(1) Let us now return to the focus of this essay and examine how the two sculptures by Donatello relate to John of Salisbury's discussions of the state and tyrannicide .(2) And here is the Christian who struggles with his participation in an act of tyrannicide .(3) It stood at the center of impassioned debate throughout Europe three hundred years later because it provided the most notable theoretical justification for the legitimacy of tyrannicide written by a Christian authority.(4) Classical tyrannicide was valorized because it could remove the oppressor with the minimum force.(5) Together, they fuel what Page DuBois calls ‘an allegorical, utopian call for tyrannicide in the name of postcapitalist, postpatriarchal future.’(6) Although Judith was a new symbol to Florence, John of Salisbury's citation of her as a paradigmatic tyrannicide made the Old Testament heroine a second exemplar.(7) It is in his practical views on tyrannicide and political murder that Sexby's real inheritance still haunts us.(8) ethical justification of tyrannicide(9) the republic was founded after a tyrannicide(10) Moreover, tyrannicide is intrinsically interesting, involving as it does political assassination or attempted assassination.(11) The Judith and Holofernes and the David evoke references to tyrannicide well known to the Medici and to other members of the educated elite in Florence through ancient and contemporary texts.(12) I had my sword for company, my ally and partner in tyrannicide .(13) Regarded as a major ancient source on tyranny and tyrannicide , it was the only text attributed to Plutarch known and taught during the fourteenth and much of the fifteenth century.(14) The closest it comes to that, perhaps, is Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis, where a defense of tyrannicide is justified as an act to restore civil society to naturally peaceful relations, not to change or revolutionize it.(15) For instance, while he states that there are instances when tyrannicide is justified (for example against tyrannical usurpers), killing a prince presumed to be a tyrant is forbidden if ‘the prince is an absolute sovereign.’(16) John contended that tyrannicide was a duty if it set people free for the service of God.
