Il mosaico del battistero "monumentale" di Albenga e i primi Concili

The baptistery of Albenga and its mosaic decoration are here read in parallel with examination of the theological background emerging from the first ecumenical councils. Starting from the archaeological framework and updated to include the recent discovery of another baptismal font under the older one and dated to the fourth or fifth century, the article highlights the relations linking Albenga to Milan, the metropolis on which Albenga depended before the arrival of the Lombards in the Italian peninsula. The decorations of Albenga's baptistery emerge here as depicting the Nicene-Constantinian Creed, adopted in Nicaea in 325 and affirmed in 381 during the first Council of Constantinople. The Albenga baptistery's mosaics would thus be a visual manifestation of orthodoxy, which would impart authority to the passage from the oral apostolic tradition to the written tradition codified in the first Christian ecumenical councils.