The S. John’ s Baptistery

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«Nor ample less nor larger they appear’d
Than, in Saint John’s fair dome of me beloved,
Those framed to hold the pure baptismal streams»

(Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Inferno XIX)

Florence is appreciated and studied all around the world: its monuments, its art and beauty that lie under every stone are the foundations of an ancient knowledge. That knowledge has always been protected and represented everywhere throughout the Renaissance. However, right when we think we have learned everything in life, we realize how much there still is to know. Concepts are not enough to remove all the doubts that raise every time we find ourselves in front of wonders such as the Baptistery of Saint John in Florence. However, there is one thing I am certain about: in Florence, nothing is fortuitous. Every stone, every monument, every small thing has its story, a logical explanation to its location; and whether it is to tell a legend or an anecdote, as ancients used to do with Myths, it is a mystery worth solving, or at least worth trying to.
The Baptistery was originally a temple dedicated to Mars. It was built between the IV and the V century AD. The very first written records of the monument date back to March 897, where the Baptistery was described as baptismal font and cathedral. In 1059, Pope Nicholas II consecrated the Basilica and in 1128, it was turned into just a baptistery. The building was also the place where investitures of knights and poets took place, as Dante described in the Divine Comedy : he dreamed of returning to the city after his exile, with a laurel wreath on his head. The Baptistery is dedicated to Saint John, the patron saint of Florence. The octagonal shape of the monument was a very common shape for baptisteries since early Christian times, since number eight has a symbolic meaning in the Catholic Church: seven are the days of the creation in the Old Testament; the eighth is the day of God, the day of regeneration, in the New Testament. According to the Pythagorean concept, eight symbolized the access to the water of the baptismal font, as celebration of life and death: water had the power to renew and purify.
The Baptistery is a treasure chest of mysteries and stories. Inside the building, there used to be a sundial built in the XI century. On June 21, the summer solstice, around midday, a ray of sun would shine through a hole in the ceiling and hit part of the zodiac marble images that can still be seen on the floor. The sundial worked for a couple of centuries; later on, the hole in the ceiling was closed and now there is a lantern hanging below the cupola.
If we observe the floor, right in the middle of the zodiac marble images we can see engraved the image of a sun surrounded by a mysterious palindrome – a word or a phrase that reads the same backwards as forwards . Written in Medieval Latin with “cryptic” deformations, the palindrome states: en giro torte sol ciclos et rotor igne, which in English could be more or less translated as “The Spiritual Sun has Turned the Ages in a Circle and is their Mover with Fire”. When the sundial was still working, the sunray entering the hole in the ceiling would shine on the inscription on the summer solstice. The same thing used to happen in French gothic cathedrals, which were built following the Sacred Geometry.
Another curious fact about the Baptistery: the building is a huge funeral monument where Pope John XXIII is buried. Pope John XXIII, in the world Baldassarre Cossa (1370-1419), is better known as the Antipope. It is said that he was accused of being a poisoner and of having sold his soul to the devil. Protected by Giovanni di Bicci ‘de Medici and by Cosimo ‘de Medici, he was deposed during the Council of Costanza (1415).
Leaving the Baptistery, our mind is full of unsolved questions and doubts about the beauty and the meaning of this monument. The white and green marbles, so beautiful and shining after their restoration, hide another little-known mystery: on the side of the Baptistery that faces Via Roma, there is a rectangular basso-rilievo that depicts a naval battle. If we look at it carefully, we are able to see an ancient Roman sarcophagus, an evidence of the ancient Roman origins of the city.

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