Forbidden fruit Adam and Eve upon expelling them from the Garden. "By that with which they were made low were they rectified." Since the fig is a long-standing symbol of female sexuality, it enjoyed a run as a favorite understudy to the apple as the forbidden fruit during the Italian Renaissance. The most famous depiction of the fig as the forbidden fruit was painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti in his masterpiece fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Proponents of the theory that the Garden of Eden was located somewhere in what is now known as the Middle East suggest that the fruit was
What Is a Nation? French citizen has to have forgotten the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, or the massacre that took place in the South in the thirteenth century. While many nations, such as France, begin with a feudal regime such as a monarchy, others, such as the United States and Switzerland, are formed by acts of consensual aggregation. France and many others, however, survived their feudal roots while maintaining their identity. Renan inquires what is the organizing principle? It can't be race, because France is "Celt, Iberian, German...The most noble countries, England, France and Italy, are the ones where the blood is most mixed."