Tertullian teaches that we “little fish, made in the image of our fish IXOYC, Jesus Christ, are born in water and can be saved only by remaining in it” (De Baptismo, 1). It is clear that, by substituting IXOYC for “fish,” the apologist intends the figure of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior. In the catacomb frescoes, the fisherman with a hook is depicted in the gallery known as the “hypogeum of the Flavians” in Domitilla (Wilpert, Pitture, pp. 242 ff. and pl. 7, 1), and in the catacomb of Callisto in cubicles A4 and A5; in the former, the fisherman is near the miracle of the fountain, and in the latter near the Baptism of Christ and the healing of the paralytic (ibid., p. 243 and pl. 27, 2 and 3). The fisherman with a hook is represented in a mosaic on the back wall of the small mausoleum in the Vatican cemetery, later transformed into a Christian structure (B. M. Apolloni-Ghetti, A. Ferrara, 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 a hook is carved on numerous Christian sarcophagi, such as three Lateran sarcophagi (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, p. 17, pls. 7, 1, 3 and 9, 3), a fragment in S. Valentino (ibid. and pl. 10, 3), on the outside of the Canova studio (ibid. and pl. 7, 4), in the Capitoline Museum (ibid. and pl. 10, 4–5), and on the sarcophagus of La-Gavolle, now in the parish church of Brignole in Provence.
The fisherman with a net. In the parable of the net, the Lord said that “the kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea and gathering every kind of fish; when it was full, the fishermen drew it up and sat down on the beach, and they gathered the good into baskets but threw away the bad” (Mt. 13:47 ff.). In Christian sarcophagi, the fishing with a net is 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 who 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 symbolizes the neophyte, as declared by St. Paulinus of Nola, who, writing to 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, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be a fisher of men” (Lk. 5:10). For this reason, G. Wilpert has identified Peter as the fisherman with a hook in the representations on the following Christian sarcophagi: that of La Gayolle (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, p. 156), that of the Museum of the Baths (ibid., pl. 62), and the fisherman with a net on the fragmentary one from Porto Torres in Sardinia, now in the Museum of Cagliari (ibid., pp. 17 and 185, pl. 141, 2), and in the two fragments in S. Sebastiano (v. CHURCH, pl. XC).
Enrico Josi.