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Although Marsilius has doubts about the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine, it is too important to his argument for him to reject it. For it records the emperor ceding legislative power to the bishop of Rome. This, for Marsilius, was the point at which Christian history began to go awry. Previously, the bishop of Rome had of necessity come to exercise quasi-jurisdictional powers over Christians, because the emperor was not fulfilling this role, but was, rather, persecuting them. Constantine's fatal but providentially ordained act provided the basis on which claims to plenitudo potestatis were asserted by later bishops of Rome. Over time, these claims became more and more extreme. They came to be embodied in canon law, sanctioned by bishops of Rome who called themselves popes, rather than by emperors. This is the singular cause of discord of which Aristotle had known nothing, because it had come into being long after his death.

This chapter begins by showing how the standard modern English translation of Defensor Pacis has encouraged an already existing Anglophone tendency to impose on the Defensor Pacis modern liberal, democratic assumptions. Nothing in the Latin original justifies this unhistorical misrepresentation of Marsilius. The chapter then considers the evidence for Marsilius's life in Paris, where he wrote Defensor Pacis, later in Ludwig of Bavaria's entourage, and the contemporary response to his book. That response was generally outrage, and it was led by Pope John XXII, who prepared a detailed critique of what he found most objectionable, and instigated a condemnation of the book — Licet iuxta doctrinam — in every diocese in Christendom. There was also much criticism by others, including some from William of Ockham, who, like Marsilius, had found political asylum at Ludwig of Bavaria's court. All criticism, whether pro- or anti-papal, agreed with John XXII about the book's most important message: a demolition of papal claims to plenitudo potestatis. No contemporary read it as so many modern commentators have done.

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.