An angry book of controversy was composed and published in the name of Charlemagne: [82] under his authority a synod of three hundred bishops was assembled at Frankfort: [83] they blamed the fury of the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe censure against the superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their pretended council, which was long despised by the Barbarians of the West.

[84] Among them the worship of images advanced with a silent and insensible progress; but a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the reformation, and of the countries, both in Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of superstition.
[Footnote 77: The remaining history of images, from Irene to Theodora, is collected, for the Catholics, by Baronius and Pagi, (A.D.

780-840.) Natalis Alexander, (Hist.

N.T.seculum viii.

Panoplia adversus Haereticos p.