CHAPTER III.

On the Religious Veneration of, and Superstitious Sacredness connected with Fish and Fishing.

ONE of the most curious features in the history of writings, ancient and modern, on the nature of fish and of fishing, is the vast space they occupy in connection with theology, and with the incoherent and superstitious ideas or notions, which have floated in the minds of the human family, relative to the finny tribes, from the earliest records of their existence till the present hour. A thick and impenetrable cloud of theological awe and symbolical mysticism envelopes the entire subject.

In Egypt the eel was devoted to religious worship. These fish were ornamented with silver, gold, and precious stones, and priests daily offered them the entrails of animals served up with cheese.1 In Boeotia, eels were immolated to the gods.

The Oxyrinchus, the Phagrus, and the Lepidotus, were considered sacred fish, and it was unlawful to touch them.

In the collection of Nineveh Inscriptions now in the British Museum, we find a large slab, with the representation of a Fish-Deity. It is one of the most curious Plutarch, De Soleit. Elian, De

Apallodor. in Chron.

Piscibus.

and perfect of figures among the wonderful relics of a

forgotten people.

We are told that among the Greeks, though many of the more refined epicures of this nation were partial to the eating of the Loach; yet the majority of the inhabitants totally refrained from its use, lest the Syrian goddess, the protectress of this fish, should gnaw their legs, cover their bodies with ulcers, and devour their livers.2

The Romans offered up the Tunny fish as a sacrifice to the god Neptune, in order that he might deign to prevent the Xiphias fish from tearing the nets of the fishermen, and to forbid the too officious dolphins from assisting in their escape.3

Martial tells us of fish which belonged to a sacred tank, and which were too holy to be handled. Elian likewise mentions fish kept in a pond, and dedicated to Jupiter Militant. Varro tells us of some Lydian fish which were considered invested with a remarkable degree of sacredness. In the History of Lydia by Polycharmus, we are told that there was a grave on the sea shore, consecrated to Apollo, where a priest usually sat to whom those who had any important matter in hand would bring two spits, to each of which were suspended ten pieces of meat, as consulting bait, and throwing them into the gulf, be desired by him to make note of what followed. As the water came rushing in, the observer saw, on the back of

2 Plutarch, De Supersti. Athen. i, 6.

3 Nonnius, Icth. p. 9.

the approaching waves, "an immense number of fish, enough to frighten any one, from their multitude and size." When the inquirer, on the bidding of the priest, had carefully recounted to him the catalogue of the fish he had seen, the other was illumined to take up his parable, and to make known to his client his future destiny.

The spirit for symbolizing all the objects of nature became, in the early history of the Church, very powerful. Material objects of all kinds, animate and inanimate, were invested by religious visionaries with symbolical meanings. Fish formed an important item in this idle worship and veneration.

In the lives of the Christian hermits of the East, we have many of the illustrations between theology and the finny tribes, besides that of Saint Anthony. The residences or cells of these personages were generally hewn out of the solid rock, and almost invariably situated near some clear and running brook or rivulet. This limpid water was a necessary article of their existence. They were in the habit of sitting for hours together musing by the sparkling and murmuring streams; and the small fish in them became the daily companions of their solitude. The hermits about mount Nitre, we are told, used to feed the fish with crumbs of bread. It was in this way that the various stories, recorded in the lives of the solitaries, arose about the sympathetic affections manifested, by the inhabitants of the waters towards the persons and movements of their friendly benefactors. We are told that one

Dorathus was in the habit of visiting a neighbouring stream, and that the fish at last became so well acquainted with his person, that they allowed themselves to be stroked down the back, and even to be taken out of the water by him at any time. And the story goes on to say, that when the holy man performed any acts of devotion, his finny friends held up their heads, and seemed quite sensible of the general purport or object of his worship.1 Nearly the same thing is told in the life of St. Macaise, who lived in a cell, on the high parts of the Nile. The fish, in one of the small brooks in the vicinity of his abode, were observed to display various gesticulations, whenever he sang his daily hymns.5

In the early periods of the Church, and during the greater portion of the scholastic ages, fish were considered the emblems of purity, and free from the general curse on mankind; the earth only, not the sea, being denounced for man's transgression. There were, at different periods in the history of ecclesiastical disputations several works on this subject, which still remain, however, only in manuscript, chiefly in the large libraries of the continent, particularly in Spain and Portugal. There are some glimpses of this notion of finny purity to be obtained in some of the Catholic books of discipline; but the theory is not very prominently developed, nor the abstract arguments on which it is based, very distinctly stated. As

4 Les Vies des SS. Pères, Amsterdam, folio, 1704.
5 Vies des Pères d'Orient, Bruxelles, 1838.

far as we have been able to penetrate this curious discussion, we find that the proofs of this theory are of two kinds a priori, and a posteriori stamp. The main proposition of the first class of a priori arguments was, that Fish did not stand in the order of creation in any considerable relation to man, as a social and domestic being;-they could not influence his temporal destiny or happiness in any perceptible degree. They inhabited altogether a different element from man; and could in no way come in contact with either his virtues or vices, his passions or desires. The whole of animated nature was placed in a different position; a great portion of animal existence was in direct hostility to human life and health; and was ever assuming that offensive attitude, calculated to remind our race of their dependant and fallen condition, by the unextinguishable and mortal enmity which subsisted between it and them. One of the essential conditions of man's social and intellectual progress, imposed upon him by the very necessities of his being, was, the utter and complete extinction of a great portion of animated life. This was one of the first and onerous duties he had to perform,— the primary obstacle which he had to remove from his path of progression. The general argument on this point is carried out by some writers with great ingenuity and dexterity. Indeed, any reader, to whom abstract speculations of any kind are in some degree familiar, will readily perceive that the subject opens up a wide