Synod of Frankfurt 794

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Mention of Frankfurt as Franconofurd in the Sacro syllabus of Paulinus of Aquileia from the year 794

The Synod of Frankfurt in 794 was an assembly of important church representatives of the Frankish Empire - bishops and priests from the Franconian Empire, Aquitaine , Italy and Provence - in Franconofurd , later Frankfurt am Main , initiated by Charlemagne . The Synod , which met in June 794, served to discuss and negotiate several central spiritual and political questions.

This synod was also intended as a Frankish response to the Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea , which had been organized by the Byzantine Empress Irene and which, among other things, dealt with the iconoclast . Because no Frankish church representative had been invited to Nicaea , Charlemagne, king of the Frankish Empire since 768, felt compelled to take this step, as he, as the most powerful ruler of the West and de facto ruler of papal politics, was ignored like a subordinate barbarian king .

Contemporary history background

A renewed campaign by Charlemagne against the Avars , which had been preparing against the Franks on the Danube with the Duchy of Baiern on the Danube , had been prepared for by Charlemagne in 792 , but failed in the late summer of 793 due to foreign political circumstances and weather conditions (→ Avars War ) . The canal between the Altmühl and Swabian Rezat rivers - the Fossa Carolina , also known as the "Karlsgraben" - was not used for this purpose. It is believed that the heavy rainfall of 793 had made the construction work more difficult, and Karl also saw greater need for action against the Saxon uprisings, which were intensifying again at the same time in the north of the Franconian Empire . In addition, the rains in the Franconian Empire had caused crop failures, so that famine threatened the empire , which also made royal action necessary.

The king and his court went to the Franconian Rezat , Regnitz and Main to Würzburg and spent Christmas there in 793. They then traveled downstream on the Main to an imperial estate at what would later become Frankfurt to winter there. The choice of location for a conference to discuss current political and religious issues had already been made in the local royal palace . For this event, Charlemagne avoided the Palatinate in Worms am Rhein (→ Diocese of Worms ), which was also in question, as well as the Ingelheim Palatinate , which is also located on the Rhine , as he feared the influence of local clergy and nobility there.

Attendees

The participants in the Frankfurt Synod included, among others, Paulinus II , Patriarch of Aquileia , Peter, Archbishop of Milan , the Benedictine abbot Benedict of Aniane , Carolingian reformer, the abbot Smaragd of Saint-Mihiel and several bishops from England , Gaul and Aquitaine the Spanish mark , the county of Roussillon and from the lower Languedoc . Theophylactus and Stephen of Rome took part as representatives of Pope Hadrian I and the bearer of his epistula dogmatica . The French church historian Emile Amann counts the Synod of Frankfurt among the “most decisive church assemblies of the whole church”.

Topics and results

The topics and items to be negotiated at the Frankfurt Synod of 794 were arranged in a total of 56 points called “chapters”, each with a different theological, political and legal weight. Historical research assigns the greatest historical importance to the first five points of this “agenda”:

  1. Discussion of the christological doctrine of adoptianism which originated in Spain . This denomination, which was unanimously condemned as heresy at the synod , was decisively influenced by the then bishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain, Elipandus of Toledo (717 - approx. 800) and by the Catalan bishop Felix von Urgell (also Félix de Urgel and Felix D'Urgell , bishop of the diocese of La Seu d'Urgell from 783 to 792 and from 798 to 799). Both Elipandus and Felix von Urgell had already been condemned at the Synod of Regensburg in 792 for this faith, which the Carolingians classified as heresy, but they continued to represent it. In its resolution, the Synod of 794 referred to the decisions of previous councils, especially those of the Council of Christ of Chalcedon , which in 451 had already advocated the "pure doctrine of the God-humanity of the Redeemer" in patristic tradition. In the course of the condemnation of adoptianism, the filioque was also added to the creed.
  2. Confrontation with the Byzantine iconoclasm . The resolutions of the Council of Nicaea led to the settlement of the iconoclasm between the Pope and the Byzantine emperor. The results of the Frankfurt Synod were the rejection of the resolutions in Nicaea, although Karl, like Byzantium previously in the resolution of Nicaea, wanted to see the worship of the icons expressly permitted. The rejection was based on the loss of prestige that Charles had to accept because he had not been invited to the Council of Nicaea. Therefore he saw the council as not ecumenical . The synod had before the synod a memorandum on the subject of image worship , which had been prepared by Frankish theologians on behalf of Charlemagne on the occasion of the Byzantine iconoclasm, the Libri Carolini . Since the Pope had to take into account both Byzantium and the Frankish Empire in his decision, he allowed the resolutions of Nicaea to remain, but only approved them with reservations. In the chapter summarizing the results of the Frankfurt Synod , the rejection of the worship of images is formulated as "completely" and "unanimously".
  3. Final fall of Tassilo III. , the last Agilolfingian Duke of Bavaria. As early as 763, the Duke had refused to support the Frankish King Pippin the Younger in the campaign against Aquitaine , thus breaking his vassal oath. In 787 he did not appear for Charlemagne's court day in Worms . Tassilo was first sentenced to death by Karl for these serious offenses on the following farm day in Ingelheim am Rhein in 788 and was later pardoned for exile in the monastery. He had to travel to Frankfurt from exile in the French Abbey of Jumièges and appear before the Synod of 794 to make atonement again . The deposed duke asked Charlemagne for his earlier resistance against him and for his pacts with the Lombards for mercy. Tassilo renounced all his sovereignty rights as well as all personal property and was sent back into monastic exile, where he died in 796. His humiliation at the Synod of 794 sealed the Carolingian rule over the Duchy of Bavaria.
  4. Determination of the prices for grain and bread in the Franconian Empire in order to limit their inflation. This chapter also emphasizes the responsibility of all feudal lords to ensure that their dependents do not go hungry. This decree is interpreted as Charlemagne's reaction to the bad harvests of 793.
  5. Edict on the recently introduced Carolingian coin reform , which prescribes this as binding. The reports on the Frankfurt Synod (cf. MGH, Cap. I, p. 74, Synodus Franconofurtensis ) show that new silver denarii with the monogram of Charlemagne should be minted everywhere in the empire. That is why the Carolingian coin reform and the creation of the Karl pound are dated to the years 793 and 794.
Front and back of a denarius of Charlemagne as struck since 793, with the "Carolus" monogram in the middle (right)

The 51 chapters that follow these first five deal with, among other things, synodal letters to several Spanish bishops on various topics, with the prohibition of the collection of admission fees by monasteries and other canonical decisions as well as with tax law details such as the collection of tithes .

The results of the Synod of 794 were in the form of in Medieval Latin written Kapitulars summarized handwritten and documented. The synod's capitular - also known as the Frankfurt capital - has not been preserved in its original form. However, there are handwritten copies from the late 9th century as well as from the 10th and 11th centuries. Two of them are in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. They are written in the Carolingian minuscule font that was developed during the reign of Charlemagne towards the end of the 8th century . It is not certain whether the original of the chapter was designed in this script; However, due to the historical development of this written form and its distribution in the Franconian Empire, this assumption seems obvious.

various

  • The synod probably took place in a predecessor building from the 7th century on what was later to be named the cathedral hill - as the royal palace in Frankfurt, which in the past was often ascribed to Charlemagne , was only built by his son, Ludwig the Pious, around 822 . This visit by Charlemagne in Franconofurd was the reason for the first documentary mention of the city - in a royal document for the synod of February 22nd, 794 for the Regensburg monastery of St. Emmeram . In the document written in Latin it says: "[...] actum super fluvium Moin in loco nuncupante Franconofurd" - "given (exhibited) on the river Main in a place called Frankfurt."
  • Charlemagne stayed in Frankfurt am Main for a total of about seven months. He used his stay for the judiciary, had theological reports and certificates drawn up. Several historical yearbooks ( annals ) report that he celebrated Easter there with his court.
  • Fastrada , the fourth wife of Charlemagne , died on August 10, 794, during her stay in Frankfurt . She was buried in the Alban basilica in Magontia , later the city of Mainz .

literature

  • Emile Amann: L'Epoche carolingienne, in: Fliche-Martin: L'Histoire de l'Eglise. Standard work on church history, Vol. 6, Paris 1941.
  • Johannes Fried , Rainer Koch, Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jelsch, Andreas Tiegel (eds.): 794 - Charlemagne in Frankfurt am Main: a king at work. Exhibition for the 1200th anniversary of the city of Frankfurt am Main. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1994. ISBN 3-7995-1204-7 .
  • Wolfgang Braunfels : Charlemagne in self-testimonies and image documents (= Rowohlt's monographs. Vol. 187). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1972, ISBN 3-4995-0187-2 .
  • Ernst Mack: From the Stone Age to the Staufer City: the early history of Frankfurt am Main. Verlag Josef Knecht, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-7820-0685-2 . In it: Chapter The Great Hour (794), pp. 106–118

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lines 3–6 of the document written in Middle Latin, written in semi-uncial (upper two thirds of the text) and in Carolingian minuscule (lower third): “[…] in suburbanis Moguntiae metropolitane civitatis regione Germanie in loco caelebri qui di (itu) r Franconofurd " - German:" [...] in a suburb of the metropolis Mainz [in] the region of Germania, at the famous place called Frankfurt. "
  2. ↑ a b Ernst Mack: From the Stone Age to the Staufer City: the early history of Frankfurt am Main, p. 107 f.
  3. ↑ Ernst Mack: From the Stone Age to the Staufer City: the early history of Frankfurt am Main, p. 108 f.
  4. ↑ a b Wolter: Frankfurt am Main as a place for Christian-occidental encounters, p. 14 f.
  5. ↑ Emile Amann: L'Histoire de l'Eglise, p. 142. emphasis added.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f 794 - Charlemagne in Frankfurt , pp. 46–48: Chapter on the importance of the Frankfurt chapter
  7. ↑ a b Wolfgang Braunfels: Karl der Große, p. 76
  8. ↑ a b c 794 - Charlemagne in Frankfurt , chapter p. 19 ff .: The Frankfurt chapter
  9. ^ Johann Mair: On the way to the schism: The Aachen Synod 809 and the filioque. 2012, p. 9
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Braunfels: Karl der Große, P. 49 ff .: Chapter Tassilo's submission
  11. ↑ 794 - Charlemagne in Frankfurt , p. 8 ff., P. 49
  12. ↑ 794 - Charlemagne in Frankfurt, p. 7
  13. ↑ Quoted from Ernst Mack: From the Stone Age to the Staufer City: the early history of Frankfurt am Main, p. 109
  14. ↑ 794 - Charlemagne in Frankfurt, p. 25
  15. ↑ Ernst Mack: From the Stone Age to the Staufer City: the early history of Frankfurt am Main, p. 109
  16. ↑ 794 - Charlemagne in Frankfurt , p. 37