Underhanded Justice

Reflections on Cesáre Giglio’s Les Juges aux Mains Coupées

With respect to the ideal of Justice, there is a great deal of agreement between Reason and Faith, between the best of the Pagans and Revelation, between Athens and Jerusalem. This should come as no surprise, for the wise insist that both Right Reason and Revealed Truth have the same source: God. Sometimes these two tributary of truths blend marvelously and communicate the same message to the boon of both streams. Thus Philo combines Moses with the Greek philosophers, and St. Augustine combines Christ with Plato as St. Thomas combines Christ with Aristotle. An artistic instance of this felicitous overlap is found in Cesáre Giglio’s fresco Les Juges aux Mains Coupées (Judges Without Hands).¹ In this unique fresco we find, in admixture wholly complementary, the words of the Jewish prophets combined with an allegory of Plutarch. Both serve to impress upon the viewer—most importantly the judges that administered justice under the auspices of the fresco—that Justice ought not to be derailed by influence or by bribe.

The fresco was painted in 1604 by the Vicenzan painter Cesáre Giglio as the centerpiece for the chamber of the ruling body of Geneva, the old Petit Conseil or Conseil ordinaire, found on the second floor of the Baudet Tower. That Tower, part of the Town Hall or Hôtel de ville of Geneva, was built in 1455.² Typical of post-Reformation custom, an example, or exemplum, of justice was sought to decorate the place where the magistrates were to congregate, and the commission for the exemplum was awarded to Giglio. In his fresco, Giglio communicates by means of an allegory a moral to the councilors who, as magistrates or judges, held court in the Tower’s chambers. Until 1792, the ruling Petit Conseil—which held the legislative, judicial, and substantial executive power—was composed of a sixteen to twenty-five man council directed by four syndics.³ In their judicial capacity, the councilors of the Petit Conseil were expected to hear criminal and civil cases in the chambers of the Town Hall.⁴ Though the hall no longer serves its judicial function, it remains a chamber of government. Presently, the chamber is the meeting house for the Republic and Canton of Geneva’s seven-member executive body, the Conseil d’Etat.

The three by six meter rectangular fresco depicts six bearded judges without hands: three on either side of a magistrate centered in the middle and bearing a scepter in his right hand, although his left hand is also cut off at the wrist. The inspiration for the handless judges is likely Plutarch’s comments in his Moralia (Iside et Osiride) or the writings of Diodorus of Sicily, where they mention that at Thebes the authorities set up statues of judges without hands so as to indicate that the justice was not to be influenced by gifts or diverted by friendship.⁵ Handless judges can neither shake hands nor accept bribes. The town fathers who commissioned the work would have known it to be essential to the Rule of Law that Justice not get sidetracked by the blandishments of bribes or influence. Giglio’s theme is thoroughly humanistic in the best understanding of that term.

Grigio’s work may also have been influenced by the popular Emblematum liber of Andrea Alciata.⁶ In his Emblematum liber, Andrea Alciato shows Plutarch’s allegory as an emblem of justice (Emblema CXLV).⁷ Contrary to Alciato’s emblem (which is truer to Plutarch’s text in that it shows the principal judge to be blind and handed), Giglio’s work shows the central judge to have his sight, yet lacking his left hand. According to Alciato, the judges are sitting because it is fitting for judges to be self-possessed and have a stable and unswerving dedication to their task.⁸ The judges are handless so that they cannot accept bribes, nor let themselves be swayed by the hand of friendship.⁹ Judges with truncated hands assure an untruncated justice.

Though Grigio’s inspiration is humanistic and classical, the Christian heritage is also present as the exemplum is bounded by Biblical personages and text.¹⁰ The judges in the fresco are flanked by two figures, most certainly Moses and most likely David (or perhaps Asaph or Isaiah), who bear scrolls with biblical texts in old French, complementing the pagan-inspired exemplum with Judaeo-Christian warrant. The scroll on the right sponsored by Moses is a quote from Exodus 23:8, which reads: Tu ne prendras point de don, car le don aveugle les prudens et renverse les paroles des justes. Translated, it reads (as translated in the Douay-Rheims version): “Neither shalt thou take bribes, which even blind the wise, and pervert the words of the just.” To the left, David frames excerpts from Isaiah 33:14 and Psalm 81 [82]:1: Qui de nous demeurera avec les ardeurs éternelles? (“Which of you shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”) and Dieu assiste en l’assemblée et juge au milieu des juges (“God hath stood in the congregation of gods: and being in the midst of them he judgeth gods.”).¹¹

The judge of the Petit Conseil or Conseil ordinaire was thus reminded not to take bribes for the sake of assuring the public an uncorrupted justice. And if the high calling and standards of his office and the example of the Theban judges were insufficient to keep the judge in line, the Genevan judge was reminded that God is ubiquitous and is found even in the chambers of human justice. He was reminded that his power was of Elohim and not his own, and that the God who loaned him the judicial power was to judge him if he abused it. And if love of God or the promise of heaven was insufficient motivation to keep the earthly judge honest, perhaps the fear of Hell would work. The judge was reminded that Hell awaited him if he failed to resist the temptation to sin against the virtue of justice. Every human judge was reminded that willy nilly he will be judged by the omniscient and eternal Judge, a Judge whose inexorable judgment cannot be bought by bribe or undue influence. Only one commodity can buy this Eternal Judge's judgment: a sincere repentance for one's sin and a sincere resolve never to transgress the law again.

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¹ A reproduction of that Giglio’s work can be found in Dennis E. Curtis & Judith Resnik, Images of Justice, 96 YALE L.J. 1727, 1736 (1987). The fresco appears to have been painted in 1604; however, as a result of later redesign, the painting was covered, and the image was not re-discovered until 1901. See BARBARA ROTH-LOCHNER & LIVIO FORNARA, THE TOWN HALL OF GENEVA, 10 (Jean Gunn trans., 1986). The depictions here are taken from Christian-Nils Robert’s La Justice dans ses Décors (Librairie Dorz: Géneve 2006) and Lochner & Fornara's The Town Hall of Geneva. Photos of the town hall are and the chamber are courtesy of the web page of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, http://www.geneve.ch/chancellerie//salles/conseil_etat.asp. ⇑

² Confusingly, the Town Hall is not the seat of municipal or city authorities of the city of Geneva today as the name would suggest, but rather the seat of the government of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, that is, it is the meeting place of the legislative branch, the 100-member Great Council (Grand Conseil), and the executive, the seven-member Council of State (Conseil d’Etat). Barbara Roth-Lochner and Livio Fornara (Jean Gunn, trans.), The Town Hall of Geneva (Geneva: 1986), 3, 5-6. ⇑

³ Originally, the Petit Conseil numbered sixteen representatives selected by the Council of the Two Hundred. In 1544, the number was increased to twenty-five. Roth-Lochner, 7. ⇑

⁴ Other judicial activities took place in the Town Hall. For example, one of the councilors was appointed Lieutenant and acted as chief of police, and, with the help of six auditors, examined criminal cases. Roth-Lochner, 8. ⇑

⁵ “In Thebes,” Plutarch relates, “there were set up statues of judges without hands, and the statue of the chief justice had its eyes closed, to indicate that justice is not influenced by gifts or by intercession.” Plutarch, Moralia, 355.A (trans. Frank Cole Babbit). Cf. Diodorus, I.48.6. See Christian-Nils Robert, La Justice dans ses Décors (XVe-XVIe siècles) (Gèneve: Librairie Droz, 2006), 93. ⇑

⁶ Christian-Nils Robert, 93-94. ⇑

⁷ Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum liber or Book of Emblems was both popular and influential in the 1500s and 1600s. The Emblematum is a collection of 212 emblems accompanied with explanatory Latin poems. First published in 1531, the Emblematum went through various editions during the lifetime of the author. The emblems and texts and an English translation may be found at http://www.mun.ca/alciato/1531.html. The depiction here is courtesy of that site. ⇑

⁸ Cur resident? Quia mente graves decet esse quieta / Iuridicos, animo nec variare levi. ⇑

⁹ Cur sine sunt manibus? Capiant ne xenia, nec se / Polliticis flecti muneribusve sinant. ⇑

¹⁰ In its effort to earn independence in the 1530s, Geneva had overthrown the overlordship of the Bishop and Duke of Savoy, and the councils of State took over the church’s property. Calvin essentially took over the religious life of Geneva by 1541, and wielded his power forcefully until his death in 1564. The Biblical spirit behind Gilgio’s allegory was thus entirely Calvinistic. ⇑

¹¹ Interestingly, Giglio uses the term “juges” to translate “gods.” In the Septuagint, the Greek uses the term gods: ὁ θεὸς ἔστη ἐν συναγωγῇ θεῶν ἐν μέσῳ δὲ θεοὺς διακρίνει. In the Vulgate, the text uses the term gods: Deus stetit in coetu Dei in medio Deus iudicat. In French, the Darby translation uses “gods” and “judges”: Dieu se tient dans l'assemblée de Dieu; il juge au milieu des juges. The Louis II version reads “gods”: Dieu se tient dans l'assemblée de Dieu; Il juge au milieu des dieux. The Martin (1744) version reads “powers” and “judges”: Dieu assiste dans l'assemblée des forts, il juge au milieu des Juges. The Hebrew term translated as “gods” or “judges” is elohim, the term usually reserved for the God of the Hebrews, but on occasion used to refer to those exercising His authority such as judges or other representatives; on occasion it is used to refer to heathen gods. See Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; and Charles Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 43. Cf. Deut. 4:35, 39 (elohim used of God); Judges 11:24; 1 Kings 18:24 (elohim used to identify the gods of the heathen); Exodus 4:16; 7:1 (elohim used in referenced to Moses); Exodus 22:8, 9 (elohim used of judges). ⇑