Page 17 - SAINT HADRIAN’S CHURCH

La Chiesa di Sant’Adriano

forementioned M. Eliade “the Christian tradition sees the
resurrection of Christ on the eight day (the one after the Jewish
Sabbat). Number 8 thus indicates the eternity. The eight
paradises of Islam and the eight pillars of heaven in the Chinese
religion have an identical conception; the eight blessings in the
Sermon on the Mount are related to eternal bliss. This is why the
shape of the Christian baptistery is that of an octagon”.

Among the four mosaics, the snake appears three times. A
special iconographic or a symbolic significance? What
mysterious allusion does the reptile guard? What is its
teaching?
Together with the lion, the snake is one of the most

common symbols of the collective imagination. Many
peoples of antiquity have adopted its cult and its
mythological images, so as to consider it the incarnation of
the deity, the genius of good and evil. Moreover the creeper
animal is tied to the concept of regeneration, resurrection
and immortality, as its skin changes.
This polyvalent symbolism of the snake made this animal

the one that mostly has lent itself to different
interpretations, sometimes contradictory, that has earned
even healing powers, according to the popular superstition,
and tied it to the cult of Aesculapius, god of the medicine.
Perhaps the unknown artist who made it has intended to
allude to the demonic temptation, to the original sin and
evil always looming to instigate man against the divine
commandments, or to the role played by the serpent in
Eden.

It is not inconceivable, however, even the positive value of

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