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A.D.
825.
It is
curious that besides the Caroline Books and the second canon of Frankfort,
another matter of great difficulty springs up with regard to the subject of the
authority of the Seventh Synod. In 1596 there appeared what claims to be an
ancient account of a convention of bishops in Paris in the year 824.[1] The
point in which this interests us is that the bishops at this meeting are
supposed to have condemned the Seventh Council, and to have approved the
Caroline books. The whole story was rejected by Cardinal Bellarmine and he
promptly wrote a refutation. Sismondi accepted this view of the matter, and
Labbe has excluded the pretended proceedings from his "Concilia"
altogether.
But
while scholars are agreed that the assigned date is impossible and that it must
be 825, they have usually accepted the facts as true, I need not mention others
than such widely differing authors as Fleury (Hist. Eccles., Lib, xlvij. iv.),
Roisselet de Sauclieres (Hist. Chronol., Tome III., No. 792, p. 385), and
Hefele (Concilien, 425).
It
would be the height of presumption were I to express any opinion upon this most
disputed point, the reader will find the whole matter at length in Walch (Bd.
XI., S. 135, 139). I only here note that if the account be genuine, then it is
an established fact that as late as 825, an assembly of bishops rejected an
Ecumenical Council accepted by the pope, and further charged the Supreme
Pontiff with having "commanded men to adore superstitiously images (quod
superstitiose eas adorare jussit)," and asked the reigning Pontiff to
correct the errors of his predecessors, and all this without any reproof from
the Holy See!
Hefele
points out also that they not only entirely misrepresent the teaching of
Hadrian and the Seventh Council, but that they also cite a passage from St.
Augustine, "which teaches exactly the opposite of that which this synod
would make out, for the passage says that the word colere can be applied to
men."
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