The Anchor
An early Christian sign of hope, from Hebrews 6:19, which calls hope an anchor of the soul, sure and firm.
What the Anchor means
The anchor stands for hope. The Letter to the Hebrews describes the hope set before us as "an anchor of the soul, sure and firm" (Hebrews 6:19). Because the anchor was already a familiar sign of safety at sea, Christians adopted it as a sign of hope in the life to come.
It is one of the oldest Christian symbols. An inscription in the catacomb of Domitilla in Rome that includes an anchor dates to the end of the first century, and about seventy examples from before the fourth century have been found in the catacomb of Priscilla alone. Its crossbar let it serve as a veiled cross, and some catacomb anchors have two fish hanging from the arms, which the Catholic Encyclopedia reads as symbolic pictures of the Crucifixion, with the fish standing for Christ.
The anchor became rare by the middle of the third century and had disappeared from Christian monuments by the early fourth. In later art it is the emblem of St. Clement, who according to tradition was martyred by drowning with an anchor tied to him.
