On 4 December 1334, Pope John XXII died. Sixteen days later, Jacques Fournier was elected pope and took the name Benedict XII. At the beginning of his pontificate, the papacy and Ludwig of Bavaria entered a period of temporary truce. Ludwig even considered a possible reconciliation with the papacy. However, his policy of appeasement was opposed first by Philip VI of France, and later by the Germans themselves. By the spring of 1337, it was clear that negotiations between the papacy and Ludwig of Bavaria were faltering. In May 1338, the first diet of Frankfurt promulgated the manifesto Fidem Catholicam proclaiming that imperial authority derives directly from God, not from the pope. Thus the conflict between the papacy and the empire was resuscitated.

The year 1337 was also a turning-point in Ockham's polemical career. After that year, according to Richard Scholz, Ockham threw off his philosophical and theological disguise, and expressed his political opinions directly and clearly. H. S. Offler agreed with Scholz. Offler wrote that Contra Benedictum, which was probably written in the autumn of 1337, ‘is the bridge over which Ockham passed from ecclesiology to a developed interest in political matters’. Indeed, the works written before Contra Benedictum, such as Contra Ioannem and the Compendium errorum, concentrate on particular errors committed by Pope John XXII and demonstrate that the Pope is a heretic.