208 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINadopting his human nature. This terminology was criticised by an
Asturian monk called Beatus, the probable author of a commentary
on the Apocalypse, and by his friend Etherius, subsequently Bishop
of Osma. In October 785 Elipandus wrote to their superior, Abbot
Fidelis of the monastery of San Torribio at Liebana, urging him to
suppress their criticism, but this instead led to their composing a
treatise denouncing the Bishop of Toledo's errors.^57
The controversy rapidly spread. It quickly became known at Rome,
for when Hadrian I wrote to the Spanish bishops in approval of their
condemnation of Migetius he also upbraided Elipandus for his
Christological ideas, bur without effect. Here the matter might have
rested but for the approval given in 792 to the controversial teaching
by Felix, Bishop of Urgell in the Pyrenees, a town then in Frankish
hands. In view of the prior papal condemnation, Felix was summoned
to Charlemagne's court at Ratisbon to be lectured on the error of his
beliefs by Bishop Paulinus of Aquileia. Having then recanted, he was
sent to Rome, where being kept a virtual prisoner, he was made to
sign a confession of faith. Not surprisingly, once permitted to return
to his see, Felix took refuge in Muslim Spain and revoked his previ-
ous recantation. In 794 Charlemagne summoned a great ecclesiasti-
cal council to Frankfurt, which bishops from Italy and the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms also attended. This gathering produced two lengthy and
detailed condemnations of the Christological teachings of Elipandus
and his friend Felix. Charlemagne, who had previously been admon-
ished by the Bishop of Toledo to beware the example of Constantine
the Great, who had fallen into heresy in his final years, sent the two
treatises together with a covering letter into Spain.^58 A further, though
less intellectually impressive, condemnation was produced by a synod
held by Pope Leo III in St Peter's in Rome in 798, but neither these
councils nor an exchange of letters between Elipandus and Charle-
magne's adviser Alcuin had any effect upon the Spanish Church.
Felix ofUrgell's fate was different. Having returned to his see, he was
removed to Aachen and forced once again to denounce his own views
after a theological debate with Alcuin. However he was not this time
allowed to return to Spain and ended his life in 818 confined in a
monastery in Lyon. After his death Agobard, the Archbishop of Lyon,
claimed to have found amongst his papers a treatise by the incor-
rigible Felix once more setting out his support for Adoptionism.
Inside Spain, Elipandus's Adoptionist terminology seems, apart from
the reactions of Beatus and Etherius, to have generated remarkably