Donatello's bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici rule in Florence - Bibliography

The graphic aspect of Judith's pause between two blows as she decapitates Holofernes and the inscription's focus on the severed head relate to the peculiarly precise anatomical characterization that is John of Salisbury's original contribution to the long-standing analogy between the body and the state. He made clear that the prince is the state's head, and that it ineluctably followed that the tyrant, or prince who misruled, must be killed so that the head is severed from the body. (74) Although he credited Plutarch's "Institutio Traiani" as his authority, John of Salisbury seems to have invented the details of the metaphor himself. (75)

John contended that tyrannicide was a duty if it set people free for the service of God. (76) In support of his position, he cited various examples of the oppression of the Jews in the Old Testament and their deliverance by the slayers of these tyrants; by far the most important savior was Judith, who killed the general of an army threatening her people. (77) In the same chapter, John extolled David as a counter example. According to John's philosophy of fealty, David was bound by oath as a subject Saul, and so unlike Judith, who owed no allegiance to Holofernes, David could not rightfully murder Saul, even though he was a tyrant. John argued that David's patient, passive resistance and decision to leave Saul's fate to God represented the moral course of action in such cases.(78)

Nevertheless, John realized that not all tyrants could be peaceably overcome and offered specific advice about deposing them by force. According to John, the most expedient way to destroy tyrants was to beseech God's retribution, but he explicitly sanctioned human dissimulation and treachery when they served the cause. (79) In this regard, his most prominent case was again that of Judith, whose beauty and charms were enhanced by God, John tells us, so that she could entice Holofernes into a drunken stupor and kill him:

Let me prove by another story that it is just for public tyrants to be killed and the people thus set free for the service of God. This story shows that even priests of God repute the killing of tyrants as a pious act, and if it appears to wear the semblance of treachery, they say it is consecrated to the Lord by a holy mystery. Thus Holofernes fell a victim not to the valor of the enemy but to his own vices by means of a sword in the hands of a woman; and he who had been terrible to strong men was vanquished by luxury and drink, and slain by a woman. Nor would the woman have gained access to the tyrant had she not piously dissimulated her hostile intention for that is not treachery which serves the cause of the faith.... For this is shown by her words ... "Bring to pass, Lord," she prayed, "that by his own sword his pride may be cut off, and that he may be caught in the net of his own eyes turned upon me.... Grant to me constancy of soul that I may despise him, and fortitude that I may destroy him. For it wi ll be a glorious monument of Thy name when the hand of a woman strike him down." ... she who had not come to wanton, used a borrowed wantonness as the instrument of her devotion and courage.(80)