Caroline Books

CAROLINE BOOKS

Origin of the Caroline Books (� 1).
Manuscripts and Editions (� 2).
Problem of Authorship (� 3).
The Work Sent to Pope Adrian (� 4).
Relation of Original Work to Larger Recension (�5).
Book I. (� 6).
Book II. (� 7).
Book III. (� 8).
Book IV. (� 9).
Characterisation of the Caroline Books (� 10).
Importance of the Work (� 11).
Theological Standpoint (� 12).
Later Influence of the Caroline Books (� 13).

1. Origin of the Caroline Books.

"Caroline books" is the name given to a criticism of the proceedings of the Second Council of Nicaea. (787), which appeared under the name of Charlemagne toward the end of the eighth century. The acts of the council had been sent to Charlemagne in a very imperfect Latin version. Already displeased with the attitude of the Byzantine court and the equivocal policy of Pope Adrian I., he took occasion to have the whole question of the iconoclastic controversy and of the validity of the council's action discussed by his theologians, and sent on the report of its proceedings to King Offa in England, with a request for the opinion of his bishops. Alcuin, then in England, drew up their reply, and brought it to Charlemagne. It has been lost, and thus it is not now known in what relation it stands to the work which the emperor caused to be written about the same time (790 or noon after), and promulgated as having the assent of the bishops of his realm, under the title Opus inlustrissimi et excellentissimi seu spectabilis viri Caroli, nutu Dei regis Francorum . . . contra Synodum, quae in partibus Graeciae pro adorandis imaginibus stolide et arroganter gesta est.

2. Manuscripts and Editions

The work, whose contents and spirit are sufficiently indicated by this title, consists of four books containing 120 chapters. It is preserved in two manuscripts, the Codex Parisinus and the Codex Vaticanus, the latter somewhat defective and apparently dating from the beginning of the tenth century. Two more were known in the sixteenth century, but have since been lost. One was said then to be extant in Rome, and a chapter from it was quoted by Steuchi, the papal librarian, in a polemical work against Laurentius Valla. The other, then extant in France, was the basis of the editio princeps of 1549, printed probably in Paris and edited by Jean du Tillet, later bishop of St. Brieux and of Meaux. This edition, which the subsequent ones followed, was used by the Protestants (Flacius, Calvin, Chemnitz, and others) in their attacks on the Roman Catholic Church, and, therefore, put on the Index by the popes from 1564, which accounts for its rarity. Of the subsequent editions the best is that published by Heumann in 1731, which makes use of all the materials at his command and gives the introductions and notes of previous editors. The less perfect edition of Goldast (1608) is followed in MPL, xcviii.

The authenticity of the work was denied by many of the older Roman Catholic theologians, such as Surius (who thought it a sixteenth-century forgery), Bellarmine, Suarez, Baronius, and as

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