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Edited from a variety of translations (mentioned in the preface) by H. R. Percival
THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS Resources Online and in Print
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82 Pages
Page 78
Excursus on the Council of Frankfort, a.d. 794.
It has been commonly represented that the Council of Frankfort, which was a large Synod of the West, with legates of the Pope present and composed of the bishops of Gaul, Germany, and Aquitaine, devoted its attention to a consideration of the question of the veneration due to images and of the claims of the Second Council of Nice to being an Ecumenical Synod. I do not know upon what grounds such statements have rested, but certainly not upon anything revealed by any remains of the council we possess, for among these we find but one brief paragraph upon the subject, to wit, the Second Canon, which reads as follows (Labbe and Cossart, Concilia, Tom. vii, col. 1057):
"II. The question was brought forward concerning the recent synod which the Greeks had held at Constantinople concerning the adoration of images, that all should be judged as worthy of anathema who did not pay to the images of the Saints service and adoration as to the Divine Trinity. Our most holy fathers rejected with scorn and in every way such adoration and service, and unanimously condemned it."
Now in the first place I call the reader's attention to the fact that the Conciliabulum of 754 was held at Constantinople but that the Seventh Council was held at Nice. It would seem as if the two had got mixed in the mind of the writer. [553]
In the second place neither of these synods, nor any other synod, decreed that the "service" (latreia) and "adoration" (proskunesis) due to the holy Trinity was under pain of anathema to be given to "the images of the Saints."
On this second canon Hefele writes as follows:
(Hefele. Concil., ยง 398).
The second of these canons deserves our full attention; in it, as we have seen, the Synod of Frankfort expresses its feeling against the Second Ecumenical Council of Nice, and against the veneration of images; Eginhard also gives us the information that it took this action, viz.: "for it was decided by all [i.e. at Frankfort] that the synod, which a few years before was gathered together in Constantinople (sic) under Irene and her son Constantine, and is called by them not only the Seventh but also Ecumenical, should neither be held nor declared to be the Seventh nor ecumenical but wholly without authority."
Hefele rejects the views of Baronius, Bellarmine, Surius, and Binius. I have no intention of defending the position of any one of these writers but I translate Binius's note, merely remarking that it is easier to reject his conclusion than to answer the arguments upon which it rests.
[553] This has been explained by saying that the last meeting was in the palace at Constantinople.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/ecumenical-councils/seventh.asp?pg=78
