The Council of Frankfurt, traditionally also the Council of Frankfort,[2][3] in 794 was called by Charlemagne, as a meeting of the important churchmen of the Frankish realm. Bishops and priests from Francia, Aquitaine, Italy, and Provence gathered in Franconofurd (now known as Frankfurt am Main). The synod, held in June 794, allowed the discussion and resolution of many central religious and political questions.
The chief concerns of the council were the Frankish response to the Adoptionist movement in Spain and the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which had been held by the Byzantine Empress Irene of Athens and had dealt with iconoclasm and with which Charlemagne took issue because no Frankish churchmen had been invited. Ultimately, the council condemned the Adoptionist heresy and revoked the Nicene Council's decrees regarding holy icons, condemning both iconodulism (veneration of icons) and iconoclasm (destruction of icons), "allowing that images could be useful educational devices, but denying that they were worthy of veneration."[4]
- ^ Lines 3–6 of a medieval manuscript, written in half uncial (upper two paragraphs) and Carolingian minuscule (lower paragraph): ...in suburbanis Moguntiae metropolitane civitatis regione Germanie in loco caelebri qui di(citu)r Franconofurd. (in a subsidiary community of the Metropolitanate of Mainz in the land of Germany in a well-known place, which is called Franconofurd)
- ^ "The Great Schism: The Estrangement of Eastern and Western Christendom". orthodoxinfo.com. Retrieved 2018-02-25.
- ^ "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Council of Frankfort". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2018-02-25.
- ^ McKitterick, Rosamond. The Early Middle Ages: Europe 400-1000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Page 189.