 Recounts the life and loves of the physician, astrologer, and famed prognosticator; his encounters with medieval science and the Inquisition; and his early struggles with his visions of the future. The film is set in France in the 16th century during one of the periodic plague outbreaks (as opposed to the Black Death [mid-14th-century Europe] or the Black Plague [mid-17th-century London]). The film depicts Nostradamus s rise in influence, because of both his success in treating plague and his predictions, culminating in his appointment as court physician to Charles IX of France.