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1626 Vox Piscis and the strange case of the ichthiobibliophage

At the markets in the university town of Cambridge, England, the air was full of the sounds of expressions of amazement and wonder when a fishmonger discovered something remarkable while cleaning a cod fish caught off the coast of King's Lynn.

A certain scholar and theologian by the name of Dr Joseph Mede (or Mead), a fellow of Christ's College Cambridge, was taking a stroll through the markets as it was perhaps his custom to do on a Tuesday. Hearing the hubbub, he hurried over to see what the fuss was all about. His scholastic knowledge was particularly welcome amongst the many illiterate market stallholders and shoppers, for Mede could read and identify the tiny sextodecimo book that had just been cut from the belly of the cod fish.

The good doctor took a knife and carefully separated pages from each other. The fish’s digestive organs had completely consumed the pasteboard cover and many of the pages, converting them into a ‘gelly’. However, ‘the middle parts’ were reasonably intact and Mede was able to decipher the table of contents and the titles of two items, Praeparatio Crucem or Of the Preparation to the Cross and A Lettre which was Written to the Faithfull Followers of Christes Gospell.  

Only an hour or two later, Benjamin Prime, who bore the title ‘the Bachelor's Bedell’, carried this unusual find to John Gostlin, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, and Master of Gonville and Caius College. Gostlin, writes a chronicler, ‘tooke speciall notice thereof’ and began an investigation into ‘the truth of the particulars’ – a truth that still eludes us today.

Half-dissolved and covered in gelatinous matter and slime, exuding a dreaful stench, the canvas-wrapped little volume (like the ichthiobibliophage, or ‘book-eating fish’ itself) became a celebrated part of literary history, the following year republished as Vox Pisces, or The Book-Fish, contayning three treatises which were found in the belly of a cod-fish in Cambridge market, on Midsummer Eve last.

In a letter now in the British Museum, written by Mr Mede to Sir M Stuteville, the writer says: 

I saw all with mine own eyes, the fish, the maw, the piece of sail-cloth, the book, and observed all I have written; only I saw not the opening of the fish, which not many did, being upon the fish-woman's stall in the market, who first cut off his head, to which the maw hanging, and seeming much stuffed with somewhat, it was searched, and all found as aforesaid. He that had had his nose as near as I yester morning, would have been persuaded there was no imposture here without witness. The fish came from Lynn.

Among the Cambridge scholars, and academics and clerics throughout the length and breadth of England, the Book-Fish, or rather the Fish-Book as we might better call it, aroused huge attention. One contemporary Cambridge wit wrote:

If fishes thus do bring us books, then we May hope to equal Bodlyes library.

(The Bodleian, at Cambridge’s rival, Oxford, was, and still is, one of the world’s great libraries.) Another said that ‘it might be found in the Code, but could never be entred into the Digest’.

Much of Vox Piscis is still a mystery. When the book was reprinted in 1627 amidst much attention from academics and clergy, the preface was written by Thomas Goad, a Cambridge graduate and cleric who held the post of president chaplain to Archbishop George Abbot. Goad was also the rector of the Suffolk parish of Hadleigh and a canon in Winchester Cathedral. Goad’s preface attributed the writings to the early English reformer John Frith, who was burned at the stake for his faith on July 4, 1533. Frith’s great crime had been to distribute contraband Protestant books.

The book, Goad said, had been ‘a long time drowned in the Deepes of Lyn', but now, by the design of divine providence, were `brought backe againe to land', by `a strange living vessell’ to refresh ‘thirsty soules’ once more.

From detailed detective work undertaken by modern bibliographers, who examined the typefaces and could tell exactly which printing presses had been used in the book’s publication, we know that some, but possibly not all, of the book was indeed written by Frith. This he did while a prisoner in 1532, convicted of heresy during the period of immense religious social and religious upheaval in Europe – the Protestant Reformation.

John Frith was a follower of Protestant reformers Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus. In later life he was a close associate of William Tyndale, the first person to translate the Bible into English (seen as a radical and even heretical act by the Catholic church in those days).

Like the other protagonists of our fish’s take, as a young man Frith resided in Cambridge where he and firebrand mates such as Hugh Latimer, John Bradford and Thomas Bilney gathered informally at a pub known as the White Horse, popularly called ‘Little Germany’ because of the German Protestantism exciting the young intellectuals of the day, and there they drank a pint or two and discussed the works of Luther and other contemporary reformers of the Catholic church. In other words, they were a bunch of student radicals, and, as is the wont of passionate progressives in all countries and all times, they drew the attention of the authorities, and they were labelled heretics.

For his student activism, Frith, like his comrades, was thrown into prison. Not any ordinary prison. Their underground hell-hole, deep within not Cambridge but Oxford University, was a cellar. But not just any cellar. Frith and his colleagues were confined in a cellar used for the salting of fish – cod fish, no doubt, being chief amongst them.

This much we do know, although we shall probably never know how the reformer’s writings were found inside a cod almost a century after his death.

A similar tale

St Kentigern (or Mungo) of Glasgow, and the salmon

(c.510 - c.600 CE) The patron saint (with his mother) of Glasgow was the apostle of north-west England and south-east Scotland and  traditionally founder of Glasgow Cathedral. In art he is pictured with his episcopal cross in one hand and in the other a salmon and ring. This latter comes from the following legend: Queen Langoureth had been false to her husband, King Roderich, and had given her lover a ring. The king came upon the lover at night and stole the ring, threw it in Glasgow’s Clyde River, and asked his queen for it. The queen, upset, asked Kentigern to help. He prayed and went to the river and caught a salmon with the ring in its mouth. He gave it to the queen and brought peace to the royal couple.

The City of Glasgow arms have the salmon with the ring in its mouth; some versions also have an oak tree with a bell hanging from a branch, and a bird at the top.

The tree that never grew,
The bird that never flew,
The fish that never swam,
The bell that never rang.

The oak and the bell refer to the story that St Kentigern hung a bell upon an oak to call people to worship.

Also known as St Mungo (Mungho [dearest] was the name St Servan (St Serf), his first preceptor, called him). Once, he was in a hurry to light candles for vigils; his enemies had put out all the fire in the monastery. He took a green hazel bough, blessed it, blew on it, and made a great flame.

Evans, Ivor H, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988 et al

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