Sacred Cod of Massachusetts

Sacred Cod Of Massachusetts

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 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 that species' 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.