Image Details

The Art Archive/Seminary Library Udine/Dagli Orti (A)

The martyrdom of Peter and Paul and the death of Simon Magus are depicted together in this tenth-century illumination from a German manuscript called the Liber Sacramentorum Fulda. The tradition that Peter and Paul died in Rome on the same day traces back to the apocryphal Passion of Sts. Peter and Paul, where Paul (lower left) is said to have been beheaded and Peter (right) crucified upside down just after Simon Magus (center) fell.