Cologne Cathedral and 'The Jews'-The St Peter portal

Legend has it that Simon told Nero that he was the son of God. To demonstrate his omnipotence, he rose up to the heavens, carried by demons. When the apostles began to pray, the demons dropped Simon and he plunged to his death. His rise and fall are illustrated together in the upper register of the tympanum: at the top, Simon is seen being carried by the demons; directly beneath that is an image of his broken corpse alongside the two praying apostles. The scenes in the lower panel on the left show the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul.

Until recently, little attention was paid to five male figures in the tympanum. Their flat hats were identified as Jewish hats not long ago. Even though the typical crowns of these hats were removed at some unknown point in time, they left clear traces. Four of the men in the upper panel are followers of Simon Magus; the fifth, in the scene depicting the disputation, is seen whispering in Nero's ear. Because Medieval texts portrayed Simon Magus as a prefiguration of the Antichrist, the Jews depicted here could also have been seen as followers of Christ's eschatological adversary.

A comparison of the images in the tympanum and the images on the choir screen in the interior of the cathedral, which could only be seen by the clergy and a very small group of visitors, explains this definite shift in emphasis, which was directed at the general public: the inclusion of images of Jews as the adversaries of the apostles and the Church and the associated insinuation of heresy and the warning that they would become more powerful in the final days of humankind can be described as having added fuel to the fire of the already heated atmosphere surrounding the trial that led to the expulsion of the Jews from Cologne in 1424.
Harald Schlüter