ABSTRACT
The modern world was slow to take shape out of the disintegration of medieval society which followed the calamities of the fourteenth century, the century of plague, peasant revolts and papal schism. With the increasing centralization of authority and the assumption of new responsibilities and rights in finance and justice, sovereigns tested their powers and enlarged their patronage. The theory of social contract was a valuable device for denying the claims of increasingly arbitrary sovereigns: first that authority was divinely sanctioned and second that patriarchy was the natural order of society, as in the Old Testament. The authority which the new class of manager-ministers helped to create, and which they, as successful meritocrats, respected, was what Max Weber called 'legalrational'. Obedience was less to the person than to the legally established authority.
