Les vrayes centuries et propheties de maistre Michel Nostradamus :

où se void representé tout ce qui s’est passé, tant en France, Espagne, Italie, Allemagne, Angleterre, qu’autres parties du monde : revues et corrigées suivant les premieres editions imprimées à Paris, Rouen, Avignon, Troyes, Hollande, & autres. Avec la Vie de l’Autheur. Et plusieurs de ces centuries expliquées par un Sçavant de ce temps. Rouen : Jean-B. Besongne, 1691. Duodecimo (145 x 85 mm), contemporary mottled calf (lower board with tiny piece of loss at centre), spine with raised bands, gilt decoration and contrasting leather title-piece lettered in gilt, and at the head an old library paper shelf label with numeral in ms.; edges speckled red; title with old stamp of the Bibliotheque de Cherbourg, cancelled by that library’s duplicate (‘Double’) stamp; pp. [36], 216 (sig. A-I12); woodcut frontispiece, and five additional woodcuts including a full-page portrait of Nostradamus, woodcut head- and tailpieces; binding firm, clean throughout, a very good copy. Collated and complete.

Rare Rouen “hawker’s edition” of the prophecies of Nostradamus, printed by Jean-Baptiste Besongne.

The contents include: a life of Nostradamus by J. A. de Chavigny; the preface addressed to César Nostradamus; the letter to Henry II; the Centuries from I to XII, the Omens in the years 1555 and following; the other Predictions of Nostradamus (by Vincent de Sève), and the Remarques Curieuses sur les Centuries. The frontispiece woodcut depicts la Mort du Roy d’Angleterre et l’embrasement de Londres, and there are two portraits of Nostradamus, one of Henry II, one of Henry IV, and one of Louis XIV.

Chomarat/Laroche, Bibliographie Nostradamus: XVIe-XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles, 302; Dorbon, Bibliotheca Esoterica, 6361.