Martin M. Miles' photos with the keyword: apple

The island of Corsica is one of the 18 regions of France. It was colonized the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Etruscans and the Romans. After the Roman empire collapsed, Corsica got invaded by the Vandals and the Ostrogoths. For a short while the island belonged to the Byzantine Empire, then the Franks granted the island to the Pope, in the early 11th century Pisa and Genoa together freed the island from the threat of Arab invasion. The island came under the influence of the Republic of Pisa, later it belonged to Genua for centuries. In 1755 after a long fight for independence from Genoa the independent Corsican Republic was proclaimed, but in 1769, when the island was conquered by France. As the areas near the coast over centuries have been threatened by attacks and raids of pirates many old hamlets and dwellings are wide inland, high in the mountains. So most of the old churches are in the mountains and some of them are hard to find. The small eye catching Romanesque church San Michele is easy to find, located on an isolated hill just outside Murato. It was erected from mid-12th century on and was consecrated in 1280. At that time Corsica was ruled by Pisa and so it was built in a bicolor typical Pisan style recognizable by the alternation of green (serpentine) and white (limestone) stones, very similar to the "Basilica di Saccargia" on the neighbouring island of Sardinia. The single nave church presents remarkable naive motifs on the walls that are amazing in their imagination and variety. The snake offers the apple to Adam. Adam is reluctant, but...

The first monastic settlement here took place in about 1070, the Premonstratensians, founded by Norbert von Xanten in Prémontré near Laon in 1120, settled here in 1130. In 1184 it was raised to the status of an abbey - Steinfeld Abbey. It became an important monastery, had property in Cologne and established a number of daughter houses ("filiae") including the Strahov Abbey in Prague and the Sayn Abbey, near Koblenz. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles ownes the Steinfeld Missale that was created here around 1180. The Premonstratensian abbey existed upto 1802, when it got secularized. Now this is Salvatorian convent. So the Salavatians take care of the basilica, erected between 1142 and 1150 by the Premonstratensians as one of the earliest vaulted churches in Germany. Saint Hermann Joseph von Steinfeld (1150 – 1241) lived here, a Premonstratensian canon regular and mystic. The tomb of Saint Hermann Joseph von Steinfeld. The saint was born under the name of Hermann in Cologne, but his special devotion of the Virgin earn him the name Joseph, that was added. As a boy, he spent all his free in the church St. Maria im Kapitol in Cologne. A legend claims, that as a boy he once presented an apple, saved from his own lunch, to a statue of Jesus, who accepted it. That´s why pilgrims plcae apples on his tomb.

Saint-Pierre was the church of one of the largest Augustinian abbeys in the Poitou, that was founded in 991 by Audéarde, the wife of viscount Herbert I of Thouars. The monastery was on one of the "chemins" of the Via Turonensis, so when the number of pilgrims increased, the Canons Regular of St. Augustine had this large church erected in two construction phases from the 12th century on. This church is very long and has a wide ambulatory. It could surely host large groups of pilgrims. When the era of the pilgrimage ended, the abbey declined and impoverished during the Hundred Years' War. Most conventual buildings were destroyed in the Wars of Religion. The abbey church now serves the parish. Saint-Pierre has an extraordinary density of medieval carvings. Most of these works are well preserved. The capitals all around the ambulatory and the choir are carved by a different workshop. The carvers here were very experienced, so their works are very sophisticated and elegant. Here is Eve, accepting an apple from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam seems not to notice, what is going on. We all know the end of that. To the very right the createn of Eve can partly be seen.