the waters of baptism, while the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove breathes divine grace. A lamb, the personification of Christ, multiplies the loaves, and brings forth Lazarus from the grave.
One of the most remarkable and important, in its theological significance, of the symbols of the Catacombs is that of the fish. It is one of the oldest in the entire hieratic cycle. It is found accompanying the first dated inscription which bears any emblem whatever,[403] and nearly a hundred examples occur which are attributed to the first three centuries. It was also one of the first to be discontinued. During the fourth century it rapidly fell into disuse, and by the beginning of the fifth had almost entirely disappeared from religious art.[404]
The abandonment of this remarkable figure may be explained by its mysterious and anagrammatic character. It is a striking illustration of that disciplina arcana of the primitive church which employed signs whose secret meaning its heathen foes could not understand. When the age of persecution passed away there was no longer the necessity to conceal under allusions and emblems, known only to the initiated, religious truths which were openly proclaimed on every hand. Hence this purely conventional sign fell into disuse.
This symbol probably derived its origin from the fact
that the initial letters of the names and titles of Our Lord in Greek—Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς, Θεοῦ Υἱὸς, Σωτήρ, Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Saviour—make up the word ΙΧΘΥΣ, a fish. “This single word,” says Optatus, “contains a host of sacred names.”[405] The same word also occurs acrostically in the initial letters of certain so-called Sibylline verses quoted by Eusebius[406] and Augustine,[407] which were doubtless of Christian origin. The symbol is first mentioned by Clement of Alexandria,[408] and probably had its origin in the allegorizing school of Christianity which sprang up in that city.[409]
There appears also to have been an allusion in this figure to the ordinance of baptism. “We are little fishes,” says Tertullian, “in Christ our great fish. For we are born in water, and can only be saved by continuing therein,”[410] that is, through the spiritual grace of which baptism is the visible sign. “This sign,” says Clement, “will prevent men from forgetting their origin.” “He (that is, Christ) is that fish,” says Optatus, “which in baptism descends in answer to prayer into the baptismal font, so that what was before water is now called,
from the fish, (a pisce,) piscina.”[411] Even the mythical fish mentioned in the apocryphal book of Tobit,[412] occasional pictures of which occur in the Catacombs, is interpreted by some of the Fathers as typifying Our Lord. “That fish which came alive out of the river to Tobias,” says Augustine, “whose heart, (liver,) consumed by passion, put the demon to flight, was Christ.”[413]
This sacred sign was also regarded as an emblem of the sufferings of Our Lord and the benefits of his atonement. “The Saviour, the Son of God,” says Prosper of Aquitania, “is a fish prepared in his passion, by whose interior remedies we are daily enlightened and fed.”[414] “ΙΧΘΥΣ is the mystical name of Christ,” says Augustine, “because he descended alive into the depths of this mortal life as into the abyss of waters.”[415] “The fish in whose mouth was the coin paid as the tribute money,” says Jerome, “was Christ, at the cost of whose blood all sinners were redeemed.” Origen merely speaks of him as “figuratively called the fish.”[416] “Thus this symbol became,” says Dr. Northcote, “a sacred tessera, embodying with wonderful brevity and distinctness a
complete abridgment of the creed—a profession of faith, as it were, both in the two natures and unity of person, and in the redemptorial office, of Our Blessed Lord.”[417]