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In his treatment of the current crisis, Marsilius shows himself to be very well-versed in the latest papal pronouncements — so well-versed that he is capable of forging a document in impeccable curial style that makes John XXII say what he wants him to have said. He concentrates overwhelmingly on the extreme statements of recent popes: Boniface VIII, Clement V, and the current pope, whom he can never bring himself to name. He avoids any discussion of Innocent III's key decretal Venerabilem. According to Marsilius, the current consummation of claims to plenitudo potestatis represented a threat not only to the Emperor, but to all Christian kings (as revealed by the recent experience of Philip the Fair, which Marsilius had observed from his vantage point at the Sorbonne). The pope was not only nullifying the rights of the Electors to the office of rex Romanorum, he was in effect claiming that all other Christian rulers derived their authority solely from him.

This Introduction examines the idea of papal pronouncements as responses to secular and religious authorities in the context of the continually changing economic and social conditions of medieval Europe, the developing idea of the nation state, the growing bureaucracy and centrality of the papal curia, and the different characters and lengths of pontificate of those who governed the Apostolic See. It is argued that traditional Christian theology ensured that popes were committed to protecting the Jews, but that they also believed that they must ensure the spiritual welfare of Christian society—and that this led them increasingly to restrict Jewish activities. This Introduction also provides the reader with an overview of recent historiography on the complex subject of papal–Jewish relations.

Drawing on the different themes of the different chapters and bringing them together, this Conclusion explains the limited and specifically servile role which Jews were expected to play in a typical papal vision of Christian society that in itself promoted a gradual hardening of Christian attitudes. Nevertheless, the Conclusion also argues that the aim of papal pronouncements was never to degrade the Jews as such. Rather, it was to satisfy the requirements of both Christian theology and the developing idea of a specifically papal authority over Jewish communities. Hence for both social and political reasons popes found it increasingly difficult to retain the spirit of their continuing Pauline/Augustinian theology in the changing social and political conditions of the age.