The Curch - Museo di San Caprasio

The Curch

The Church dates back to the year one thousand when in all Europe churches had been restored and big cathedrals raised: in that big renovation period also this abbey monks enlarged their Church.  The church’s apse and façade that just a century before, on 27th May 884, had been built by Adalberto I of Tuscany,  were battered down and rebuilt extending the internal space of the naves. The IX century façade remains can be seen below the immersion font which has a circular shape with steps to enter the basin, whose the grinded pot bottom is conserved. The font dates back to the end of XI century and the first half of XII century, when the monastery Church became a parish in the service of a wide land.  Continuing along the right nave  you can see the trucks of the lateral entry big portal which outside had two big capitals: the reassuring eagle depiction one , symbol of Our Saviour and the other one with a demonic face similar to the depicted one over the Fidenza Cathedral, with plant patterns and a wild animal depiction. At the entry of the church two capitals warned the sinner, but reminded also that from the bad the good can rise and that from the sin you can save.
At the height of the portal, the concrete floor portion indicates the base of a pillar battered down in 1951, it conserves as the other one in front of it important trucks of frescos with geometrical decorations , probably dated back to the XI century.
The high altar has been recomposed using marbles of the seventeenth-century altar erected in 1664 in order to conserve the relics of Saint Severo given by marquis Cosimo Centurione, at the time of great baroque interventions which involved the new marble and slate floor realization, the all families and communities grave renovation, the stuccoes decoration of apse restored in 2012. The altar conserves on two sides the coats of arms of the Geneva Centurion family, the crown is overcame by a bear which reminds their descent from Ursine of Rome: the chessboard band has been stone cut, in 1797 with Napoleonic occupation that rectified the end of feudalism in all Lunigiana. In the ambo three valuable caissons of XVII have been recovered. They depict the Virgin Mary of the Savona Mercy, the Virgin Mary of the rosary, Saint Michele Archangel.