FISHERMAN. — G. Christ said to the two fishermen Peter and Andrea: “Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men” (Mt. 4:19; Mk. 1:17; Lk. 5:10).
Tertullian teaches that we, “little fish, like our ‘fish’ IXØYC Jesus Christ, are born in water and are saved only by remaining in it” (De Baptismo, 1). It is evident that, by placing IXØYC in place of fish, the apologist intends the acrostic “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.” In the cemetery frescoes, the fisherman with the hook is represented in the gallery known as the “hypogeum of the Flavii” in Domitilla (Wilpert, Pitture, p. 242 ff. and pl. 7, 1), and in Callistus in the two cubicles A₂ and A₃; in the former the fisherman is near the miracle of the spring, in the latter near the Baptism of Christ and the healed paralytic (ibid., p. 243 and pls. 27, 2 and 3). The fisherman with the hook is represented in mosaic on the rear wall of the small mausoleum in 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, Città del Vaticano 1951, pp. 41–42, and II, pl. XIIa). The fisherman with the hook is carved on numerous Christian sarcophagi, such as three in the Lateran (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, p. 17, pls. 7, 1, 3 and 9, 3), on a fragment in S. Valentino (ibid. and pl. 10, 3), outside the Canova studio (ibid. and pl. 7, 4), in the Museo Capitolino (ibid. and pl. 10, 4–5), and on the sarcophagus of La-Gayolle, now in the parish church of Brignole in Provence.
The fisherman with the net. In the parable of the net, the Lord said that “the kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea and which gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, the fishermen drew it out and, sitting on the shore, selected the good ones into baskets and threw away the bad” (Mt. 13:47 ff.). In 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). S. Ambrose declares that men are fish caught by the fisherman Peter, who with his hook does not kill but gives life (Hevameron, V, 6, 7).
The fisherman symbolizes the minister who confers the Sacrament of Baptism, and the fish the neophyte, as is declared by s. Paolino di Nola, who, writing to the bishop Delfino who had baptized him, calls him Peter and says that he himself is the fish he had drawn 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. 5:11). Therefore G. Wilpert recognized Peter in the fisherman with the hook in the representations of the following Christian sarcophagi: that of La Gayolle (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, p. 156), that of the Museo delle Terme (ibid., pl. 62), and the fisherman with the net on the fragmentary one from Porto Torres in Sardinia, now in the Museo di Cagliari (ibid., pp. 17 and 158, pl. 141, 2), and in the two fragments in S. Sebastiano (v. CHIESA, pl. XC).