The collection belongs to the group of pseudo-Isidorian forgeries that includes the false decretals ascribed to Isidorus Mercator, the so-called Capitula Angilramni, and a series of reworked extracts from the Council of Chalcedon.
Both the subject matter and the sources employed by the forged capitularies show that they were composed in the western part of the Frankish empire, in the archiepiscopal province of Reims, and not at Mainz.
It has long been noted, for example, that several of the forged capitula attack the chorepiscopate, and ninth-century opposition to chorbishops was particularly strong in the western Carolingian empire.
This relationship is reversed, however, in the final section of Benedictus Levita, where the capitula appear to use Pseudo-Isidore's false decretals as a source.
Three other writings precede the first book; a prologue in verse, a preface in prose which treats of the origin and contents of the collection, and the aforesaid metrical panegyric on the rulers of the Carolingian line; beginning with Pepin and Carloman and ending with the sons of Louis the Pious.
Four supplementary writings (additamenta) are annexed to the last book; (I) The Aachen capitulary of 817 concerning the monasteries; (II) the report of the bishops (August, 829) to the Emperor Louis the Pious; (III) a few genuine capitularies and a large number of forged ones, just as in the main body of the collection; (IV) a large number (170) of extracts taken from various sources, among which are also forgeries of the Pseudo-Isidore.
The collection is found complete in Étienne Baluze, Capitularia regum Francorum (Paris, 1677), I, col. 801-1232, and in Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Leges, II (Hanover, 1837), 2, 39-158 (cf.