Edited sentence: (which, in French, as easily means 'The Prophecies, by M.Any criticism of Nostradamus for claiming to be a prophet, in other words, would have been for doing what he never claimed to be doing in the first place.DE M.Further material was gleaned from Petrus Crinitus's De honesta disciplina of 1504, which included extracts from Psellus's De daemonibus and the De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum..." (Concerning the mysteries of Egypt...), a book on Chaldean and Assyrian magic by Iamblichus, a 4th-century neo-Platonist.Latin versions of both had recently been published in Lyon.Michel Nostradamus' – which is precisely what they were – as 'The Prophecies of M.Michel Nostradamus' – which, except in a few cases, they weren't, other than in the manner of their editing, expression and re-application to the future).Nostradamus: open letter to Privy Councillor (later Chancellor) Birague, 15th June 1566.The fact that they reportedly burned with an unnaturally brilliant flame suggests, however, that some of them were manuscripts on vellum, which was routinely treated with saltpetre.This is presumably why he entitled his book.While it is true that Nostradamus claimed in 1555 to have burned all the occult works in his library, no one can say exactly what books were destroyed in this fire