As soon as the capitulary was composed, it was sent to the various functionaries of the Frankish Empire, archbishops, bishops, missi dominici and counts, a copy being kept by the chancellor in the archives of the palace.
[2] Such capitularies make provisions of a varied nature: it was necessary at an early date to classify them into chapters according to the subject.
This collection soon acquired official status: after 829 Louis the Pious refers to it, citing book and section.
[2][3] New capitularies were naturally promulgated after 827, and so it was that by 858 there had appeared a second collection in three books, compiled by an author calling himself Benedictus Levita.
However, the author not only included prescriptions from the capitularies, but introduced other documents into his collection: fragments of Roman laws, canons of the Church councils and especially spurious provisions very similar in character to those of the same date found in the False Decretals.
In 1677 he brought out the Capitularia regum francorum, in two folio volumes, in which he published first the capitularies of the Merovingian kings, then those of Pepin the Short, of Charles and of Louis the Pious, which he had found complete in various manuscripts.
For works after 840, he also published as supplements the unreliable collection of Ansegisus and Benedictus Levita, with warning about the untrustworthy character of the latter.
A fresh revision was required, and the editors of the Monumenta decided to reissue it in their quarto series, entrusting the work to Dr Alfred Boretius.
Boretius, whose health had been ruined by overwork, was unable to finish the project, which was continued by Victor Krause.
Frequently we have only the proposition made by the king to the committee, capitula tractanda cum comitibus, episcopis, et abbatibus, and not the final form which was adopted.
[6] With the capitularies have been incorporated various documents; for instance, the rules to be observed in administering the king's private domain (the celebrated Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii, which is doubtless a collection of the instructions sent at various times to the agents of these domains); the partitions of the kingdom among the king's sons, as the Divisio regnorum of 806, or the Ordinatio imperii of 817; the oaths of peace and brotherhood which were taken on various occasions by the sons of Louis the Pious, etc.
Henceforth the kings only regulated private interests by charters; it was not until the reign of Philip Augustus that general provisions again appeared, but when they did so they bore the name "ordinances" (ordonnances).