Simon the Zealot
Saint Simon the Zealot is the patron of tanners, curriers, and sawyers chiefly because of how tradition says he died. In Western legend he was martyred by being sawn in two — and so the saw became his emblem in art, drawing to him the sawyers and woodcutters who wield that tool. The trades that work hide and leather (tanners, curriers) are likewise his by reason of his martyrdom: some accounts hold he was instead flayed alive, the very work a tanner does to a skin, and the leather-workers took the saint who suffered as their patron. His patronages are thus all read straight off the manner of his death, as so often with the apostles, rather than from any event of his preaching.
Saint Simon the Zealot was one of the twelve apostles. Called “the Zealot” or “the Canaanite” to distinguish him from Simon Peter, he may have belonged to the Jewish Zealot movement before following Christ. Tradition holds that he preached in Egypt, Libya, and Persia, where he was martyred together with the apostle Jude.
