Medieval rulers already subordinated private loyalty to public utility
Evidence
Even in the early Middle Ages, however, it is plain that contemporaries had a clear sense of the claims of utility in the discharge of public office. When Pope Zachariah deposed the last of the Merovingians from the crown of France and absolved his subjects from their oaths of loyalty, he did so quite explicitly because the latter was inutilis for the exercise of his potestas (Post 1964: 376). — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1219
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Supports the reader’s argument that observable constraints (here, utility to the state) trump personal fides â parallels how society’s visible utility overrides individual trust commitments in Saramago’s collapse.
- SHARE: Pope Zachariah deposing the Merovingians for being ‘inutilis’ is a niche medieval-history tidbit worth sending to a church-history friend.
Related
- Medieval rulers could be deposed for being useless in office (similarity 0.88)