The subject was not a new one among the Franks. They had held a mixed assembly of clergy and laity under Karl’s father in 767. There were present representatives of the then Pope, Paul I, and the iconoclast Emperor Constantine; and it is supposed that the decision, which is not recorded, was in accordance with the national feeling. That national feeling was guided by abhorrence of the abominations of the idol-worship of the pagans by whom they were surrounded. Karl himself strongly shared this feeling. He sent the decrees, which the Pope had sent to him, to Alcuin, who, as we have seen, was then in England. Alcuin made remarks on them in a letter, out of which grew a treatise in four books called the _Libri Carolini_, the chief author of which was Alcuin, who was no doubt assisted by other ecclesiastics. Probably Karl himself kept his hand upon the work up to the time of its publication. The general line of the treatise is that images are useful for ornament and historical remembrance, and therefore they must not be destroyed; but worship of them must not be required. We must bear in mind that the word image means any kind of representation, the Nicaean Council of 787, as we have seen, specifying paintings and mosaics. One of the points on which these Caroline Books condemn the iconoclasts is, that they do not distinguish between images and idols; but this is a less grave mistake, the Caroline Books declare, than that committed by the Nicaean Council, in confusing the use of images with the worship of them. The former error is attributed to ignorance; the latter—it was a severe remark considering that the Pope had forwarded the decrees—is attributed to wickedness. It may be well, in this connexion, to recall the fact that the _imago_, the image of our Lord, which was carried in procession by Augustine and his monks at their interview with Ethelbert of Kent, was not an idol, but a painting on a tablet[171]. We of the Church of England keep this meaning of _imago_, in the allowance of paintings and mosaics in our churches, quite separate from the idea of an idol, which we disallow.