Pilgrimage Nostalgia

[canis_major]

The BBC produced a documentary series called Civilisation which was aired in 1969. In Part 2 of the series, called "The Great Thaw" (embeded here), Kenneth Clark visited the Abbey of Cluny, and other abbeys in France after the Cluniac style.

What might be of interest to visitors to this forum are the following:

@ 07:05 minutes: Abbey of Cluny

@ 09:15 minutes: Abbey of Mossaic, where he mentions it being on the pilgrimage route to Compostella

@16:30 mins: Conques / St Foy (he mentions pilgrimage again)

@23:25 mins: Abbey of Vezelay "where the pilgrims gathered".

Being nearly 45 years old now, the footage gives a sense of continuity with the past, as well as a bit of nostalgia as to how things looked all those years ago.

Not many pilgrims in sight!

Gerry

 

[gerardcarey]

Thanks for that Gerry. Wonderful to see the programme again.
Now to find out how to download the series onto my tablet - to watch during my Camino this year.

Regds
Gerard

 

[scruffy1]

Thank you for this marvelous documentary. Moissac and Conques were fantastic to see again and I will be leaving Jerusalem for Vezelay in April for the first time-a nice introduction. My only problem? The script read by Clark rather romanticizes and sanitizes the First Crusade, forgetting to mention that as the restless Normans and thethousands of pilgrims, the peasants under Peter the hermit and the Crusaders marched through Europe on their way to liberate Jerusalem from the hands of the perfidious infidels, they also murdered thousands of the Jews of Speyer, Trier, and Mainz, the Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, and almost anyone else who could not or would not support them. Much better of course to focus on the beautiful images in the documentary but his shallow glossed over interpretation of the First Crusade leaves me with a bad taste.

 

[canis_major]

Thanks for that Gerry. Wonderful to see the programme again.
Now to find out how to download the series onto my tablet - to watch during my Camino this year.

Regds
Gerard

Thanks Gerard. I actually have the series on DVD as well - bought it 10 years ago. Was delighted to see it on YouTube as one of the DVDs is faulty!

 

[canis_major]

Thank you for this marvelous documentary. Moissac and Conques were fantastic to see again and I will be leaving Jerusalem for Vezelay in April for the first time-a nice introduction. My only problem? The script read by Clark rather romanticizes and sanitizes the First Crusade, forgetting to mention that as the restless Normans and thethousands of pilgrims, the peasants under Peter the hermit and the Crusaders marched through Europe on their way to liberate Jerusalem from the hands of the perfidious infidels, they also murdered thousands of the Jews of Speyer, Trier, and Mainz, the Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, and almost anyone else who could not or would not support them. Much better of course to focus on the beautiful images in the documentary but his shallow glossed over interpretation of the First Crusade leaves me with a bad taste.

Thanks Scruffy1. Yes I agree with you. The Crusades in general were a great mistake in history, to say the very least, and left a negative legacy to this day.

But I am fascinated by the footage, the art history, the scenary. Not sure whether it is this episode or a later one, but he also shows Assisi, which brought back memories of when I visited there. Also there is a nice piece on Charlemagne's throne in Aix la Chapelle, now Aachen. It is just fascinating, and beautiful.

 

[StuartM]

Terry Jones did a great documentary series on the Crusades for the BBC. Very entertaining and captured the utter ridiculousness of the whole concept of crusading. Not exactly serious, academic history (no surprise as it's written by an ex-Python) but very good all the same.

 

[canis_major]

I've just noticed that the link I embedded above to YouTube is no longer available. However, should anyone else be interested in the this particular episode (Episode 2), if you do a search "Civilisation The Great Thaw" on YouTube other uploads are available. Cheers. Gerry