Somehow loosely related http://astrologie-mondiale.com/nostradamus-et-la-fin-des-temps/ A. Weaknesses of both swords. ... "The two swords" refers to a political theory of the Middle Ages. At the time, there were two swords or two powers: temporal power and spiritual power. The temporal power, it is the king or the emperor who has the political competence on the daily life of the people. Spiritual power was the Pope who held the magisterium over the interior life of believers. In this theory, the spiritual sword is superior to the temporal sword. There is the idea that the spiritual delegates its power to the temporal sword. It is the pre-eminence of the Church over the rest of society. Nostradamus tells us, that spiritual and temporal powers will be withdrawn from Western countries. It is, of course, the weakening of the papacy that we have witnessed since the 19th century. It is also, it seems, the overthrow of political power by revolutionary disturbances (we will see this point in the next chapter).