Authorship
The work begins, "In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ beginneth the work of the most illustrious and glorious man Charles, by the will of God, king of the Franks, Gauls, Germany, Italy, neighboring provinces, with the assistance of the king, against the Synod which in Greek parts firmly and proudly decreed in favour of adoring (''adorandis'') images recklessly and arrogantly," followed immediately by what is called "Charlemagne's Preface". However, it is unlikely that Charlemagne wrote any of the books himself,Examination of the Caroline BooksContents
According to the ''Libri Carolini'', images may be used as ecclesiastical ornaments, for purposes of instruction, and in memory of past events. It is foolish, however, to burn incense before them and to use lights, though it is quite wrong to cast them out of the churches and destroy them. It used to be supposed that the work failed to appreciate the distinction made at the Second Council of Nicaea between the ''veneration and worship'' reserved to God alone and the ''veneration of honour'' to be paid to images. There was indeed one passage in the Acts of Nicaea which had been mistranslated as confusing the two; and this passage is duly pilloried in the ''Libri''. But other passages in the ''Libri'' show awareness that Nicaea made this distinction, e.g. at III. 27, which paraphrases Nicaea as saying that ''We do not adore images as God nor do we pay them divine worship''. But the ''Libri'' argue that the distinction made at Nicaea between ''worship'' and ''honour'' does not justify praying to images or attributing miraculous powers to them, as Nicaea had claimed. The text points out that the patristic passages cited by Hadrian in support of his position expressed approval of images as a catechetical aid but not of their veneration; it argues forcibly (at III. 17) that it was absurd to require the veneration of images, when generations of martyrs and holy monks had not venerated them; the veneration of images was not to be put on a par with faith. The ''Libri'' show a better understanding of the Fathers of the golden patristic age (fourth and fifth centuries) than both the iconophiles (who wrongly claimed that the Fathers upheld the veneration of images) and the iconoclasts (who wrongly claimed that the Fathers disapproved of the making of images). The old charge that the Franks were misled by a bad translation and failed to appreciate the subtleties of Byzantine theology has therefore been abandoned in sound recent scholarship (e.g. by Thümmel and Auzépy, see Price, listed below, 69-70). In arguing against Pope Hadrian the ''Libri'' also appealed to a letter by Gregory the Great (''Registrum'' XI. 10) that had argued that ''Pictures are placed in churches not to be adored but purely to instruct the minds of the ignorant.'' It was therefore able to claim that Hadrian in defending Nicaea II was betraying the true tradition of the Roman Church. The contents were interpreted byEditions
* Freeman, Ann, with Paul Meyvaert. ''Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (Libri Carolini)'', Hannover 1998In English translation
* Partial English translation: Caecilia Davis-Weyer, ed. ''Early Medieval Art 300-1150: Sources and Documents'' (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), pp. 100–103.References
Further reading
* Chazelle, Celia. "Matter, Spirit, and Image in the ''Libri Carolini''." ''Recherches Augustiniennes 21 (1986): 163-184. * Chazelle, Celia. "Images, Scripture, the Church, and the Libri Carolini." In ''Proceedings of the PMR Conference'' 16/17 (1992-1993): 53-76. * Freeman, Ann. "Theodulf of Orleans and the Libri Carolini." ''Speculum'' 32, no. 4 (Oct. 1957): 663-705. * Freeman, Ann. "Further Studies in the Libri Carolini, I and II." ''Speculum'' 40, no. 2 (1965): 203-289. * Freeman, Ann. "Further Studies in the Libri Carolini III." ''Speculum'' 46, no. 4 (1971): 597-612. * Freeman, Ann. "Carolingian Orthodoxy and the Fate of the Libri Carolini." ''Viator'' 16 (1985): 65-108. * Froehlich, K. "The ''Libri Carolini'' and the Lessons of the Iconoclastic Controversy." In ''The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary. Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue'', eds. H. G. Anderson, J. F. Stafford, and J. A. Burgess, 193-208. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. * Gero, Stephen. “The Libri Carolini and the Image Controversy.” ''Greek Orthodox Theological Review'' 18 (1975): 7-34. * Noble, Thomas F.X. "Tradition and Learning in Search of Ideology: The Libri Carolini." In ''The Gentle Voices of Teachers: Aspects of Learning in the Carolingian Age'', ed. Richard E. Sullivan, 227-260. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1995. * Noble, Thomas F. X. ''Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009 (esp. pp.158-243). * Schade, H. "Die Libri Carolini und ihre Stellung zum Bild." '' Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie'' 79 (1957): 69-78. * Ommundsen, Aslaug. "The Liberal Arts and the Polemical Strategy of the ''Opus Caroli Regis Contra Synodum (Libri Carolini)''." ''Symbolae Osloensis'' 77 (2002): 175-200. * Schaff, Philip. "History of the Christian Church, Volume IV, Mediaeval Christianity." * Price, Richard, ''The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787)'' (Liverpool, 2018), 65-74.External links