FRANKFORT, COUNCIL oil', attended by 300 bishops from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and England, was held in 794 at Frankfort-on-the-Main, by order of Charlemagne, to consider the decision of the second council of Niewa concerning the worship of images; and the doctrine of Adoptianism as advanced anew by Elipandus and Felix ' The second council of Nicrea, held 787 A.D., having passed a decree sanctioning the worship of images, the pope sent a copy of it to Charlemagne in order to obtain the approval of the French bishops. But that monarch earnestly opposed the decree, and • either personally wrote, assisted perhaps by Alcuin, or directed Alcuin in writing for him, the celebrated Caroline books, which strongly condemn every act or appearance of worship paid to images, even to bowing the head and burning lights before them. In arguing, for instance, against the plea that images are necessary to perpetuate and call the memory of holy things, the writer says, " Unhappy memory which, in order to think of Christ who should never be absent from the heart, needs the presence ot an image, and can enjoy his presence only by seeing his image painted on a wall. We Christians, who with open face beholding the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory, are no longer bound to seek the truth in images and pictures." These Caroline books were read as part of the discussion at the council of Frankfort. The decision of the council was against the worship of images and against
second council of Niema for sanctioning it. Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo, and Felix, bishop of Urgellis, also a city of Spain, revived the opinion, formerly advanced by theologians of Antioch, that Christ in his human nature was the Son of God only by adoption. This language seems to have been sometimes used merely as•synonymous with the assumption of human nature by the divine nature of Christ, and therefore as meaning only that Christ the Son of God became man, But its appropriate figurative • sense is that Christ's human nature, being only human, was adopted by God, as a man may adopt as his own the son of another. In this sense it was regarded as carrying out the Nestorian doctrine to its extreme results in maintaining that, since Christ, in his human nature, was the Son of God only by adoption, there could be no proper union of his divine and human attributes. It was in this sense, probably, that the council of Frankfort condemned the opinion as heretical. Felix professed to recant it, but after wards advanced it anew. Elipandus also, secure in his extreme age and in the protec tion of the Saracens, violently maintained it. It did not, however, gain many new _adherents and did not survive its immediate authors.