This short book is controversial. Marsilius of Padua has been subject to a variety of interpretations: he has been characterised as a medieval precursor of the republican humanists of the Renaissance, a traditional corporatist, a defender of the imperialist ideology and, more recently, a medieval thinker who produced a ‘generic’, ‘secular’ political theory. George Garnett challenges the ‘republican’ and ‘secularist’ interpretations by situating Marsilius' political writings within the context of his times. The outcomes are that Marsilius defended his imperialist political agenda and that his celebrated work Defensor pacis was anchored in a Christian understanding of history. One of the virtues of the book is to show successfully that the notoriety of the Defensor pacis in the late Middle Ages stems from the often underappreciated discourse ii, not from the much debated discourse i. To do this, Garnett has made use of extensive manuscript sources. On this basis, the author turns to his close reading of discourse ii in relation to Marsilius' minor treatises to demonstrate that, according to Marsilius, ‘the progressive perversion of the clergy in the Christianized Roman Empire was … rooted in the powers claimed by the popes on the basis of the donation of Constantine, later subsumed and expanded in the title of plenitudo potestatis’ (p. 139). Garnett's analysis of discourse ii and other Marsilian writings would have been more helpful, however, if he had contextualised them more fully. While the author offers interesting observations on Dante and Engelbert of Admont, it would have been particularly useful if he had situated Marsilius within the traditions of late medieval historical writings and the historical awareness of late medieval political writers. While Garnett's emphasis on the historical framework makes good sense, I am unsure whether he has clarified why Marsilius wrote discourse i in the way in which he did. In the light of the contemporary reaction to the Defensor pacis, Garnett stresses the importance of discourse ii, thereby rehabilitating and building upon Jeannine Quillet's imperialist interpretation. However, how the Defensor pacis was read is one thing; what Marsilius intended is quite another. The introduction to the book is characterised by a pointedly polemical tone, which attacks provocatively the ‘secularist’ reading attributed mainly to Cary J. Nederman. I was struck, however, by Garnett's failure to engage with the rapidly expanding literature. Curiously, the important works of Antony Black and Janet Coleman and a recent biographical account by Frank Godthardt, for instance, are not discussed at all. Even the attack on Nederman is based solely on his concise Community and consent, although he has published on Marsilius in numerous other outlets. Garnett's ambitious and thought-provoking book is perhaps too brief to ‘overturn [the] widely accepted view’ as it promised.