In the symbol of Raziel. Exegesis and symbols in the Tridentine era.

The paper focalises on the conception of alphabetical letters, and takes into consideration their role within the symbolic forms category in the age of the so-called "sign crisis" towards the decline of the Renaissance. The paper concentrates on the grammatical science which came into being in the mid 1500's, as one of the attempts to re-motivate the sign, now considered unsuitable to express the essence of things according to the Biblical episode of the Tower of Babel and consequent language confusion. This type of reflection was however destined to be brief in the Counter Reformation culture, where the written word, predominant in philology and Biblical study from Valla to Erasmus and Luther, was finally substituted by image, the cult of which was decreed by the Council of Trent in 1563.