätte...

Eine der wenigen Rezensionen des Buches "Nostradamus: A Healer of Souls in the Renaissance" zeigt exemplarisch, wie schwer es fallen kann, vom gewohnten überlieferten Bild eines "Propheten der Apokalypse" abzurücken. Mark Greengrass, der die französische Ausgabe des Buches ins Englische übersetzte, hat zu Machielsens Rezension eine ausführliche Antwort verfasst (am Ende der u.g. Seite ggf. auf "+Author's Response" klicken), aus der ich o.g. Interpretation der Bezeichnung "astrophile" entnommen habe: https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/2237

Aus dem Vorwort der englischen Übersetzung:
"... This translation includes various modifications from the original 2011 French edition. They have all been undertaken with the approbation of the author. Some corrections have been incorporated into the notes (in line with those in the Russian translation of the work). A few works have been added to the bibliography and the footnotes to bring it up to date. ..."

Wie üblich: Wer es lesen mag ...

Gruß
Ulrich