Sacred Cod

Not to be confused with Sacred Cow.

The Sacred Cod

A view from below of a carved, painted fish. The Sacred Cod in its "natural habitat". "Humble the subject and homely the design; yet this painted image bears on its finny front a majesty greater than the dignity that art can lend to graven gold or chiselled marble ..."
Year	1784 (1784)
Type	Woodcarving
Dimensions	4 ft 11 in (1.50 m) long
Weight	80 lb (36 kg)
Location	Massachusetts State House, Boston

The Sacred Cod is a four-foot, eleven-inch carved-wood effigy of an Atlantic codfish, "painted to the life", 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" (i.e. Massachu­setts, of which cod is officially the "historic and contin­u­ing symbol"). The Sacred Cod has gone through as many as three incarnations over three centuries: the first (if it really existed—​​the authoritative source calling it a "prehistoric creature of tradition") was lost in a 1747 fire, the second disappeared during the American Revolution, and the third is the one seen in the House today.

Sacred Cod is not a formal name but a nickname which appeared in 1895, soon after the carving was termed "the sacred emblem" by a House committee appointed "to investigate the significance of the emblem [which] has kept its place under all administrations, and has looked upon outgoing and incoming legislative assemblies, for more than one hundred years." Soon sacred cod was being used in reference to actual codfish as well, in recognition of the creature's role in building Massachu­setts' prosperity and influence since early colonial times.

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 landing in New Jersey. In 1968 it was taken briefly again, this time by students at the University of Massachu­setts Boston.

A fish figure is displayed in the State House Senate chamber as well—​​a brass casting (sometimes called the Holy Mackerel) above its central chandelier.

Significance

A "sacred cod" in its natural habitat

Seal of New Hamp­shire, 1776

Years before the statesmen of the period had decided to make public acknowl­edge­ment of the indebted­ness of the colony to the codfish, and had voted to adorn the assem­bly chamber with a wooden repre­sen­ta­tion thereof, indi­vid­uals and private cor­po­ra­tions were eager to pay tribute to the codfish, and vied with one another in their anxiety to make the recognition as conspicuous as possible.

A History of the Emblem of the Codfish in the Hall of the House of Representatives. Compiled by a Committee of the House. (1895)

Codfishing was the first industry practiced by Europeans in Massachu­setts, and it is said that the colony's first export was a cargo of fish. Thus the codfish has been an important New England symbol for centuries, its image appearing on many early coins, stamps, corporate and government seals, and insignia such as the early crest of the Salem Gazette. In 1743 a prominent Salem businessman built a mansion in which "the end of every stair in his spacious hall [displayed] a carved and gilded codfish."‍

In the late 1920s an "amusing"‍ codfish emblem appeared briefly, "totem-like", on Massachu­setts license plates.

History

Boston's Old State House, home of the second and (for 14 years) the third Sacred Cod

Poised high aloft the old hall of the Massa­chu­setts House of Repre­sen­ta­tives, riding serenely the sound waves of debate, unper­turbed by the ebb and flow of enact­ment and repeal or the desul­tory storms that vexed the nether depths of oratory, there has hung through immemo­rial years an ancient codfish, quaintly wrought in wood and painted to the life.

Humble the subject and homely the design; yet this painted image bears on its finny front a majesty greater than the dignity that art can lend to graven gold or chiselled marble. The sphere it fills is vaster than that through which its prototype careered with all the myriad tribes of the great deep. The lessons that may be learned of it are nobler than any to be drawn from what is beautiful; for this sedate and solitary fish is instinct with memories and proph­ecy, like an oracle. It swims symbolic in that wider sea whose confines are the limits set to the activities of human thought. It typifies to the citizens of the Common­wealth and of the world the founding of a State. It commem­o­rates Democracy. It celebrates the rise of free institutions. It emphasizes progress. It epitomizes Massachu­setts.

A History of the Emblem of the Codfish in the Hall of the House of Representatives. Compiled by a Committee of the House. (1895)

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The modern Massachu­setts State House, c. 1862

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

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The Sacred Cod above the House of Represen­ta­tives visitors' gallery (formerly the Ladies' Gallery)‍

What is now called the Sacred Cod has hung for three centuries—​​though with inter­rupt­ions, and in at least two (and possibly 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).

First Cod

Of the Cod's first incarnation, the Committee on History of the Emblem of the Codfish (appointed by the House in 1895) wrote:

There is a dim tradition that in the primitive House of Assembly of the Province there hung a codfish which was the gift of Judge Samuel Sewall [a judge at the Salem witch trials who] died in 1729. [But his] published remains make no mention of this tradi­tional fish, and it is difficult to imagine that a man of his loquacious verbosity would have omitted to chronicle his munificence.

Assuming it existed and 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."‍

Second Cod

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 wrote, the second Cod

disap­peared from the State House and was doubtless destroyed, for the closest histor­i­cal research fails to shed any light upon the time, manner or cause of its disap­pear­ance, or to disclose any refer­ence to it whatever. Mayhap some burly British trooper, quart­ered in the improvised barracks of the old State House [during the Siege of Boston], took umbrage at the spick and span elegance of the newly painted emblem of colonial inde­pend­ence and thrift. Such a one may have torn down the cherished symbol from the wall whence it had offered aid and comfort to the rebel patriots, with its assur­ance of the material wealth accessible to the embry­onic State, and, in spirit of vandalism so preva­lent at that age, used it to replenish his evening camp fire.

The Committee found "good reason to believe that this missing fish ... was carved by one John Welch, a Boston patriot".

Third Cod

The third Cod was installed in 1784, after Represen­ta­tive John Rowe—​​namesake of Rowes Wharf, and "a leading spirit in the stirring scenes that led up to the famous 'Boston Tea Party'"‍—​​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 under­writ­ten person­ally) is the one extant today.

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

Committee on History of the Emblem of the Codfish

On January 2, 1895—​​the House's last day of business before relocating to a new chamber in the same building—

[t]he question of taking with it the "represen­ta­tion of a codfish," which for more than a hundred years had never missed a "roll call," was brought up for consideration. It was, however, deemed wise to investigate the significance of the emblem before its removal ...

Accordingly, after "nearly two months of painstaking research and investigation" the three-member 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. (It is some­times said that the Cod is turned to face the political party currently in power, but no such tradi­tion was mentioned by the Committee.)‍

"Sacred Cod" nickname

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Pittsburgh Gazette Times,

April 26, 1912

The Committee's report refers at one point to "the sacred emblem", and while it was working an item appeared in the Boston Globe referring to the carving as "the Sacred Cod". Within a few years authors, journalists, and advertisers—​​even those far from New England—​​were using the term routinely. The phrase quickly came to refer not only to the wooden Cod in the State House but to flesh-and-blood cod from the sea as well, especially as an item of commerce. At the 1908 convention of the Retail Grocers of the United States, held in Boston, one delegate recalled

the first organized effort ... for the bettering of conditions in the grocery business. I refer to the Boston tea party. How could we get along without the Boston baked beans or the almost sacred cod?

Two years later the New Hampshire Board of Agriculture, bemoaning the counterfeiting of foodstuffs "famous for their distinctive properties or superior quality", warned that "haddock, hake, pollock, cusk, etc., are substituted indiscriminantly in place of the sacred cod."‍ In 1912 President William Howard Taft, in 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, emphasizing fishing's vital role in the colonial economy, wrote that "Puritan Massachu­setts derived her ideals from a sacred book; her wealth and power from the sacred cod."‍

The famous doggerel poking fun at Boston's Brahmins—

And this is good old Boston, / The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots / And the Cabots talk only to God.

—paraphrases an earlier poem now little remembered:

Here's to old Massachusetts / The home of the sacred cod,
Where the Adamses vote for Douglas, / And the Cabots walk with God.

"Cod-napping" and other incidents

Harvard Lampoon

The Holy Mackerel above the chande­lier in the Massachu­setts Senate chamber

In an incident now referred to as "The Cod-napping" by State House officials, on April 26, 1933 members of the Harvard Lampoon (the Harvard College humor magazine) entered the House of Represen­ta­tives gallery, cut down the Cod, and carried it away in an unusually large florist's box equipped with protruding decoy lilies.

External image
News photo (Leslie Jones, Boston Herald-Traveler, 1933) showing Sacred Cod with Charles Apted, who had recov­ered it from "Codnappers"

According to The New York Times—​​which reckoned the Cod's value to be "something less than nothing. As an object of art it is worthless"—​​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 upon them." (Nonetheless, at the appointed time "[House] Speaker Saltonstall looked mournfully at the vacant place and then banged the gavel. The first act of the House fitted the occasion. It passed to be engrossed a bill allowing the cold storage of swordfish.")‍

Meanwhile, 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."‍ "Indignant" 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 mysterious telephone call sent Harvard official Charles R. Apted to West Roxbury where two men, with collars up and hatbrims 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 [15 cm] higher [than] the reach of any individ­ual. A stepladder will be needed to remove it in the future."‍

University of Massachusetts

Using a stepladder, on November 14, 1968 students at the new Boston campus of the University of Massachu­setts took the Sacred Cod in protest of perceived legislative indifference to their school. ("Sacred Cod gone from House perch", the Boston Globe reported.)‍ It was found days later in a little-used State House hallway.

Greyhound replacement proposal

In 1937 Representative John B. Wenzler offered a facetious proposal "that the sacred cod be immediately removed [from the House chamber], and a greyhound substituted in its place, as the 1937 Legislature has shown itself to be completely under the power of the dog track operators."‍ Apted (whom the Boston Globe called "the superintendent of caretakers at Harvard and Harvard Cop No. 1") wrote to Wenzler: "As one who is, and was, very much interested in preserving [the Cod's] dignity, and furthermore having held it in my arms ... I most respectfully ask a favor, that is: If the greyhound be substituted, that I be presented with the cod in order that it may be preserved for the future of young Americans."‍

World War II

After the House of Representatives' move to its new chamber in 1895 the Massachu­setts Senate, which took over the old House chamber, incorporated a fish figure (often dubbed the Holy Mackerel)‍ into the chandelier there, as a reminder of the Sacred Cod the Representatives had taken with them. When officials of the World War II aluminum-for-defense drive—​​misinformed that the Sacred Cod was aluminum—​​asked that it be donated to the war effort, House Speaker Christian Herter explained that the Cod had been created decades before aluminum's discovery, and suggested that the Holy Mackerel be considered for sacrifice instead.