Catena (biblical commentary)

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The biblical text surrounded by a catena, in Minuscule 556

A catena (from Latin catena, a chain) is a form of biblical commentary, verse by verse, made up entirely of excerpts from earlier

Biblical commentators
, each introduced with the name of the author, and with such minor adjustments of words to allow the whole to form a continuous commentary.

The texts are mainly compiled from popular authors, but they often contain fragments of certain

patristic writings now otherwise lost.[1] It has been asserted by Faulhaber that half of all the commentaries on scripture composed by the church Fathers are now extant only in this form.[2]

History

The earliest Greek catena is ascribed to Procopius of Gaza, in the first part of the sixth century. Between the seventh and the tenth centuries Andreas Presbyter and Johannes Drungarius are the compilers of catenas to various Books of Scripture. Towards the end of the eleventh century Nicetas of Heraclea produces a great number of catenae. Both before and after, however, the makers of catenae were numerous in the Greek Orient, mostly anonymous, and offering no other indication of their personality than the manuscripts of their excerpts. Similar compilations were also made in the Syriac and Coptic Churches.[3]

In the West,

Lanfranc of Canterbury (d. 1089). The Western catenae have had less importance attached to them. The most famous of the medieval Latin compilations of this kind is that of Thomas Aquinas, generally known as the Catena aurea (Golden chain) and containing excerpts from some eighty Greek and Latin commentators on the Gospels.[4] Thomas composed the parts of his Catena aurea treating the gospels of Mark, Luke, and John while directing the Roman studium of the Dominican Order at the convent of Santa Sabina, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.[5]

Similar collections of Greek patristic utterances were constructed for dogmatic purposes. They were used at the

Seventh General Council in 787; and among the Greeks such compilations, like the exegetical catenae, did not cease until late in the Middle Ages. The oldest of these dogmatic compilations, attributed to the latter part of the seventh century, is the "Antiquorum Patrum doctrina de Verbi incarnatione".[6]

Finally, in response to homiletic and practical needs, there appeared, previous to the tenth century, a number of collections of moral sentences and paraenetic fragments, partly from Scripture and partly from the more famous ecclesiastical writers; sometimes one writer (e.g.

sigla
", contractions for proper names, and the frequency of transcription, led naturally to much confusion.

Printed editions

From the fifteenth century to the nineteenth, various catenas were published. However no modern editions exist, and there are severe textual problems in editing them.

Among the editors of Greek catenae was the Jesuit

Critici Sacri, sive clarissimorum virorum annotationes atque tractatus in biblia,[8]
containing selections, not only from Catholic but also from Protestant commentators.

An important collection of the Greek catenae on the New Testament is that of

Migne
commentary in his "Scripturae sacrae cursus completus" (Paris, 1840–45).

For the Byzantine collections of ethical sentences and proverbs of (

Krumbacher, pp. 600–4, also Elter, E. (1893), De Gnomologiorum Graecorum historia atque origine, Bonn{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
).

Online Catenas

Some websites host online versions of catenas, whether they be uploads of older books or original works. An example of a web original catena is CatenaBible.com, founded in 2015,[9] which provides commentary from both Church Fathers and more modern writers such as George Leo Haydock. Another example of an online version is the "e-Catena" of Peter Kirby on Early Christian Writings.[10]

Notes

  1. ^ Shahan (1913). Cf. Holl, Fragmente vornikänischer Kirchenväter, Leipzig, 1899.
  2. ^ Shahan (1913). See Catholic Encyclopedia article's bibliography listed in the reference section below.
  3. ^ Shahan (1913). Cites: Wright, de Lagarde, Martin, in Krumbacher, 216.
  4. ^ Shahan (1913). Cites: Ed. J. Nicolai, Paris, 1869, 3 vols.
  5. ^ Torrell, 161 ff.
  6. Loofs
    , Leontius von Byzanz, Leipzig, 1887.
  7. ^ Shahan (1913). Cites: Migne, Patrologia Graeca, XCV, 1040-1586; XCVI, 9-544.
  8. ^ Shahan (1913). Cites: Edited by Pearson, London, 1660; Amsterdam, 1695-1701
  9. ^ About Us - CatenaBible.com (accessed 9 Aug. 2022)
  10. ^ Kirby, Peter. "e-Catena." Early Christian Writings. 2022. 9 Aug. 2022

References

Attribution

External links
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