Frutolf was possibly a teacher of the quadrivium in the monastery, but principally a librarian and manuscript copyist.
His "Chronicle of the World" (Chronica) is among the most complete and best-organised of the early Middle Ages.
An unedited liturgical treatise entitled De officiis divinis (On the divine offices) survives in Frutolf's own hand in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.
He may also have written De rhithmomachie, a work concerning a popular medieval mathematical and strategy based board game.
He developed a critical view of history and awareness of anachronism, among other things pointing out that "some songs as 'vulgar fables' made Theoderic the Great, Attila and Ermanaric into contemporaries, when any reader of Jordanes knew that this was not the case".