Oct 30 on the History Channel / The Plague

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It began like the common cold. Then fever, baseball-sized black swellings on the neck, coughing of blood. Few lived more than two days. The year–1347. It was history’s worst biological disaster and almost half of Europe’s population died within three years. Visit the plague ships’ rat-infested holds, witness the terror that swept through the towns, and walk with the religious flagellants. Follow a princess as she travels into the center of the plague, a doctor who struggles to understand what is happening, and a Jewish merchant caught up in violent attacks. Hear the actual words of the victims, taken from diaries and journals. From the Pope’s palace to the humble huts of medieval peasants, watch as people live and die in the unforgiving grip of fear and death, and wonder how we would act if such a terrible event happened today. Tonight on the History Channel

Sunday, October 30 @ 8pm ET/PT
 
Well as long as they don’t the blame plague on the pope or George Bush, I might watch it! 😛

Seriously though, it sounds like a very good and informative evening of TV, alike watching most of the garbage that passes for entertainment these days. :rolleyes: Sorry I just had to include a little rant there! 😃
 
My husband was planning on watching this tonight. If we’re home in time to catch it. (going to my mom’s for dinner.) Looks interesting.
 
Roughly two of every three people died from the plague, So think about yourself and two of your friends, two of your family, two of you would of died. Just to give you some of the mindframe that went on during that time period.
 
Incomprehensible. Makes you wonder how anybody survived with any sort of mental health intact.
 
I watched it and it is really very interesting, and scary. I think about the various ‘doomsday’ cults that have existed since I have been alive and how many sprung up around the plague of the middle ages. It is certainly understandable. My grandparents are buried in an old Catholic Cemetery here in the Diablo Valley, and there are many, many graves from the flu epidemic of 1918. So many of them are the graves of children. It shows that illness can have such an impact, including the potential of the avian flu that the WHO is working on today, and really, even with all our technology, there can be so much havoc caused by a virus.
 
why do I keep watching the History Channel expecting good historical research and presentation, when I know all I will get is sensationalism, conjecture and gratuitous Catholic-Church bashing. The program missed a great opportunity to explore the reasons for the rapid spread of the disease and the social effects, but instead of new research, or even reliable, accurate presentation of existing research, we got generalizations unsupported by evidence.

One quarter of the program was devoted to scenes re-enacting a small, isolated short-lived aberration by a tiny sect called the flagellants, which arose in a couple of German towns and was quickly supressed. the presentation made it seem like these people had a widespread influence and following. The expert quoted on that phenomenon is the author of a popular book, not a historian.

the “experts” cited made all kinds of generalizations about the breakdown of social systems and the influence of the Church, without citing any real evidence or showing any proven links between the effects of the plague, and social developments many years later, such as development of the printing press and other technologies. Lots of time devoted to priests who refused to give last rites to plague victims, very little on the heroic saints who gave their lives caring for victims and survivors.
 
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puzzleannie:
why do I keep watching the History Channel expecting good historical research and presentation, when I know all I will get is sensationalism, conjecture and gratuitous Catholic-Church bashing. The program missed a great opportunity to explore the reasons for the rapid spread of the disease and the social effects, but instead of new research, or even reliable, accurate presentation of existing research, we got generalizations unsupported by evidence.

One quarter of the program was devoted to scenes re-enacting a small, isolated short-lived aberration by a tiny sect called the flagellants, which arose in a couple of German towns and was quickly supressed. the presentation made it seem like these people had a widespread influence and following. The expert quoted on that phenomenon is the author of a popular book, not a historian.

the “experts” cited made all kinds of generalizations about the breakdown of social systems and the influence of the Church, without citing any real evidence or showing any proven links between the effects of the plague, and social developments many years later, such as development of the printing press and other technologies. Lots of time devoted to priests who refused to give last rites to plague victims, very little on the heroic saints who gave their lives caring for victims and survivors.
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I completely agree with you. What was it about those ‘experts’ that gave me the creeps. It was not so much what they had to say that disgusted me but also there mannerisms etc.
I can’t quite put my finger on it.
I dread to think about how the history channel will destroy history in their upcoming special about the Crusades.
 
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