Leonardo Da Vinci

Candice Coxall

ENG 121 M'Lea Rigdon

03-16-05

Compare and Contrast

Geniuses of Their Time

Nostradamus and Leonardo Da Vinci are two of the world's most intelligent, amazing, highly achieved men that have been followed and questioned throughout history. They have changed time and left many people wondering what was true or false throughout their work and lives that existed hundreds of years ago. Although they lived in different countries and different times, they are both very similar through their work, genius ness, and minds.

Both men were born in Europe in the fourteen and fifteen hundreds and studied with their grandfathers. Nostradamus was born in 1503 in France and was born Jewish but forced to Catholicism due to a religious reform. "Growing up he spent much of his time learning several languages, math, astronomy, and astrology from his grandfather, Jean" (Keyes). He had then gone to school for liberal arts and medicine and had even treated many victims of a plague.

Leonardo was born in 1452 in Anchiono, Italy where he lived with his father and stepmother. He later moved to Vinci to stay with his grandfather and then traveled to Florence to have a greater education. "There he learned to write, to read and to calculate. Also he was taught in geometry and Latin" (Kausal).

Although they used their studies in different ways, they had studied many of the same topics. Nostradamus had written in French, Italian, Greek and Latin in his many quatrains, as Leonardo spoke and wrote in French, Italian and Latin in his many journals. On the scientific subject, Nostradamus had his own practice in medicine and treated plagues, and Leonardo had held his own autopsies and studied the human body through medicine practice, drawings, and intense detail of the human form.

Nostradamus had become a prophet through religion, astrology, and