Byzantium is a word found several times in Nostradamus's Quatrains.
Byzantium was the name of the former greek town that then became the great city of Costantinople (called the 2° Rome), the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The roman emperor Constantine the Great moved it there, giving it the name Constantinople. It outlived the Western Roman Empire by nearly 1000 years before falling to the Ottoman Empire. It was renamed Istanbul and is now the largest city in Turkey, but not its capital. It stands between Europe and Asia on a thin peninsula. With the Fall of the Second Rome, Russia saw itself as the Third Rome, heir to the role of protector of Orthodox Christians and former subjects of the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantium can be found in 1-40, 2-49, 4-38, 5-25, 5-47, 5-54, 5-70, 5-80, 5-86, 6-21, 6-53, 7-36, 8-39, 8-51, -83, 9-30, 9-73, 10-62, and The Epistle to Henri II paragraph 43.
As the Eastern Roman Empire had ceased to exist before Nostradamus wrote, the word has been interpreted several ways:
- The Ottoman Empire
- The Republic of Turkey
- Erdogan-ruled Turkey
- Muslims, in general
- Eastern Orthodox Christians
- Istanbul
- Greece
- The Black Sea area, such as Crimea
- Russia
- A future West Asian Empire, possibly the Antichrist's
Words Nostradamus used in his naitive language that have been translated "Byzantium" or "The Byzantine" are Bisance, Bizant, Bisantinois, Bisence, Bizantin, and Bizance.