 One focus of controversy was the papal claim to “fullness of power”. Originally the claim meant that the pope had preeminently whatever power any other authority had within the Church, so that he could intervene by full right in any Church affair (Rivière 1925). Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), whose decretals repeatedly “exalted papal political power” (Pennington 2007: 165), provided the fodder for subsequent jurists to develop the notion of papal fullness of  power.[45]  During the thirteenth century this conception was also invoked when the pope authorised the mendicant friars to preach and perform religious functions in a diocese even without the consent of the diocesan bishop. Such interventions were strongly opposed by many secular clerics who argued that bishops had their authority by divine law and were not merely agents of the  pope.[46] 