A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a Dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s, the "peace sign", as it is known today (also known as "peace and love"), was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a superposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814) (aka "Peasant Before the Firing Squad").
The V hand signal and the peace flag also became international peace symbols.
Olive branch
Classical antiquity
The use of the olive branch as a symbol of peace in Western civilization dates at least to 5th century BC Greece. The olive branch, which the Greeks believed represented plenty and drove away evil spirits,Rupert Graves, The Greek Myths, Harmonsdsworth: Penguin Books, 1962, Section 53.7 was one of the attributes of Eirene, the Greek goddess of peace. Eirene (whom the Romans called Pax), appeared on Roman Imperial coins with an olive branch.
The Roman poet Virgil (70–10 BC) associated "the plump olive"Virgil, Georgics, 2, pp.425ff (trans. Fairclough) with Pax and he used the olive branch as a symbol of peace in his Aeneid:
High on the stern Aeneas his stand, And held a branch of olive in his hand, While thus he spoke: "The Phrygians' arms you see, Expelled from Troy, provoked in Italy By Latian foes, with war unjustly made; At first affianced, and at last betrayed. This message bear: The Trojans and their chief Bring holy peace, and beg the king's relief."
The Romans believed there was an intimate relationship between war and peace. Mars, the god of war, had another aspect, Mars Pacifer, Mars the bringer of Peace, who is shown on coins of the later Roman Empire bearing an olive branch.Ragnar Hedlund, "Coinage and authority in the Roman empire, c. AD 260–295", Studia Numismatica Upsaliensia, 5, University of Uppsala, 2008 Appian describes the use of the olive-branch as a gesture of peace by the enemies of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus in the Numantine War and by Hasdrubal of Carthage.Nathaniel Hooke, The Roman history: From the Building of Rome to the Ruin of the Commonwealth, London: J. Rivington, 1823
Later representations
Poets of the 17th century associated the olive branch with peace. A Charles I gold coin of 1644 shows the monarch with sword and olive branch. Throughout the 18th century, English coins show Britannia with a spear and olive branch.
The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, contains an allegorical painting by James Thornhill, Peace and Liberty Triumphing Over Tyranny (1708–1716), depicting King William III and Queen Mary (who had enacted the English Bill of Rights) enthroned in heaven with the Virtues behind them. Peace, with her doves and lambs, hands an olive branch to William, who in turn hands the cap of liberty to Europe, where absolute monarchy prevails. Below William is the defeated French king, Louis XIV.
In January 1775, the frontispiece of the London Magazine published an engraving of Peace descending on a cloud from the Temple of Commerce, bringing an olive branch to America and Britannia. In July that year, the American Continental Congress adopted the "Olive Branch Petition" in the hope of avoiding a full-blown war with Great Britain.
On the Great Seal of the United States (1782), the olive branch denotes peace, as explained by Charles Thomson, Secretary to Congress: "The Olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace & war which is exclusively vested in Congress."
Dove and olive branch
Christianity
The use of a dove as a symbol of peace originated with early Christians, who portrayed baptism accompanied by a dove, often on their sepulchres.James Elmes, A General and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Fine Arts, London : Thomas Tegg, 1826
The New Testament compared the dove to the Spirit of God that descended on Jesus during his baptism. Christians saw similarities between baptism and Noah's Flood. The First Epistle of Peter (composed around the end of the first century ADThe Early Christian World, Volume 1, p. 148, Philip Esler) said that the Flood, which brought salvation through water, prefigured baptism. Tertullian () compared the dove, who "announced to the world the assuagement of divine wrath, when she had been sent out of the ark and returned with the olive branch, to the Holy Spirit who descends in baptism in the form of a dove that brings the peace of God, sent out from the heavens".
At first the dove represented the subjective personal experience of peace, the peace of the soul, and in the earliest Christian art it accompanies representations of baptism. By the end of the second century (for example in the writing of Tertullian)" ... praeco columba terris adnuntiavit dimissa ex arca et cum olea reversa quod signum etiam ad nationes pacis praetenditur eadem dispositione spiritalis effectus terrae ... " Tertullian, On Baptism, Chapter 8 it also represented social and political peace, "peace unto the nations", and from the third century it began to appear in depictions of conflict, such as Noah and the Ark, Daniel and the lions, the three young men in the furnace, and Susannah and the Elders.Graydon D. Snyder, Ante Pacem: archaeological evidence of church life before Constantine, Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003
The dove appears in Christian inscriptions in the Roman catacombs, sometimes accompanied by the words (Latin for ). For example, in the Catacomb of Callixtus, a dove and branch are drawn next to a Latin inscription , meaning In another example, a shallow relief sculpture shows a dove with a branch flying to a figure marked in Greek as (, or ). The symbol has also been found in the Christian catacombs of Sousse, Tunisia (ancient Carthage), which date from the end of the first century AD.
The Christian symbolism of the olive branch, invariably carried by the dove, derives from Greek usage and the story of Noah in the Hebrew Bible.Graydon F. Snyder, "The Interaction of Jews with Non-Jews in Rome", in Karl P. Donfreid and Peter Richardson, Judaism and Christianity in Early Rome, Grand Rapids: Wm B. Ferdman, 1998 The story of Noah ends with a dove bringing a freshly plucked olive leaf (Hebrew: ), a sign of life after the Flood and of God's bringing Noah, his family and the animals to land. Rabbinic literature interpreted the olive leaf as "the young shoots of the Land of Israel" Genesis Rabbah 33:6' or the dove's preference for bitter food in God's service, rather than sweet food in the service of men. Neither represented peace in Jewish thought, but the dove and olive branch acquired that meaning in Christianity.
Before the Peace of Constantine (313 AD), in which Rome ceased its persecution of Christians following Constantine's conversion, Noah was normally shown in an attitude of prayer, a dove flying toward him or alighting on his outstretched hand. According to Graydon Snyder, "The Noah story afforded the early Christian community an opportunity to express piety and peace in a vessel that withstood the threatening environment" of Roman persecution. According to Ludwig Budde and Pierre Prigent, the dove referred to the descending of the Holy Spirit rather than the peace associated with Noah. After the Peace of Constantine, when persecution ceased, Noah appeared less frequently in Christian art.
In the fourth century, St. Jerome's Latin Bible translated the Hebrew in the Noah story as , (), possibly reflecting the Christian equivalence between the peace brought by baptism and peace brought by the ending of the Flood. By the fifth century, St Augustine confirmed the Christian adoption of the olive branch as a symbol of peace, writing that, "perpetual peace is indicated by the olive branch (Latin: ) that the dove brought with it when it returned to the ark."
Medieval illuminated manuscripts, such as the Holkham Bible, showed the dove returning to Noah with a branch. Wycliffe's Bible, which translated the Vulgate into English in the 14th century, uses "" ("a branch of olive tree with green leaves") in Gen. 8:11. In the Middle Ages, some Jewish manuscripts, which were often illustrated by Christians, also showed Noah's dove with an olive branch, for example, the Golden Haggadah (about 1420).Narkiss, Bezalel, The Golden Haggadah, London: The British Library, 1997, p. 22British Library, Online Gallery, Sacred Texts. The Golden Haggadah, p.3, lower left hand panel.
English Bibles from the 17th-century King James Bible onwards, which translated the story of Noah direct from Hebrew, render the Hebrew as rather than , but by this time the association of the dove with an olive branch as a symbol of peace in the story of Noah was firmly established.
Secular representations
Late 15th century In the late 15th century, a dove with an olive branch was used on the seal of , the Florentine committee known as The Ten of Liberty and Peace,Mattingly, Gareth, "Michiavelli", in Plumb, J.H., The Horizon Book of the Renaissance, London: Collins, 1961 whose secretary was Machiavelli; it bore the motto (Peace and the Defence of Liberty). Late 18th century In 18th-century America, a £2 note of North Carolina (1771) depicted the dove and olive with a motto meaning: "Peace restored". Georgia's $40 note of 1778 portrayed the dove and olive and a hand holding a dagger, with a motto meaning "Either war or peace, prepared for both." Early 19th century The Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace, also known as The London Peace Society, formed on a Quaker initiative in 1816, used the symbol of a dove and olive branch. Early 20th century A German war loan poster of 1917 showed the head of an eagle over a dove of peace in flight, with the text, "Subscribe to the War Loan". Mid-20th century Picasso's lithograph, La Colombe (The Dove), a traditional, realistic picture of a pigeon, without an olive branch, was chosen as the emblem for the World Peace Council in Paris in April 1949. The dove became a symbol for the peace movement and the ideals of the Communist Party and was used in Communist demonstrations of the period. At the 1950 World Peace Council in Sheffield, Picasso said that his father had taught him to paint doves, concluding, "I stand for life against death; I stand for peace against war." At the 1952 World Peace Council in Berlin, Picasso's Dove was depicted in a banner above the stage. The dove symbol was used extensively in the post-war peace movement. Anti-communists had their own take on the peace dove: the group distributed posters titled (), showing the peace dove metamorphosing into a Soviet tank.
The broken rifle
The broken rifle is a symbol that represents a absolute rejection of violence. Used by War Resisters' International (WRI) and its affiliates but predates the foundation of WRI in 1921. The first known example of the symbol is in the masthead of the January 1909 issue of (Down with Weapons), the monthly paper of the International Antimilitarist Union in the Netherlands. In 1915 it appeared on the cover of a pamphlet, (Under the Broken Rifle), published by the Norwegian Social Democratic Youth Association. The (German) League for War Victims, founded in 1917, used the broken rifle on a 1919 banner.