Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

2276 FISH IN MYTHS, SYMBOLS, DIET, MEDICINEwe are enjoined to eat fish, of which, it must be remembered,Aphrodite was a patron goddess.As regards Maunday Thm'sday, Robinson writes :" Oneof the annual Church disbursements up to the end of thesixteenth century was for herrings, 'red and white.' Let ushope that those who in pious observation of Christian ordinancesthus charged themselves with phosphorus were not aware thatthey were simply perpetuating the worship of Venus. ^Friday,again, is dies Veneris, and fish, her own symbol, is thereforeappropriate for the day."Of the making and explaining of symbols in early andmediaeval times there is no end. The monkish mind, perhapsowing to environment and fasting, found this a congenial andpleasant pursuit.Among the books on this subject, Mundtis Symbolicus,although, or perhaps because, published in 1681, attracts memost, not merely by its fulness of information and of quotationfrom classical. Patristic, and mediaeval literature—it is a goodcompetitor with Burton's Anatomy for Collectanea—but alsoby the number and naivete of its lemmata, or appropriateapophthegms, which appeal alike to one's ignorance and one'shumour. Of 737 pages of the volume before me 43 concernthemselves solely with fish, and provide delightful browsing.The object and practice of Picinelli, from whose // MondoSimholico Erath makes the Latin translation, is to examineinto the habits, real or alleged, of each fish, and deduce, as wasthe frequent custom of books in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, from its delinquencies or virtues a moral lesson orlessons.Thus the lemma, " Fallacis fnidus amoris," not inaptlysummarises the amatory character of the Sargus, as indicated* p. Robinson, International Fisheries Exhibition (London, 1883), Part III.p. 43." The representations of the Virgin in a canopy or vesica piscis aresupposed to have a specially Christian significance : if they have any at all,it is a very heathenish one."2 Mimdtis Symboliciis, a rare folio, of which two editions, 1681 and 1694,exist, is a translation of // Mondo Simbolico (written by Picinelli Filippi, andpublished at Milan 1653, 1669, and 1680), made by Aug. Erath. Cf. Tresordes livres rares et precieux, torn. v. (Dresde, 1859-69), p. 282. The Bodleianpossesses only the 1694 edition of Mundus Symbolicus, while apparently theBritish Museum lacks both.