Libri Carolini (Opus Caroli regis contra synodum)
A long treatise in four books, written at Charlemagne’s court and in his name, against the Second Council of Nicaea. It rejects both the destruction of images decreed in 754 and their adoration, as it understood the decree of 787.
The work speaks throughout in the voice of the Frankish king. Its preface says that a synod held in Bithynia some years before had abolished images, that another held there about three years before now compels people to adore them, that the text of this second synod has reached the West, and that the king answers it with the consent of the bishops of his kingdom. That dates the writing to about 790 or soon after.
Its position is a middle one: images may be kept in churches as ornament and as reminders of past events, God alone is adored and the saints receive their fitting veneration, and so the Franks neither break images with the one party nor adore them with the other. The authors knew the Greek council only through the first Latin translation of its acts, which a later papal librarian, Anastasius, described as so literal that it could hardly be understood. The treatise is evidence of how the council of 787 was received at the Frankish court. In the sixteenth century John Calvin appealed to it against the council.
Cited in
- AD 787, firm date