FISHERMAN. - Christ said to the two fishermen Peter and Andrew: "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men" (Mt. 4:19; Mk. 1:17; Lk. 5:10).
Tertullian teaches that we "little fishes, like the 'fish' IXØYC our Jesus Christ, are born in the water and are saved only by remaining in it" (De Baptismo, 1). It is evident that, by putting IXØYC in place of fish, the apologist means the acrostic "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior." In the cemetery frescoes the fisherman with the hook is represented in the gallery called "of the hypogeum of the Flavii" in Domitilla (Wilpert, Pitture, p. 242 ff. and pl. 7, 1), in Callistus in the two cubicula A₂ and A₃; in the latter the fisherman is near the miracle of the spring, in the former near the Baptism of Christ and the healed paralytic (ibid., p. 243 and pl. 27, 2 and 3). The fisherman with the hook is represented in mosaic on the back wall of the small mausoleum of the Vatican necropolis, later transformed into a Christian one (B. M. Apolloni-Ghetti, A. Ferrua, E. Josi, E. Kirschbaum, Esplorazioni sotto la Confessione di S. Pietro in Vaticano, I, Vatican City 1951, pp. 41-42, and II, pl. XIIa). The fisherman with the hook is carved on numerous Christian sarcophagi, as in three Lateran ones (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, p. 17, pls. 7, 1, 3 and 9, 3), in a fragment in S. Valentino (ibid. and pl. 10, 3), on the exterior of the Canova studio (ibid. and pl. 7, 4), in the Capitoline Museum (ibid. and pl. 10, 4-5), and in the sarcophagus of La-Gayolle, now in the parish church of Brignole in Provence.
The fisherman with the net. The Lord in the parable of the net said that "the kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea and which has caught every kind of fish; when it was full the fishermen pulled it out and, sitting down on the shore, they chose the good ones into baskets and threw away the bad" (Mt. 13:47 ff.). On Christian sarcophagi fishing with the net was represented on the sarcophagus of S. Maria Antiqua (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, p. 17, pl. 3, 1) and on a sarcophagus lid in the Villa Doria-Pamphili in Rome (ibid., pl. 10, 1). St. Ambrose declares that men are fish that are caught by the fisherman Peter who with his hook does not kill, but gives life (Hexaemeron, V, 6, 7).
The fisherman symbolizes the minister who confers the Sacrament of Baptism and the fish the neophyte, as is declared by St. Paulinus of Nola, who, writing to the bishop Delphinus who had baptized him, calls him Peter and says that he is the fish drawn by him from the deep and bitter waves of this age (Ep. 20: PL 61, 249 ff.). Indeed the Lord said to Peter "fear not, from now on you will be a fisher of men" (Lk. 5:11). Therefore G. Wilpert has recognized Peter as the fisherman with the hook in the representations of the following Christian sarcophagi: in that of La Gayolle (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, p. 156), in that of the Museo delle Terme (ibid., pl. 62) and the fisherman with the net in the fragmentary one of Porto Torres in Sardinia, now in the Museum of Cagliari (ibid., pp. 17 and 158, pl. 141, 2) and in the two fragments in S. Sebastiano (v. CHIESA, pl. XC).