Capitulary of the Synod of Frankfurt

The synod met in the summer of 794, in the twenty-sixth year of Charlemagne’s reign, and the king took part in person. Its first chapter condemns the teaching of the Spanish bishops Elipandus and Felix that Christ as man was the adopted son of God. Its second deals in three lines with the new synod of the Greeks on the adoration of images, which it says was held at Constantinople. It states that the synod had laid an anathema on anyone who would not give the images of the saints the same service and adoration as the Trinity, and that the fathers at Frankfurt rejected and condemned this.

That is not what the council of 787 had decreed, and the chapter shows how the decree was understood at the Frankish court. The remaining chapters deal with the price of grain, monastic discipline and church order; one says that God may be prayed to in any language, and the last admits Alcuin to the fellowship and prayers of the synod.