The posts claim that the French astronomer Nostradamus, shared thousands of times on Facebook, wrote a quote about “a weak man” who “will rule the Western world with Jezebel” in the midst of a “plague”. This is false. The quote, which began circulating after the US presidential election in late November 2020, was probably fabricated to mimic the style of the astrologer, whose four-line verses, known as quatrains, often predict the future.
The alleged quote attributed to Nostradamus in social reports reads: ‘A plague will fall upon the world. After that, a weak man will rule the Western world with Jezebel. The people will be harmed and subdued by a foolish ruler. The great eagle will suffer and fall. ”
Facebook posts with this alleged quote can be seen here, here, here. Some reruns that are visible here, here, here also include a photo of US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Reuters found no evidence that these words were written by Nostradamus. A search for keywords in multiple compilations of his work online (here, here), including “Jezebel”, “Western world” and “weak man” yielded no results.
The results of a Google search for the quote include a fact article from Snopes (here), a blog post that does not contain a reference but attributes the words to Nostradamus (here) and a meme page (here) .
Stephane Gerson, professor of French, French studies and history at the University of New York (here), dismissed the possibility of the quote as an authentic Nostradamus quatrain.
“According to a long-established pattern, someone apparently wrote a prediction in a language meant to invoke his (perhaps cut-and-paste different clauses from Nostradamus’ quatrains),” Gerson emailed Reuters. said.
For example, Nostradamus’ book The Prophecies, which can be seen here, contains dozens of references to plagues, floods, and famines (see examples: page 15, page 28, page 46). However, this is a common recurring theme in Nostradamus’ work. As previously explained by Gerson here, one must keep in mind that plagues were repeated during his lifetime in 16th-century Europe. This was one of the problems he wrote about. ”
Similarly, ‘Les Propheties’ also contains several references to the term ‘eagle’, which according to Gerson is a ‘symbol of the Holy Roman Empire’ and not the United States yet to be established. See examples on page 17, page 20, page 22.
Gerson also noted an anachronism: Nostradamus’ work does not mention a ‘Western world’ as the alleged prophecy claims. “Nostradamus speaks here and there of the Western coasts or the Western west of Europe, but, as far as I can determine, not of a Western world.”
According to Lexico, a collaboration between Dictionary.com and Oxford University Press (OUP), the term “Western World” is the earliest use found in the late 16th century (here). Nostradamus died in 1566 (here).
The earliest repetition of this alleged ‘prophecy’ that Reuters could find on public Facebook groups and pages dates back to November 22, 2020 (here, here), days after the news media announced that Biden had won the US presidential election in 2020 (here) which further indicates that it is probably a recent concoction.
The claim received attention again after Biden and Harris were sworn in on January 20 (here, https: // www.facebook.com/119304444787592/posts/3980368498681148) and are still circulating.
Since there is no earlier trace of this alleged citation and a search for keywords in different compositions of Nostradamus work did not yield similar results, this ‘prophecy’ is most likely fabricated.
Reuters had earlier denied allegations that Nostradamus had predicted the Covid-19 pandemic.
VERDICT
Untrue. There is no evidence that Nostradamus ever wrote that “a weak man will rule the Western world with Jezebel”. The earliest record of it spreading online appears to be from November 2020.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.