They were eagerly received by the Church, and for various reasons Pope Nicholas I. (853-867) gave them papal sanction and used them to extend his power. He led the Church to believe that they were among the most venerable and carefully preserved documents of the papal archives. Backed up by them, he asserted his jurisdiction over both East and West; in fact, the whole world. To the eastern Emperor he wrote, "We by the power committed to us by our Lord through St. Peter, restore our brother Ignatius to his former station, to his see [at Constantinople], to his dignity as patriarch and to all the honours of his office."[336:1] At the same time he exalted the power of excommunication and used it to humble both princes and prelates; he forced Lothair II. to restore his divorced wife; he humbled the great Hincmar by reinstating the deposed Bishop Rathod of Soissons; he subjected both metropolitans and bishops to his rule; he deposed the archbishops of Cologne and Trier and made the Pope ubiquitous through the system of legates. Well could the old chronicler say: "Since the days of Gregory I. to our own time, sat no high priest on the throne of St. Peter to be compared to Nicholas. He tamed kings and tyrants, and ruled the world like a sovereign. To holy bishops and the clergy he was mild and gentle; to the wicked and unconverted a terror, so that we might truly say a new Elias arose in him." It is evident [wrote the great forerunner of Hildebrand] that Popes can neither be bound nor unbound by any earthly power, nor even by that of the Apostle if he were to return upon earth; since Constantine the Great has recognised that the pontiffs held the place of God on earth, the Divinity not being able to be judged by any man living. We are then infallable and whatever may be our acts, we are not accountable for them but to ourselves.[336:2] This is generally held to be spurious now, but the spirit of it may be said to be true. The archbishops eagerly accepted the decretals because they hoped to profit by their doctrines. Instead, however, through them they were subjected to the Pope and largely lost their independence. They were gladly received by the bishops, since by them they hoped to gain independence both of the tyrannical metropolitans and of the state. They were welcomed by the lower clergy and laity in general without a question because they came from a source so high in authority as the Pope and the bishops.