Martyrdom of SS Simon and Jude from the Coëtivy Hours

Dunois Master, attributed to

Folio with three-quarter page miniature from a book of hours attributed to the Dunois Master, written in Latin and French in a bastarda script, made in Paris and dated 1443–1445. It was commissioned by Prigent de Coëtivy (1399?–1450) on the occasion of his marriage to Marie de Rais (1429–1457). Removed from the bound volume between 1933 and 1960. Beneath rubrics in red, a prayer to Simon and Jude opens with the illuminated initial ‘S’ (Symon cananeus et iudas zelotes apostolic domini) painted with white, red, blue and gold ivy-leaf ornament (most of the gold is lost). It is one of an unusually large series of forty-seven suffrages, or short prayers to saints, arranged hierarchically. The section opens with a number of prefatory prayers, followed by the Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors and Virgins. The miniature is painted in demi-grisaille with pigments and gold and depicts the martyrdom of Saints Simon and Jude (not Judas Iscariot). The apocryphal Passion of Simon and Jude tells the story of their martyrdom in Persia. It is also recorded in the Golden Legend, a popular collection of hagiographies (saints’ lives), and partly alluded to in the accompanying prayer. Two enchanters, Zaroes and Arphaxat, were driven from Ethiopia by St Matthew. The sorcerers travelled to Persia where they stoked suspicion against the apostles. When Simon and Jude revealed the idols of a particular city (sun and moon) to be false, the angry crowd ran them threw. In the painting, one saint is stabbed with a sword while the other impaled with a spear. It is here directed by a king holding a wand, a common attribute of pagans employed both as a sign of authority and a belief in false gods. In the lower margin an archer emerging from a flower takes aim at a dragon, perhaps a reference to the story of St Michael pacifying the dragons of the aforementioned magicians in Ethiopia. Between the two figures are the distinctive trifoliate leaves of a red rose, an allusion to the Trinity. The red of the rose itself is a sign of martyrdom.