Chapter Four: The Bones of the Triumvir

“In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock among many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.”

― St. Malachy O’Morgair

It’s well known that Nostradamus scrambled the order of the stanzas in his Centuries. To truly comprehend the prognoses of the Provençal physician, therefore, we must seek to restore the lost order of the Quatrains. My own preferred approach to this task is to “track” a specific theme through the Centuries, picking up on those Quatrains that appear to refer to related events. We can then assume that these related verses were grouped together in the prophet’s original rendering.

Let’s try to apply this technique to the theme of St. Peter’s tomb. Before we get into our initial scan of the ostensibly relevant Quatrains, however, we should first attempt to understand why Nostradamus took such a manifestly avid interest in this subject. First off, we must recognize that he composed his prophecies during the period known as the Wars of Religion in 16^th Century France. As is true of most prophets, Nostradamus often peered into the future through the prism of the past, discerning the shapes of things to come in the patterns of current events of his own time. In the French Wars of Religion, he found a presentiment of the great Religious War to be fought at the end of the Sixth Millennium ― the last and most destructive war of human history.

The 16^th Century Wars of Religion pitted the entrenched Catholics of France against the rising tide of the Protestant Huguenots. The ultimate prize of this bloody, ruthless struggle was the throne of France itself. It’s noteworthy that Michel de Nostredame initially established his prophetic credentials by successfully predicting the fall of the Catholic Valois dynasty and the accession of the Protestant House of Navarre, in the person of King Henry IV. Before Henry of Navarre would ride triumphantly into Paris, however, the two sides vied viciously in a contest of massacres, atrocities and abominations. No act was too execrable, no deed too depraved to visit upon the opposing religionists. In this turbulent scenario, Nostradamus saw the emerging outlines of our own era, with its pandemic of religiously inspired violence.

Perhaps the central issue of theological contention between the Catholic Church and the insurgent Protestants of the 16^th Century was the bona fides of the Pope’s claim to be the legitimate successor of St. Peter. Then as now, the historical basis of the claim of papal primacy has rested upon the supposed martyrdom and burial of the Apostle Simon Peter on Vatican Hill during the reign of Nero in 64AD. On the other hand, Protestant theologians have pointed to the absence of historical evidence that the sainted Fisherman ever resided in Rome. The earliest chronicles of Christian activity in Rome ― including the epistles of St. Paul ― make no mention of Peter’s presence there.[1] Later assertions of a Petrine pedigree by the Church of Rome coincided with its effort to supplant the more prestigious Sees of Jerusalem and Alexandria as the center of world Christianity. Modern historians find it extremely doubtful that Peter founded the Church in Rome. Likewise, they consider the claim that he served as Rome’s first bishop to be “an unfounded tradition that can be traced back no earlier than the third century”.[2]

Based on the historical record, therefore, it’s quite likely that St. Peter’s interment beneath the main alter of the Roman basilica that bears his name is a fraud ― a fabrication out of the same whole cloth as the so-called “Donation of Constantine”, and probably of the same vintage. As the fiction of Constantine’s bequest of Rome’s imperial power to Pope Sylvester was used to validate the papacy’s claim to supreme temporal authority, so the illusory throne of Peter has been deployed to establish Rome’s spiritual sway. The Donation of Constantine was finally exposed as a rank forgery in the 16^th Century during Nostradamus’ own lifetime.[3] It appears that the prophet viewed this revelation as foreshadowing a parallel exposé in our own time, perhaps involving the authenticity of St. Peter’s tomb. Nostradamus saw the religious wars of his day as symptomatic of the weakening of Rome’s secular and spiritual hegemony in the Western World. Projecting the Vatican’s historical decline into the future, the French seer envisioned the devastating crisis that would enfold Roman Catholicism at the end of the Sixth Millennium (which corresponds to the beginning of the Third Millennium of the Christian era).

Nostradamus’ vision of an abrupt, unexpected disintegration of the Holy See in our times is consistent with the 12^th Century prophecy of St. Malachy. The latter, we recall, predicts that Pope John Paul II will have only two successors, and that one of those will be an Antipope. Later, in the 19^th and 20^th Century, the same warning of an impending “eclipse” of the Catholic Church was repeated in ecstatic apparitions of the Blessed Virgin, the most notable of which occurred in La Salette, France, in 1846, and Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. What’s particularly intriguing about Malachy’s prophecy, especially in the context of our discussion, is his reference to the last Pope as “Peter the Roman”. This designation implies that the 21^st Century Pope Peter will be distinguishable from his First Century counterpart because the former will truly be a Roman, while the latter was not. In this regard, Malachy’s vision points to a much needed renewal of the Catholic priesthood, based upon the genuine martyrdom of “Peter the Roman” rather than the spurious tradition of Simon the Fisherman.

Figuratively speaking, therefore, the Basilica of St. Peter now stands as an edifice of lies. Such edifices have the distinctive trait of appearing to be unshakeable right up to the moment when they begin to collapse ― and then they collapse virtually overnight. We have the contemporary example of the precipitous collapse of Soviet Communism, another edifice of monolithic falsehood. In fact, the bitter enmity that existed between the Vatican and the Reds was more a function of their hierarchal kinship than their philosophical differences. In both cases, the extreme concentration of power at the top of the hierarchal pyramid was sustained by stripping the “priests” of one of the fundamental attributes of human autonomy. In the case of the Communist Party “priesthood”, their inability to acquire property severely limited their opportunity to develop individual fiefdoms independent of the Kremlin. Similarly, the celibacy imposed on the Catholic prelates has served the principal purpose of precluding potential family alliances which could undermine the absolute primacy of the Pope.

But, human nature being what it is ― and what God apparently intended it to be ― people are just not capable of consistently resisting the lure of sex and wealth. Consequently, any hierarchy which is premised on its members resisting these temptations must, of necessity, impose a heavy blanket of secrecy over its internal business, lest it become known that the rule of self-denial is honored more often in the breach than in the observance. In this sense, the Vatican rests on a foundation of secrecy much as the Kremlin once did. There is, however, a fundamental “structural” problem inherent in even the thickest wall of secrecy: Once the smallest fissure opens in the wall, it begins to crumble. The history of the late 20^th Century demonstrated the unbelievable speed with which the bastions of Soviet secrecy disintegrated once the modest opening of Glasnost was made to appease world opinion. And we are now perhaps witnessing the beginning of a similar scenario with respect to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Each lifting of the Church’s veil of secrecy releases the stench of a moral decay that goes back decades, even centuries. As this stench begins to fill the nostrils of the general populace and the Catholic faithful, the calls for total disclosure and full reconciliation will become irresistible. The question then becomes: Can the Catholic hierarchy, as it is currently constituted, withstand this onslaught of public scrutiny?

The figure of the Apostle Simon Peter makes an apt symbol for the widening crisis in Roman Catholicism for several reasons. First, Peter embodies the historical contradictions of the Church’s position on clerical celibacy, since three of the four Gospels attest that the great Fisherman had a wife.[4] It simply untenable for the Church to justify an exclusively male priesthood because the Apostles were men, and yet insist on the practice of celibacy contrary to the Apostolic model. In fact, clerical celibacy was not at all the norm in early Christianity, and even in the Western Church it was not consistently practiced until the 11^th Century.[5] Secondly, the historical St. Peter never subscribed to St. Paul’s notion of foregoing the observance of the Mosaic Law in the practice of Christianity.[6] Simon Peter remained a Jew to the end of his life, as did his Master Jesus of Nazareth. When St. Malachy envisions a latter-day Pope Peter restoring the Church to its true roots, therefore, those roots clearly lie in the Judaism which the Apostle Peter never abandoned.

Peter’s Tomb and the Death of Pius XI

With this background, let’s turn now to consider how the theme of St. Peter’s supposed Vatican tomb plays out in the Centuries of Nostradamus. Granting that the good Doctor “shuffled the deck” vis-à-vis the order of his Quatrains, still it’s unlikely that the current numbering is totally random. For example, the prophet could hardly have overlooked the significance of the 66^th Quatrain in Century VI, corresponding as it did to the ill-famed number of the Beast, 666. So let’s start our hunt at that point:

At the foundation of the new sect,

The bones of the great Roman will be found,

A sepulcher covered in marble will appear,

Earthquake in April, buried evil.[7]

The original St. Peter’s Basilica was constructed by the Roman Emperor Constantine early in the 4^th Century. It was built on the site of an a First Century pagan necropolis on Vatican Hill, where stood a pair of marble columns flanking a sepulcher reputed to be the burial place of St. Peter. The Emperor had the sepulcher enclosed in a massive cubical mausoleum made of marble and porphyry.[8] This, then, would appear to be the “sepulcher covered in marble” to which Quatrain 6.66 is referring. The pagan necropolis was rediscovered below the present-day Basilica in February 1939, when Vatican workmen were excavating a tomb for recently-deceased Pope Pius XI.[9] Six months later, in September 1939, Father Josemaría Escrivá, an obscure Spanish priest attached to General Franco’s fascist army, published a book of 999 religious maxims entitled The Way.[10] Father Escrivá’s tome would become the theological foundation of Opus Dei, a secretive, ultra-authoritarian sect which now dominates the Holy See. In April 1939, one of the five most powerful earthquakes of the 20^th Century rocked the South Pacific.

Thus far, all the pieces seem to fit nicely. But several nagging question still remain. Who was the “great Roman” whose bones were enclosed in Constantine’s marble mausoleum? And what are we to make of the “buried evil” referred to in the stanza’s final line? If we search for other stanzas in which the words “bones” and “marble” both appear, we find only one:

The bones of the Triumvir will be found,

Searching deep for an enigmatic treasure:

The peace of those around this cavity of marble

and metallic lead will be disturbed.[11]

These verses quite eerily describe a truly enigmatic series of excavations initiated by Pope Pius XII in 1939 soon after the death of his predecessor Pius XI. According to Vatican lore, the workmen digging the tomb for the recently deceased Pontiff broke through the floor of the grotto under St. Peter’s Basilica into an ancient Roman necropolis. Since this appeared to correspond to the First Century cemetery on Vatican Hill where Simon Peter was reputed to be buried, Pius XII authorized an archeological dig. They ultimately uncovered not only the pagan necropolis, but also the marble mausoleum built by Roman Emperor Constantine over the dual-pillared burial monument marking the supposed tomb of the Fisherman. In the course of these excavations, the graves surrounding Peter’s alleged resting place were necessarily disturbed and desecrated, as they had been when Constantine erected the original Basilica on the site.

If one is willing to endure a lot of Vatican red-tape, it’s possible to tour the excavations below St. Peter’s Basilica, as I did in April 2001. While I was waiting to be guided through the restored pagan necropolis, I chatted with a young priest who was brimming with all sorts of historical details. Among the things he told me was that Pius XII conducted the digging operation under a heavy shroud of wartime secrecy ― even going so far as to have the excavated soil carted away at night, so that the operation would not be observed by Allied aerial reconnaissance. My informant also reported that there was considerable German involvement in the dig. This latter fact struck a chord in my memory, since I knew that the Nazis had a strange occult obsession with searching for certain types of holy relics ― particularly those reputed to have mystical powers. I recalled that the Germans during the war had excavated an area in southern France where the Visigoths were said to have buried the treasure they looted from Rome early in the Fifth Century.

What was the “enigmatic treasure” that the Nazis were looking for, and why should Pius XII have been helping them? In their excavations in France, the Germans seemed to have been searching for the legendary Holy Grail. The Grail is a magical chalice that was thought to be among the treasures taken from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by the Roman General Titus when he destroyed it ― in fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy ― in 71 AD. The triumphal Arch commemorating Titus’ brutal suppression of the First Century Jewish rebellion still stands in the Eternal City, and on it one can see engraved depictions of his troops carrying off the Temple treasure and bringing it back to Rome. Hence, when the Visigoth conqueror Alaric sacked the city three centuries later, the Temple treasure might have been part of the booty he took with him back to Gaul. But, being Christians, the Visigoths respected the sanctity of Rome’s churches and refrained from looting them when they sacked the city. So the other possible scenario would have the treasure still hidden in somewhere in the original St. Peter’s Basilica ― which would explain the keen interest of the Nazis in unearthing it.

As for the role of Pius XII in all of this, it was an outgrowth of his complicity in the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany. While Pius was widely condemned in the war’s aftermath for his failure to actively oppose Hitler’s genocide, the history of his pre-war collaboration with Nazism has only come to light recently with the publication of John Cornwell’s controversial book Hitler’s Pope.[12] Based on documents culled from the Vatican’s own secret wartime archives, Cornwell exposes Pius’ involvement in brokering the political deal which enabled Hitler to garner the votes in the German parliament to launch his dictatorship. Before ascending to the papal throne as Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli served as the Vatican’s Secretary of State, in which capacity he negotiated a Concordat with Hitler’s government. The principal aim of the Concordat was to give the Pope the exclusive power to appoint and remove bishops in the German Church.

If he were to cooperate in the establishment of a papal dictatorship over the national Churches, however, Hitler expected the Vatican to reciprocate in kind by helping to advance his own dictatorial ambitions. Pacelli proved more than willing to oblige. The Catholic Center Party held the crucial bloc of votes in the German parliament to either defeat the Führer’s initiative or ensure its passage. By arranging for these votes to be delivered to the Nazis, Pacelli made himself one of the architects and enablers of the abominable reign of terror that ensued. Pacelli’s accomplice in this crime against humanity was the then-leader of the German Center Party, a priest named Ludwig Kaas.[13] Kaas, who would later move into the Vatican and become Pacelli’s intimate “companion”, espoused the theory that authoritarian governments make the best partners for an authoritarian Church ― a view to which the future Pope earnestly subscribed. In his role as personal confidante to Pope Pius XII, Monsignor Kaas also played a key role in the Vatican’s alleged discovery of the bones of St. Peter, as we shall subsequently discuss.

Pacelli’s cynical collaboration with Nazism would continue later in 1933, when the Vatican-Nazi Concordat was signed. He allowed Hitler to characterize the Concordat as a moral endorsement of his regime by the Church, requiring that German Catholics, in the Führer’s own words, “put themselves without reservation at the service of the new National Socialist state”.[14] As Nazi persecution of religious and ethnic minorities proceeded apace in the ensuing years, however, Pacelli’s boss Pope Pius XI became increasingly alarmed. Perhaps the aging Pontiff had begun to regret his own implicit endorsement of fascism by entering into the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini in 1927. Be that as it may, in 1938 Pius XI commissioned a Jesuit scholar to write for him a papal encyclical emphatically condemning all forms of fascism and anti-Semitism. Although the text of the encyclical was drafted in September 1938, the Vatican hierarchy kept it away from the Pope for as long as they could.[15]

When the encyclical finally reached him in January 1939, Pius XI immediately began to make secret plans to stage a dramatic release of the anti-fascist document at a special synod of Italian bishops on February 11^th. That date, the Pope felt, was certain to underscore the importance of the new encyclical, since it was the anniversary both of the signing of the Lateran Treaty and his own papal coronation. Vatican insiders leaked news of the Pope’s plan to Mussolini, who feared that the Pope’s new stance would abrogate the Lateran Treaty and strip his regime of its legitimacy in the eyes of Italian Catholics. Il Duce arranged with his Vatican collaborators for his mistress’ father, Dr. Francesco Petacci, to administer the Pontiff’s medications on the night of February 10^th. Not surprisingly, the Pope was found dead the next morning. The details of this assassination were recorded in the diary of French Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, which was discovered after his death.[16]

The fact that Pius XI was assassinated, and that his subsequent burial precipitated the Vatican’s search for St. Peter’s tomb, casts a new layer of meaning on another of Nostradamus’ prophecies. Again, the prophet highlights the importance of this particular stanza by assigning it a highly recognizable number ― 3.65, the sixty-fifth Quatrain in Century III.

When the sepulcher of the great Roman is found,

The day after a new Pontiff will be elected:

Scarcely will the Conclave have approved the new Pope

[His predecessor] poisoned, his blood in the sacred chalice.[17]

It’s rather obvious that the “sepulcher of the great Roman” in Quatrain 3.65 is the same as the marble sepulcher in which the “bones of the great Roman” are said to be found in Quatrain 6.66. It’s also quite plausible that the “sacred chalice” envisioned here refers to the Holy Grail, which was the “enigmatic treasure” alluded to in Quatrain 5.7. We might speculate further that the murder of Pius XI ― a murder enacted in the interests of fascism and with the apparent complicity of Vatican insiders ― relates to the “buried evil” spoken of in Quatrain 6.66.

Because Pius XI was assassinated on the anniversary of his papal coronation, his reign lasted exactly 17 years. It happens that the number 17 has a particular relevance to the theme of St. Peter. In the last chapter of John’s gospel, the resurrected Christ appoints Simon Peter to shepherd his flock until his return. Before doing this, however, Jesus instructs the Fisherman to cast his net for a prodigious catch of fish, numbering 153. Adding up the numbers from 1 to 17, we find the sum is 153.

The prophetic significance of the number 153 apparently relates to the succession of Popes who trace their authority to St. Peter. In that context, the 153^rd Pontiff was Leo IX (1049-1054), who initiated the so-called “Reform Papacy” of the 11^th Century. While the Reform movement was ostensibly aimed at rooting out corruption within the Church, its principal thrust was the concentration of power in the hands of the Pope and his circle of Cardinals.[18] As we mentioned earlier, this was the era in which the dogma of a celibate priesthood was imposed. It was also the period during which the Papacy took on the trappings of a temporal monarchy, including the appropriation of the imperial purple vestments worn by the Roman Caesars.[19] In this regard, critics of the Vatican’s absolutism have frequently invoked the image of the purple-arrayed harlot of Babylon in Chapter 17 of the book of Revelation ― another instance in which the number 17 strangely prefigures the Papacy’s approaching apocalyptic crisis.

The ominous import to the Vatican of the number 17 and its derivative 153 was evidently not lost on Nostradamus. In the following Quatrain, he very clearly refers to the assassination of Pius XI as setting off a sequence of calamitous events, the consequences of which are only now becoming apparent.

After the see has been held for seventeen years,

It will change hands five times in a comparable period of time:

Then one will be elected at the same time [as another],

Who will not be too much in conformity with the Romans.[20]

Pope Pius XI held the Keys of St. Peter for exactly seventeen years from February 11, 1922 to February 11, 1939. During the two decades beginning with the last year of his successor's reign, there were five occupants of the Papal throne, beginning with Pius XII, who died in October 1958, followed by John XXIII (1958 - 1963), Paul VI (1963 - 1978), John Paul I (Aug.-Sept.1978), and finally John Paul II, elected on October 16, 1978. The latter, being the first non-Italian Pope in over four-and-a-half centuries, is often identified by Nostradamus’ modern interpreters as the one who is “not too much in conformity with the Romans”. But a more careful reading of this stanza suggests that the French Prophet is instead referring to the Pope who will be elected after the reign of Polish Pontiff. Interpreted in this manner, this Quatrain also conforms to St. Malachy’s prediction that John Paul II would have a pair of successors, both elected “at the same time”, one of whom would be an Antipope.

“Peter the Roman”

Historically, Antipopes have been associated with disputed papal elections in which two candidates both claim victory. Thus, the last true Pope, Malachy’s “Peter the Roman”, will be elected “at the same time” as another candidate, an Antipope who will also claim the papal throne. St. Malachy calls this Antipope “the Glory of the Olive Tree”. Since the Olive Tree typically appears in Scripture as a symbol of the Jewish people, Malachy’s prophecy clearly suggests that the Antipope will be a Jew who has converted to Catholicism. In this sense, he will be the diabolical mirror-image of Peter the Roman, who ― despite his epithet ― will be break sharply with the conformity of the Roman priesthood by seeking to restore it to its Jewish roots.

It appears, therefore, that the next ― and last ― genuine Pope will take the name Peter. Since the Roman Pontificate was supposedly initiated by the Apostle Peter, one might expect that the name Peter would have been chosen by many previous Popes. But it’s a curious fact that not one of the 260-odd Catholic Pontiffs elected to date has opted to honor the great Fisherman by assuming his name. Why? St. Malachy’s prediction that Peter would be the last Pope doesn’t explain it, since more than 160 Popes had shunned the name of the great Apostle before Malachy ever received his vision in 1140 AD. Moreover, Malachy’s list of future Popes was kept hidden in the Vatican archives until its first publication in 1559 (in time, by the way, for Nostradamus to have read them while he was completing his own prophecies).[21] So why should all of the 220 Popes enthroned before the publication of Malachy’s list have avoided using the name of the alleged founder of their line? Given the consistency of this pattern, one would have to assume that this unwritten taboo is deeply ingrained in the Church hierarchy. One might also interpret this odd aversion for Peter’s name as an implicit acknowledgment of the spurious character of the Papacy’s Petrine legacy.

Be that as it may, the choice of the name Peter by a newly elected Pope would constitute nothing short of an act of outright rebellion against the Vatican hierarchy. It would signal the intent of the part of the new Pontiff to radically transform the Catholic priesthood, to literally rebuild the Church on a new foundation. Instead of the foundation of falsehood, whose emblem is the bogus tomb of St. Peter, the last Pope would lay down a foundation of Truth. But to do so would necessarily expose the mountain of lies upon which the power of the Roman hierarchy rests.

This mountain of lies appears symbolically in the last of the three visions revealed by the Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917. In that vision, a future Pope is seen ascending a steep mountain, followed by a priesthood consisting of both men and women. At the top of the mountain, they are fired upon by soldiers surrounding a large Cross made of the trunks of oak trees. Mountaintop oak groves are, of course, notorious in the Jewish Scriptures as sites of idolatrous worship of such abominations as Baal and Moloch. Also significant is the fact that the soldiers in the Fatima vision shoot arrows at the Pope and his entourage. Scriptural imagery, particularly in the Book of Psalms, often employs arrows as a metaphor for the tongues of the wicked seeking to defame the Righteous.[22] This tells us that the reactionary crusade to unseat Pope Peter will involve both physical violence and a vicious campaign of lies aimed at vilifying him.

One of the keys to the symbolism of this vision, which accompanied the as-yet-undisclosed Third Secret of Fatima, lies in the two Angels who stand beneath the Cross on the mountaintop. These are the same two Angels who were sent by God to destroy the city of Sodom. This explains why the beleaguered Pope is seen in the vision passing through a city in ruins on his way to the mountain. It’s noteworthy, however, that the two Angels who visited annihilation on Sodom also saved a righteous remnant from out of the accursed city. In the same way, the Fatima vision is telling us, the devastation soon to be visited upon the Holy See of Rome will spare a remnant of the Catholic bishops, who will form the nucleus of a renewed and purified priesthood. As is described in the Torah, the Hebrew ritual for the purification of the Levite priests consisted of sprinkling them with the blood of a sacrificial victim.[23] In the same way, the two Angels of the Fatima vision are seen aspersing the blood of the martyred victims over the assembly of Pope Peter’s disciples.

Thus, even though the Vatican continues to suppress the actual text of the Third Secret of Fatima, their disclosure (in June 2000) of the associated vision actually reveals the contents of the Secret itself. The Scripture-based symbolism of the Fatima vision depicts the existing hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church as the spiritual equivalent of the city of Sodom, and with the same fate looming before it. This is consistent with the last prophecy of St. Malachy, which envisions the destruction of Rome, “the seven-hilled city”. The moral degradation of the Church’s priesthood now being exposed by the scandals of the sodomites and pedophiles is only the “tip of the iceberg”. We should remember that when Lord Acton coined his famous aphorism ― “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ― it was the Papacy to which he was referring. (Acton, by the way, was himself a devout Catholic.) In her Third Secret, Our Lady was warning the Catholic hierarchy that it would either have to purge itself of corruption or suffer a calamitous, bloody purgation unprecedented in its history. Such a purgation will involve the martyrdom of many of the faithful, including the last Pope. But it will leave in its wake a reborn Catholic Church with a reconstituted priesthood ― open to celibates and non-celibates alike and to the religious of both genders ― a priesthood purified by the blood of its martyrs.

Not surprisingly, the aspersed blood of purification which figures so prominently in the Fatima vision also crops up in the visions of Nostradamus.

The one whose face is sprinkled with blood

Of the victim recently sacrificed:

Jupiter in Leo, foreseeing through an omen:

[One] put to death then for the sake of the Bride.[24]

In Catholic theology, the Church is the Bride of Christ. So here we have another prophetic rendering of the passion of a martyred Pope, who will lay down his life to restore the virtue of this “Bride”. By doing so, he will forever dissolve the absolute monarchy of the Holy See and establish himself as the founding “St. Peter” of a cleansed Church. Our Provençal astrologer predicts that these events will begin to unfold when the planet Jupiter is found in the constellation Leo. Jupiter was passing through the constellation of the Lion during the period from late September 2003 to mid-August 2004. The good Doctor’s scenario for the martyrdom of Pope Peter is remarkably similar to Sister Lucy’s vision of a modern day sack of Rome by the army of Antichrist.

All around the great city,

Soldiers will be lodged throughout the fields and towns:

Paris to launch the assault, Rome incited [to uprising],

Then the Pontificate will be subjected to a great pillage.[25]

The sack of Rome will occur in the context of a great Schism in the Church, during which a French Antipope will violently seize the Vatican and inflict slaughter upon the loyalists of Pope Peter. In the stanza preceding this one, Nostradamus describes the military leader who will breaches the Vatican walls on behalf of the Antipope:

Liberty will not be recovered,

A black, proud, villainous, unjust man will occupy it [Rome],

When the dispute over the papacy unfolds,

In the manner of Hitler, [he will establish] a fascist republic of Venice.[26]

The third Quatrain in this series envisions the “shipwreck” of the Pontificate in the aftermath of Antichrist’s pillaging the Vatican and installing his Antipope:

By the Attic land, center of wisdom,

Which is at present the rose of the world:

Pontificate ruined, and its great preeminence

Submerged, a shipwreck amidst the waves.[27]

In Chapter One, we discussed this stanza with reference another Quatrain which speaks of papal bloodshed at a time “when the rose will flourish”.[28] We mentioned that the “Attic land” represents the source of Western secular philosophy, which derives from ancient Greece ― as opposed to the West’s spiritual traditions, which are based on the Hebrew Scriptures. At a very early stage, Christianity split into two branches: one based on the sacred revelation of the Jewish Prophets, and the other based on the profane logic of the Greek philosophers. The latter branch became known as Gnosticism, and was ultimately adjudged to be heretical. As we have said, this was the heresy taught by Simon Magus and his followers.

One of the principal esoteric symbols of Gnostic mysticism was and is the “rose”. To the Gnostics, the rose stands for the inner reality, or “microcosm”, which generates the outward reality of everyday experience. Through various magical and occult arts, the Gnostics believe that this inner realm can be manipulated so as to transform physical reality. Alchemy, which claims the ability to transmute base metals into gold, is an example of Gnosticism. Another is the Rosicrucian movement ― originally a secret society dedicated to subverting the Church of Rome ― which mysteriously “reappeared” in Europe early in the 17^th Century. The “Rosy Cross” emblem of this sect is actually a depiction of Gnostic “microcosm”. In its original form, this emblem consisted of a rose in the middle of a Celtic-style cross with arms of equal length. Such a cross is an ancient symbol of the Earth, and is still used as such in astronomy and astrology. Therefore, when Nostradamus speaks of the “rose of the world”, he is actually referring to the “Rosy Cross” emblem of Gnosticism. In the following Quatrain, he speaks of this esoteric symbol even more explicitly:

The rose upon the middle of the great world,

For new deeds public bloodshed:

Those who speak the truth will be silenced,

Then, if need be, the awaited one will come late.[29]

When we revisit the “Rosy Cross” of Gnosticism in Chapter Seven, the identity of the “awaited one” mentioned in the last verse above will become clear. For now, suffice it to say that the appearance of this False Messiah will coincide with the martyrdom of Pope Peter and terrible bloodletting among those who remain faithful to the true Church. It’s also apparent that the creed of the “awaited one” and his followers will be some variety of Gnosticism ― the “rose upon the middle of the great world”.

Elsewhere in his Centuries, Nostradamus envisions an apocalyptic crisis involving the Roman Catholic clergy. The crisis that he prophesies appears to bear all the earmarks of the one now emerging in our times. If that’s so, then the good Doctor’s prognosis clearly points toward a bloody reckoning:

The blood of the Church people will be poured out,

In as great abundance as water:

And for a long time it will not be stanched,

Woe, woe to the clergy, ruin and complaints.[30]

While the prophet “shuffled the deck” pretty thoroughly, even the best shuffle leaves some “cards” in their original order. Consequently, we find a few instances in which two sequential Quatrains are obviously meant to be read together. And this is one of them. If we go on to the next Quatrain, we encounter a further elaboration of the outcome of the Vatican’s current crisis:

As a consequence of the power of the three temporal Kings,

The Holy See will be relocated to another place:

Where the reality of the spirit endowed with a physical body

Will be restored and recognized as the true See.[31]

Insofar as Nostradamus foresees the restored Church relocating its seat away from Rome, he’s in accord with the visions of the 19^th Century Catholic prophetess, the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich. Anticipating a future schism in the Church, Anne Emmerich foretold that the true Pope would be forced to flee Rome, which would become the seat of a “dark, counterfeit Church” dominated by a “secret sect”.[32] But, if we look closer at the last stanza, Nostradamus seems to be predicting something more than a mere geographical shift in the Holy See. In a most physician-like way, he refers in the third line to the visceral unity of the Spirit and the Body. It’s almost as if he knew that the Church’s denial of the reality ― and, yes, even the divinity ― of the Body would become the source of its undoing. Quite astoundingly, he foresees that, with the translation of the Church’s physical location, will come a corresponding shift in its theological paradigms. When the Church is reborn, therefore, it will rediscover that human sexuality is not something to be hidden and denied, but rather that it is the sacred energy that enlivens the Spirit. To rediscover this particular truth, Catholicism ― and, indeed, Christianity in general ― must also rediscover its roots in Jewish mysticism, as revealed in the teachings of the Kabbalah.

The Triumvirate

From the first line of the foregoing Quatrain, it’s apparent that this watershed event in Church history is to be precipitated by the pressure of three political rulers, the “three temporal Kings”. Nostradamus explains more about these three Kings in one of the two prose sections of his prophecies, the Epistle to King Henry II. In the Epistle,[33] he outlines a future scenario in which the priesthood will descend into “whoring and lechery”. The Church hierarchy will split into three factions, each one backed by one of the three competing temporal rulers. One of these factions ― the one which will ultimately become dominant in Rome ― will be “led by madmen into lecherous lust”. When the outraged public calls upon the civil authorities to intervene (as they already are beginning to do as we speak), the political powers will seize the opportunity to install their own pawn as Pope.

For the clergy there will be utter desolation from the warlords who