Justice Blindfolded: The Historical Course of an Image. Adriano Prosperi. Trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi. Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700. Leiden: Brill, 2018. xxiv + 260 pp. $122

Yet it can also be—and often was—seen as a sign that Justice is obtuse, unheeding of evidence, and open to discreetly whispered favors or threats that could tilt the balance of her scales to benefit those who came to court with an abundance of social or financial capital. The satire, Prosperi notes, developed over the following decades into a critique of the partiality of traditional communal law and an embrace of the superiority of law based on Roman models as an expression of the power and justice of the state. Christ remained calm—not goaded into ending a travesty of justice, but accepting the larger plan of redemption that it was part of, and signaling with his words to Dismas the Good Thief that faith and grace rather than vengeance or power animated that plan. [...]did Protestants through the early modern period find their way to a reevaluation of Justice's blindfold as a symbol of the serenity, impartiality, and grace of divine justice.