Benutzer:Altkatholik62/Sacred Cod

Vorlage:Good Article Vorlage:Infobox artwork The Sacred Cod is a four-foot, eleven-inch painted effigy of a codfish hanging in the House of Representatives chamber of Boston's Massachusetts State House—"a memorial of the importance of the Cod-Fishery to the welfare of this Commonwealth."

There have been three incarnations of the Sacred Cod, over three centuries. The first was lost in a 1747 fire, the second disappeared during the American Revolution, and the third is the one on display today.

In 1933 the Sacred Cod was briefly "Cod-napped" by editors of the Harvard Lampoon, prompting police to drag the Charles River and search an airplane in New Jersey. In 1968 it was taken again in a protest by students at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The Massachusetts Senate chamber also displays a fish symbol—a brass casting (known as the Holy Mackerel) incorporated into its central chandelier.

Background

The Atlantic cod

a round seal with an upright cod on the left, a bundle of five arrows in the center, and a tree on the right.

The 1776 state Seal of New Hampshire

Cod has a long history in Massachusetts and is entwined with many of the state's early events and people. Fishing for the Atlantic cod was the first industry practiced by Europeans in Massachusetts, and the first export from Massachusetts was a cargo of fish.

Representations of codfish have been used for symbolic purposes in New England for centuries. Cod were represented on many early American coins as well as a two-penny stamp for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Images of cod have represented government and organizations across New England, appearing on the Plymouth Land Company seal, the 1776 state Seal of New Hampshire, and the early crest of the Salem Gazette. The cod was also incorporated into countless weathervanes up and down the New England coast and it appeared briefly on the Massachusetts license plate. In 1974 the cod was designated Massachusetts' state fish.

History

The Council Chamber in the Old State House, where the Sacred Cod once hung.

The modern Massachusetts State House, ca. 1862

Etching, from Ballou's Pictorial (1856), of the old Rep­re­sent­a­tives (now Senate) chamber, with the Sacred Cod near upper right.

The Sacred Cod suspended above the rear balcony of the Rep­re­sent­a­tives chamber.

The Holy Mackerel can be seen above the lights in the chandelier in the Massachusetts Senate.

What is now called the Sacred Cod has hung for three centuries (though with interruptions, and in three successive incarnations) in the chamber of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (or its predecessor, the House of Assembly of the Province of Massachusetts Bay) since the early 18th century.

Of the Sacred Cod's first incarnation, the Committee on History of the Emblem of the Codfish (appointed by the House in 1895) wrote: Vorlage:Quote Whatever its origin, when the State House burned in 1747 "this prehistoric creature of tradition ... doubtless went up in a whirl of smoke which still clouds its history to the peering vision of the antiquarian."

A second Cod appeared sometime between 1748 (when the State House was rebuilt) and 1773 (when Thomas Crafts, Jr. billed the Province of Massachusetts Bay, "To painting Codfish, 15 shillings"). But within a few years, the Committee said, the second Cod Vorlage:Quote The Committee found "good reason to believe that this missing fish ... was carved by one John Welch, a Boston patriot".

The third Sacred Cod was installed in 1784, after Representative John Rowe asked leave "to hang up the representation of a Cod Fish in the room where the House sit, as a memorial of the importance of the Cod-Fishery to the welfare of this Commonwealth, as had been usual formerly ... And so the emblem was suspended" in the old State House once again, and this Cod (which Rowe may have paid for personally) is the one extant today.

In 1798 it was moved to the Representatives chamber in the new State House, where it originally hung "directly over the Speaker's desk, but in the [1850s] it was shifted to the rear of the chamber".

On January 2, 1895—the House's last day of business before relocating to a new chamber in the same building— Vorlage:Quote Accordingly, "after nearly two months of painstaking research and investigation" the Committee on History of the Emblem of the Codfish submitted its report, and after debating "at length" the House ordered "immediate removal of the ancient 'representation of a codfish' from its present position in the chamber recently vacated by the House, and to cause it to be suspended ... in this chamber..."

The Sacred Cod was wrapped in an American flag, placed on a bier, and—escorted by the Sergeant-at-Arms—borne by House messengers to the new House chamber, where the assembled Representatives rose in applause. After repainting by Walter M. Brackett, it was hung where it remains today: "between the two sets of central columns, and under the names 'Motley,' and 'Parkman'," facing left as viewed from the floor of the chamber.Vorlage:Citation needed (It is sometimes said the Cod is turned to face the political party currently in power, but no such tradition was mentioned by the Committee.)

"Cod-napping" and other incidents

In an incident now referred to as "The Cod-napping" even by State House officials, on April 26, 1933 members of the Harvard Lampoon (the Harvard College humor magazine) entered the House gallery, cut down the Cod, and carried it away hidden in an unusually large flower box.

According to the New York Times, Massachusetts officials were "shocked into a condition bordering on speechlessness" by the theft, "some legislators holding that it would be sacrilege to transact business without the emblem of the Commonwealth looking down on them", while Boston mayor James Michael Curley received a telephone message: "Tell the Mayor that when the Sacred Cod is returned it will be wrapped in the municipal flag, now flying in front of City Hall. Try and catch us when we cop the flag. Lafayette Mulligan, we are here." Police went so far as to drag the Charles River and, learning that a Lampoon editor had flown to New Jersey, had the plane searched on landing.

Eventually a tip sent Harvard College police chief Charles R. Apted to West Roxbury where two men, with collars up and hats pulled down, emerged from a car to hand over the Cod (not wrapped in any flag) before speeding away. In the early hours of April 29, after repairs to three damaged fins, the Sacred Cod was re-hung in the House chamber, "six inches higher [than] the reach of any individual. A stepladder will be needed to remove it in the future."

Armed with a stepladder, on November 14, 1968 students at the new Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts took the Sacred Cod in protest of the site selected for their campus. It was found three days later in a little-used State House hallway.

When the World War II aluminum-for-defense drive, mistakenly informed that the Cod was aluminum, asked that it be donated to the war effort, House Speaker Christian Herter explained that the Cod was created decades before aluminum's discovery, and suggested that a brass fish figure incorporated into the chandelier of the Senate chamber (known as the "Holy Mackerel") be considered for sacrifice instead.

"Sacred Cod" nickname

The Committee's report refers only to "the sacred emblem", but while it was working an item appeared in the Boston Globe referring to the carving as "the Sacred Cod", and by the time of the 1933 "Cod-napping" newspapers used the term routinely.

The phrase quickly came to refer to actual codfish as well, especially codfish as a commercial product. At the 1908 convention of the Retail Grocers of the United States, held in Boston, one delegate recalled Vorlage:Quote Two years later the New Hampshire Board of Agriculture, discussing deceptive labeling of foodstuffs, warned that "haddock, hake, pollock, cusk, etc., are substituted indiscriminantly in place of the sacred cod." In 1912 President William Howard Taft, speaking from Boston, addressed a journalists' banquet in New York City "by long distance telephone from the home of the sacred cod". And in 1922 historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that "Puritan Massachusetts derived her ideals from a sacred book; her wealth and power from the sacred cod."

External links

• Boston Public Library. Photo, 1933