The Sacred Cod is a four-foot-eleven-inch (150 cm) 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, installed in 1784, is the one seen in the House chamber today.
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", said an 1895 paean by Massachusetts legislators.[C]
A "sacred cod" in its natural habitat
The modern Massachusetts State House (seen here c. 1862), where the third Sacred Cod hangs in the Representatives chamber.
Etching (Ballou's Pictorial, 1856) of the old Representatives (now Senate) chamber, with the Sacred Cod near upper right
The Atlantic cod is a fish of the family Gadidae, widely consumed by humans. It is also commercially known as cod or codling. Dry cod may be prepared as unsalted stockfish, and as cured salt cod or clipfish.
Image: Atlantic Cod, Atlantischer Kabeljau (Gadus morhua)
Image: Atlantic cod
Atlantic cod are demersal fish—they prefer sea bottoms with coarse sediments.
Spawning female in captivity
