The verb insignare/to teach comes from the Latin root tied to signum/the sign. To teach is not merely to transmit knowledge or to place information into the mind. It is to mark with a sign, to seal. To teach is to imprint a form that carries permanence.
The act of teaching belongs to the realm of consecration, given that to teach is to inscribe upon the soul a visible or invisible mark that does not fade. The contrast with educare/to educate is sharp. To educate is to lead out, or to draw something into a form already prescribed. The gesture is narrow, disciplinary, and restrictive. Teaching, when read through the root of the sign, belongs to the baptismal act, where the seal is given in water and Spirit. To teach is closer to sacrament than to schooling. The ancient catechumen understood this through the architecture of the baptistery.
I. Teaching as the Mark of the Seal
The act of teaching is revealed in the Latin through its connection with signum. A sign which points, gathers, and manifests. To place a sign upon someone is to consecrate them into a bond that cannot be erased without rupture. In early Christianity, the teaching of the catechumen culminated in the moment of sealing, known in Greek as sphragis. The seal was the visible and invisible mark of Christ upon the body and spirit. The word itself carried juridical and mystical weight. In Roman law the seal was the guarantee of authenticity. In the mysteries it was the bond between the initiate and the Divine. When Paul the Apostle spoke of those who bear the seal of the Spirit, he addressed a teaching that was an indelible mark placed upon the inner man.
This understanding distances teaching from the domain of academic method. To teach is not to fill or to mould. To teach is to consecrate through signs that are living and active. The script traced upon wax, the chrism upon the forehead, the cross marked with oil – they all belong to the same act. Hence the difference with educare. Education works within the limits of form; it shapes from outside. Teaching, when seen in its root, works through the mystery of the sign; it marks from within.
II. The Baptistery as the First School
The baptistery of the ancient Church was much mroe than an annex. It was the chamber of passage. Its architecture spoke the language of initiation. Often built in the form of an octagon, it carried the secret of the eighth day. The seven days of creation belonged to the cycle of the old world. The eighth was the beginning of the new. To enter the baptistery was to be inscribed into this new time. The octagonal pool marked the crossing, where teaching was a rite.
The catechumen passed through stages. Renunciation of idols, exorcisms, despoiling of garments, immersion into the waters, and unction with oil. Each act was a teaching and, thus, a seal. The stripping away of clothing was the teaching of humility, of nakedness before God. The immersion was the seal of death and rising. The unction was the Spirit pressed into flesh through fragrance and touch. The baptistery was school in its truest sense.
III. Teaching as Mystical Consecration
To understand teaching as marking with signs changes its entire weight. It ceases to be the simple transfer of ideas and becomes sacramental. The teacher is not a distributor of content but one who seals. This aligns with the early mystagogical catechesis, where bishops such as Cyril of Jerusalem explained to the newly baptised the mysteries that had already been enacted upon their bodies. The teaching came after the rite, because the true teaching was the rite itself. The words only unveiled what the seal had already impressed.
Such a view rescues teaching from the narrowness of utilitarian form. Teaching is consecration. To teach is to baptise language, to chrismate thought, to inscribe through word and sign that which abides. The Marian dimension is also unveiled. Mary welcomed the Word as seal. The Spirit marked her womb with fire and she became the first catechumen of the new covenant. Teaching in its root is Marian, since it engraves the Verbum within flesh. To teach in this sense is to transmit Christ through the sign.
The baptistery reveals to us that true teaching is a passage, demanding renunciation, immersion, and anointing. The seal given was real, unerasable, demanding fidelity until death. Those who bear the seal carry teaching upon their body. They carry within the inscription of Spirit.
Fiat Lux.