The previous chapters have dealt with changes in the inquisition's procedures in the fourteenth century. Underlying those changes was a shift in how inquisitors, and the wider Church, understood the purpose and jurisdiction of the inquisition. These changes in the understanding of inquisition can be seen in Eymerich's thinking compared with Gui's and, to a lesser extent, in that of Ugolini and De officio. They were related to wider developments, in particular changing views on heresy more generally and on the nature and threat of magic. Indeed the Directorium played a role in the theological/legal changes which helped to underpin the witch persecutions in the fifteenth century and beyond. But there was also a growing diversification of religious activity and greater lay involvement. The fear of uncontrolled activities which this generated was perhaps first formally expressed in Ad Nostrum, a Bull stemming from the Council of Vienne (1311–12) which targeted (northern European) Beguines or the ‘heresy of the free spirit’. Robert Lerner has demonstrated that there was no single movement behind the Church's fears but, rather, diverse experimentation. Similarly John van Engen refers to this phenomenon from the 1370s onwards, writing that ‘European society sparkled with new religious and cultural agendas’. This is part of the background against which Eymerich wrote the Directorium.

Eymerich conceived of an inquisition which was in some ways different from Gui's, although perhaps less so from that in Ugolini and De officio. However, the immediate practical realisation of his thinking was patchy, not least because of his expulsion from Aragon in 1376. He can perhaps best be characterised as trying to codify for inquisitors fourteenth-century changes in thinking on heresy and the inquisition, as well as giving the inquisition a permanent and fixed role within the Church. In doing this he did not simply reflect change which had already occurred but played an active role in crystallising, for the purposes of the inquisition, changes which had not yet fully occurred. In this he had support from Gregory XI. Indeed he was part of Gregory's efforts to revitalise the papacy along what were by then the traditional lines of Innocent III and his successors, including a strong antiheresy component. Eymerich would have seen himself as reflecting the best thinking of his time on heresy and inquisition by drawing out in a coherent way the conclusions of earlier thinking on the pursuit of heresy.