An Astrologer Put The King's Death In Print Seven Years Early: Single Combat, A Wound To The Head, Near His 41st Year. In His 41st Year, In Single Combat, A Lance Went Through His Visor.
In 1552, an astrologer put a warning in print. The King of France must avoid all single combat in an enclosed field, especially near his forty first year, or a wound to the head would blind him, or kill him. Seven years later, almost to the letter, it happened.
The king was Henry the Second, one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe. The astrologer was Luca Gaurico, the most celebrated stargazer of the age, trusted by popes. He did not whisper his warning. It was printed, and repeated to the king in a letter, with the details spelled out: single combat, an enclosed field, the forty first year, a wound to the head. The court shrugged it off, and for a sensible reason. Kings did not fight in single combat. Then, in 1555, a seer in Provence named Nostradamus printed a strange verse of his own: the young lion shall overcome the old, on the field of combat, in single battle. He shall pierce his eyes in a cage of gold.
In the summer of 1559, France celebrated a great peace and two royal weddings, and Henry threw a tournament in the rue Saint-Antoine in Paris. On the last day of June, the king rode in the lists in gilded armour. He was forty years old. In his forty first year. He ran his courses, and near the end of the day he faced Gabriel de Montgomery, the young captain of his own Scottish Guard. Their lances splintered, and the king, unsatisfied, demanded one more pass. On that final course, Montgomery's lance shattered against him, and the splinters drove up through the gilded visor, into the king's eye.
The two most famous doctors alive fought for him: Ambroise Pare, the great surgeon, and Vesalius, the father of anatomy. To understand the wound, they even drove the broken lance into the severed heads of executed criminals. Nothing worked. After ten days of agony, on the tenth of July 1559, the king died. A head wound. Single combat. An enclosed field. His forty first year. Every clause of a warning that had sat in print for seven years while the king rode toward it. France never held a royal joust again.
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