fish

One of the symbols employed by the first Christians, who had their seals engraved with a dove or a fish, as mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, though it was a familiar sign to Christians long before his time, going back as far as the first decades of the 2nd century, as found in early frescoes, rings, seals, gilded glasses, etc. It is a symbol for the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, but also as the Greek acrostic Ichtys, i.e. ‘Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter’ (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ), meaning ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’, and which was intended as a protest against the pagan apotheosis of the emperors, who coined themselves as Sons of God. In his De Baptismo, the 2nd century ecclesiastical writer Tertullian refers to Christians as little fishes, in the well-known passage ‘we, little fishes, after the image of our Ichthys, Jesus Christ, are born in the water’. After the 4th century, the symbolism of the fish gradually disappeared, though representations of fishes may sometimes still be found on ornamental baptismal fonts and cups, and refer to the water of the Baptism.