The paper deals with the relationship between consent of the people and other forms of legitimation in mediaeval political thought. It focuses in particular on authors who adopt a «pluralistic» approach to the sources of legitimation. The analysis concerns four authors, Manegold of Lautenbach, Vincent of Beauvais, Giles of Rome and Hervé de Nédellec. They belong to different moments of the development of medieval political thought and don’t use the same political language. They concur in the persuasion that consent must be taken into consideration as a source of legitimation, but alone doesn’t account for the complexity of the phenomenon.