Northern Crusades

In the early 1200s, Dogen brought Chinese Zen philosophy to Japan, and established the Japanese Zen school of Buddhism. He taught that a person was capable of realizing Buddhahood within himself, by way of Zazen. Zazen is extended hours of sitting and meditating to achieve a state of “Mu” (nothingness, or empty existence).

On 16 July 1212, a Crusader army made up of Castilians, Aragonese and Navarrese (but also French, English and Germans) confronted the army of the Almohad Caliph an-Nasir at the foot of the Sierra Morena mountain range. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, as the battle is known, is considered the most important battle of the Middle Ages on the Iberian Peninsula and is a key event in the history of Spain. More than 800 years later, a group of archaeologists and specialists have begun an archaeological study of the battlefield. Is everything that has been said about the battle true? What secrets does the terrain hide? And, above all, what can we learn today about events that took place hundreds of years ago and that pitted tens of thousands of people against each other in the south of our country?

In the year 1215, the rebel barons of England have forced their despised King John to put his royal seal on the Magna Carta, a seminal document that upheld the rights of free men. Yet within months of pledging himself to the great charter, the King reneged on his word and assembled a mercenary army on the south coast of England with the intention of bringing the barons and the country back under his tyrannical rule. Barring his way stood the mighty Rochester castle, a place that would become the symbol of the rebel's momentous struggle for justice and freedom.

A dramatised documentary about the life of Rumi, a Persian mystical poet whose images of universal love and divine mystery continue to be celebrated more than 700 years after his death.

The TARDIS crew lands in the Himalayas of Cathay in 1289, their ship badly damaged, and are picked up by Marco Polo's caravan on its way along the fabled Silk Road to see the Emperor Kublai Khan. The story concerns the Doctor and his companions' attempts to thwart the machinations of Tegana, who attempts to sabotage the caravan along its travels through the Pamir Plateau and across the treacherous Gobi Desert, and ultimately to assassinate Kublai Khan in Peking, at the height of his imperial power.

When German knights invade Russia, Prince Alexander Nevsky must rally his people to resist the formidable force. After the Teutonic soldiers take over an eastern Russian city, Alexander stages his stand at Novgorod, where a major battle is fought on the ice of frozen Lake Chudskoe. While Alexander leads his outnumbered troops, two of their number, Vasili and Gavrilo, begin a contest of bravery to win the hand of a local maiden.

In the 1200s, a man arose whose ruthlessness was so feared, he emerged as the greatest empire builder ever known to mankind. Inspired by true historical events.

Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.

During the 13th century, a small village fights for freedom in the frontier landscape of the Carpathian Mountains against Mongolian invaders.

Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.

Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Ondrej now not only assumes control of his father's properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.

In his delirium from his return from war, Francesco Bernardone goes back in his memories to the days when he lived for parties and carnal pleasures. He slowly recovers, but after the illness he is no longer the Francesco that everybody knew. Instead of spending hours in taverns, he meditates on the beauty of God's creatures, soon renouncing his riches and his family with plans to rebuild an abandoned church and his life.

The historical television play was written based on Vančura's Pictures from the History of the Czech Nation and takes place against the backdrop of the European situation at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Přemysl Otakar I., father of Agnes of Přemyslid, sought recognition of the Czech lands as a hereditary kingdom. And what about his love and fickleness? The story will answer this, in which poetry and truth diverge only in the degree of emotional movements, in the tremors of souls, which lead to love as well as to hatred.

Wenceslas II, who already has adult children Eliška and Václav, refuses to marry the young Alžběta Rejčka. In the end, he succumbs to the insistence of Abbot Konrád. The queen brings him Poland as a dowry, and Wenceslas II thus expands his empire. He still lives in the shadow of his great father, Přemysl Otakar II, and his lords reproach him for his weakness and inability to fight. Wenceslas is truly afraid of the moment when he will have to lead an army into the field and prefers to settle disputes diplomatically. His fencing teacher Hynek of Dubá and his mistress Anežka know about the king's weakness, and Václav seeks their company rather than his young wife. However, Rejčka admires the king and trusts him with the charm of a young girl. The enemy invades the country and advances quickly. It is necessary to confront him in the field, but the king hesitates and postpones the decision.

The life story of Blessed Zdislava of Lemberk, about whom legends rather than sparse historical references tell us that she was a deeply religious woman with healing powers who devoted herself entirely to the humble service of her sick and suffering neighbors.

A samurai warrior attempts to stop Kublai Khan's Mongol hordes from overrunning Japan in the 13th century.

In 13th century Ireland a group of monks must escort a sacred relic across a landscape fraught with peril.

Born Fernando de Bulhões, he was a precocious Portuguese youth, concerned with the suffering of the poor. Grown into a contemplative young man he renounces the world to join first the Augustinian Order and then the Franciscans order (where he takes the name Anthony) in his dedicated service to the faith.

A comedy about the love of the Czech nobleman Záviš of Falkenštejn for the Hungarian princess Kunhuta, who later married Přemysl Otakar II and became the Czech queen.

The life of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) as related by followers who gather after his death to tell stories so that Leone can record them: a privileged and virile youth, a prisoner of war, an heir who turns away from his father and gives all to the poor, a beggar for others, and an inspiration to friends who accept the Gospels' life of poverty.