martyrdom · 65
Three traditions send Simon to three deaths and they cannot all be right. The Western passionaries have him and Jude martyred together in Persia, Simon sawn asunder — which is where the saw he carries in Western art comes from. The Byzantine synaxaria have him preach in Abkhazia and die peacefully there, and his supposed grave at Nikopsia was shown for centuries. A medieval British strand puts him in Britain altogether. None of it has a witness before the late passionaries, and this dataset marks the whole event legendary rather than choosing. What is old and real is underneath it: Simon and Jude share a day in the Roman calendar, and the pairing is older than any story told to explain it.
A joint feast on 28 October in Rome, and an iconography of the saw.