The Catena Aurea

Thomas Aquinas and his golden chain

Thomas was born about 1225 at Roccasecca, near Aquino in southern Italy. As a student at Naples he joined the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, a new order of friars founded to preach and to teach, against his family's wishes. He studied under Albert the Great, became a master of theology at Paris, and taught there and in Italy for the rest of his life. His best-known work, the Summa theologiae, is a vast account of Christian teaching that he left unfinished. He died on 7 March 1274 at the abbey of Fossanova, on his way to the Council of Lyon, not yet fifty. The Catholic Church honours him as a saint and a Doctor of the Church.

For a medieval master of theology the Bible was the first book, and Thomas lectured on books of both Testaments. From 1261 to 1265 he taught at Orvieto, in central Italy, where Pope Urban IV then held his court, and the pope asked him for an exposition of the Gospels drawn from the Fathers. Thomas finished Matthew, probably by 1264, and dedicated it to Urban. After the pope's death that October he went on with Mark, Luke and John, probably finishing them by about 1268, and dedicated them to Cardinal Annibaldo degli Annibaldi, a fellow Dominican and a friend. He seems to have called the work simply a continuous gloss; the name Catena Aurea, ‘the golden chain’, came from later readers.

A catena (Latin for ‘chain’) links passages from earlier interpreters in the order of a biblical book, so that each verse is followed by what the church's teachers have said about it. Greek Christians had been making such chains since about the sixth century. Thomas arranged the extracts so that one Father takes up where another leaves off and the whole reads almost as a single commentary, and he named the source of each. In his dedication to Urban he explains that he sometimes shortened a passage, changed its order, or gave its sense rather than its words, especially in Chrysostom's sermons, whose Latin translation was poor.

The voices come from East and West: Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Gregory the Great among the Latins; Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria among the Greeks; and later writers such as the English monk Bede, Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, Remigius of Auxerre and the Byzantine archbishop Theophylact, who wrote around 1100. From Origen in the third century to Theophylact the chain spans nearly nine hundred years, so ‘the Fathers’ here means the church's teachers in a broad sense. For the last three Gospels, Thomas says in his second dedication, he had more Greek commentaries put into Latin, and the app shows it: Theophylact, never quoted on Matthew, is among the voices heard most often in Mark, Luke and John. Notes headed Gloss come mostly from the standard notes in the margins of the medieval Latin Bible; some that cannot be traced may be Thomas's own linking words.

From Oxford into English

Six centuries later the Oxford Movement, begun in 1833 by John Henry Newman, John Keble, Edward Pusey and others, set out to recall the Church of England to the faith and worship of the early church, and began an English series of the Fathers. The Catena was translated in the same spirit and published at Oxford in four volumes, one for each Gospel, between 1841 and 1845.

The description of the edition the app uses names Newman as translator, with the year 1842; the app's credit calls him the editor, which is more exact: he wrote the preface, and much of the translating was done by younger Oxford men; the preface to the Mark volume, signed with his initials, thanks John Dobree Dalgairns of Exeter College for that volume. In October 1845, the year the last volume appeared, Newman was received into the Catholic Church. He became a cardinal in 1879 and was declared a saint in 2019.

The editors did more than translate. Where Thomas's wording strayed so far from a Father's that the sense was lost, they followed the Father's own text, and they said when they could not find a passage in the author's surviving works. They were frank about the names: the Mark volume warns that many passages there under Chrysostom's name are not his, and that those headed Jerome come from a commentary judged by all to be another man's. The app keeps the edition's labels: Pseudo-Chrysostom or Pseudo-Jerome for a work once credited to that Father, and ‘non occ.’ after a name when the passage could not be found.

The English in the app is the public-domain text in CrossWire's Bible library, prepared from the Oxford volumes and checked against scans of the original printing.

How the Fathers read Scripture

The Fathers read the Gospels as pastors and preachers, most of them bishops or monks explaining Scripture to their people. They believed that every word had been given by God for the church's salvation, and so they asked more of a passage than what it reported. In time the church summed up their way of reading as a teaching about the senses of Scripture. The literal sense is what the words say and the events they tell. On it rest the spiritual senses: the allegorical, in which what is told points to Christ and his church; the moral, sometimes called the tropological, in which it shows how to live; and the anagogical, in which it points to the life to come. A medieval rhyme put it briefly: the letter teaches what happened, allegory what to believe, the moral sense what to do, and anagogy where we are going.

They found this way of reading in the New Testament itself. On the road to Emmaus the risen Lord read the Law and the Prophets as speaking of him:

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself.

Luke 24:27

Paul says of Hagar and Sarah, "These things serve as illustrations" (Galatians 4:24), and of Israel's years in the wilderness, "these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us" (1 Corinthians 10:11). Origen of Alexandria, the boldest of them, gave the idea an image: "the historical sense is the body, the spiritual meaning is the soul" Catena, Matthew 23:29.

A single section often shows the senses side by side. On the gifts of the Magi a note from the Gloss first observes that gold and spices were what the Arabians had in plenty. Augustine then reads the gifts as a confession of who the child is: "Gold, as paid to a mighty King; frankincense, as offered to God; myrrh, as to one who is to die for the sins of all" Catena, Matthew 2:11. And Gregory the Great turns them toward the reader, who offers gold by shining with wisdom, frankincense by prayer, and myrrh "when we mortify by abstinence the lusts of the flesh" Catena, Matthew 2:11. On the daughter of Zion, Rabanus moves from the city on Mount Zion to the church "pertaining to the Jerusalem which is above" Catena, Matthew 21:5.

The best-known example is the good Samaritan. In the Catena on Luke 10 Augustine says that the man going down to Jericho "is taken for Adam himself, representing the race of man" Catena, Luke 10:30. Jerusalem is the heavenly country he fell from; Jericho, whose name he takes to mean the moon, is our mortal life; the robbers are the devil and his angels; the priest and the Levite are the Law and the Prophets, which could not heal; the Samaritan is Christ. A passage under Chrysostom's name adds, "For the Inn is the Church" Catena, Luke 10:34, and the two pence become the two covenants or the two commandments of love. Yet the section keeps its feet on the ground. Basil checks the map, and the section ends with the parable's plain lesson in Ambrose's words: "For relationship does not make a neighbor, but compassion" Catena, Luke 10:37.

Numbers drew the same attention. On the hundred and fifty-three fish of John 21, Augustine adds the seven of the Spirit to the ten of the Law, then adds up every number from one to seventeen, which makes a hundred and fifty-three: the number "represents all who partake of the grace of the Holy Spirit" Catena, John 21:11. Such readings seem strange because a modern reader asks first what the writer meant in his own time. The Fathers asked that too, but they were sure that the Spirit who gave Scripture meant more than any human writer could see, and that nothing in it was idle.

Not all the Fathers read alike. Chrysostom, trained at Antioch, keeps close to the plain sense and its lesson for life; Origen and Hilary, Bede and Rabanus look readily for a hidden meaning, and many of their paragraphs open with ‘Mystically’. Even the allegorists knew limits: of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field Augustine says, "The things instanced are not to be allegorized" Catena, Matthew 6:28. Thomas himself taught in the Summa theologiae that every spiritual sense rests on the literal, that doctrine may be argued from the literal sense alone, and that nothing needed for faith lies in a spiritual sense which Scripture does not state plainly somewhere else. Catholic and Orthodox teaching keeps the spiritual senses on that foundation; the Reformers held to the plain sense as the ground of doctrine and were wary of allegory, though they too read the Old Testament toward Christ.

What it is good for, and its limits

The Catena's first gift is its company. On almost any verse of the Gospels you hear many voices, Greek and Latin, bishops and monks, often answering one another. Most of them wrote before East and West parted, and all long before the Reformation, so Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians alike count them as teachers of the one church; the Reformers quoted them constantly, Calvin above all Augustine.

It is strongest where the Fathers were strongest, on the person of Christ and on the Trinity. They had defended the faith of Nicaea against Arius, who taught that the Son was a creature, and against Sabellius, who made Father, Son and Spirit one person under three names, and it shows in their comments. On the first verse of John, Chrysostom notes that John, "passing over the Conception, Nativity, education, and growth, speaks immediately of the Eternal Generation" Catena, John 1:1. On "I and the Father are one" Augustine says that both words count: "In that He says, one the Arian, in we are the Sabellian, is answered" Catena, John 10:30. Of the apostle Thomas's confession, Gregory the Great writes that he "saw the man, confessed the God" Catena, John 20:28. This is the faith of the Nicene Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon at work in reading Scripture (The Trinity; Truly God and truly man). And doctrine never stays on the page: Gregory goes on, "For he only really believes, who practices what he believes" Catena, John 20:29.

The Catena is also honest about disagreement. On "you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church" it gathers readings that later divided the churches. Chrysostom explains, "On this faith and confession I will build my Church" Catena, Matthew 16:18. Origen says that everyone who confesses Christ as Peter did is a rock, and Rabanus and the Gloss see in the keys a special primacy given to Peter. Augustine recalls that he had explained the rock both as Peter and as the Christ whom Peter confessed, and leaves the matter open: "Let the reader choose whether of these two opinions seems to him the more probable" Catena, Matthew 16:18. Catholic readers will find witnesses here to the teaching on Peter's office, and Orthodox and Protestant readers the readings of the rock as Peter's confession or as Christ himself that many of them hold; all can see the question weighed with care long before it divided anyone (How do Catholics and Protestants differ?).

Its limits are those of a medieval anthology. First, the names over the passages are not always right. On Matthew, Pseudo-Chrysostom is an unfinished Latin commentary that long passed as Chrysostom's and is now thought to be by an unknown writer of about the fifth century. On Mark, as the Oxford preface warns, many passages under Chrysostom's name are not his, and Pseudo-Jerome is someone else's commentary. A label ending ‘non occ.’ marks a passage the editors could not find, such as a saying on the bread of the Supper credited to Gregory: "whether we receive leavened or unleavened, we are made one body of the Lord our Saviour" Catena, Matthew 26:26. And because Thomas cut and condensed, an extract shows a Father's thought only in part; to know what he held, read him whole.

Second, the spiritual readings have to be weighed by the plain sense. The Samaritan as Christ and the fish as all who share the Spirit's grace teach true things, but those truths stand on other texts, not on the details of these stories. Some readings rest on what a Hebrew name was thought to mean, and the lists the Fathers used were not always right.

Third, the Fathers knew what their age knew. They had no modern study of the oldest manuscripts, of archaeology or of the ancient Near East, and the Latin writers read the Gospels in Latin. On questions of history, text or language a recent reference work will serve you better.

Fourth, it is a thirteenth-century Latin theologian's choice. It gathers many Greek Fathers, but arranges them as the Western church of Thomas's day read them, and its later Latin voices speak for that church: one note of the Gloss calls Peter "one principal Vicar of Christ" Catena, Matthew 16:19. On the Supper, Ambrose says that once Christ's words have been spoken "it is Christ's Body" Catena, Matthew 26:26, while Augustine, in the same section, says that in the sacraments "what is seen is one thing, what is understood is another" Catena, Matthew 26:26. Catholic and Orthodox Christians, who believe the bread becomes Christ's body, and Lutherans, who confess his body truly present, hear their faith in Ambrose; Reformed Christians have often appealed to Augustine. The same Fathers wrote both kinds of sentence, and each tradition reads them in its own way (What are baptism and the Lord's Supper?).

Fifth, it carries the hard words of its age. On the crowd's cry before Pilate, Jerome holds that the curse they called down rests on the Jews to this day, while Chrysostom adds that God did not ratify it and received those of them who repented (Catena, Matthew 27:25). Many churches today reject any idea of a curse resting on the Jewish people and remember the harm it has done.

Last, it covers only the four Gospels. For the rest of the Bible the app has Matthew Henry and, in most books, Wesley.

In this app

In the reader, tap a verse and a bar appears at the foot of the screen; tap Study and a sheet opens with four tabs: Original, Commentary, Cross-refs and Topics. In the four Gospels the Commentary tab offers Church Fathers between Matthew Henry and Wesley, and every verse has its section.

The Catena divides the Gospels into some eight hundred sections, four or five verses on average, and the tab shows the section that contains your verse under a heading such as Luke 10:29-37. The verses come first, marked ‘Ver.’, then the comments, each under its Father's name in bold. Some names carry a reference to the work quoted or a label described above, and ‘A Greek expositor’ stands where Thomas named no author. A section can be long; the one on the good Samaritan runs to more than fifty paragraphs.

The Korean app shows each comment first in the Korean translation, which renders every sentence and gives the verses and the Scripture quoted in the comments in the Korean Revised Version; a button shows the English original. It also has a page for each chapter's commentary, at addresses like /study/luk/10/, where the Catena follows Matthew Henry with the English folded under each section.

References inside the comments open the verse in the translation you are reading. The question essays and doctrine lessons quote the Fathers from the Catena, and a link there with a Father's name opens this tab at that verse. The comments also appear in search results under Commentary, and Offline reading in Settings can save the study data. Study sources gives the credit, and the name at the foot of each section links to the project that prepared the English text.

Reading it well

Read the Gospel first. Read the passage slowly and ask what it says before you open the Fathers; then let them show you what you missed. What a Commentary Is and How to Read One gives the general principles.

Find your verse in the section. The comments follow the verses in order and usually quote the words they explain, so you can see where each Father picks up the text.

Listen for the plain sense first. Usually someone, often Chrysostom or Theophylact, explains what is happening; the readings that begin ‘Mystically’, or simply ‘Or’, come after. Weigh a spiritual reading by Thomas's own rule: does Scripture teach plainly elsewhere what this reading draws from the passage? If so, receive it as a meditation on a truth you already hold; if it rests only on a name or a number, enjoy it lightly.

but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

1 Thessalonians 5:21

Notice who is speaking and when. A bishop of fourth-century Constantinople, a monk in eighth-century Northumbria and a twelfth-century note of the Gloss stand side by side; a Pseudo- before a name tells you that the real author is unknown.

Pray with them. Many of these comments were first preached in church, to ordinary believers. Take one sentence, such as Ambrose's on who is a neighbour, and carry it through the day.

Compare other voices. Matthew Henry, an English Nonconformist of three centuries ago, reads the good Samaritan first as a lesson in loving one's neighbour and then, more briefly, as a picture of Christ's mercy: "We were like this poor, distressed traveller" Matthew Henry, Luke 10:30. The old reading lives on in him, held more lightly (Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary; Wesley's Explanatory Notes). The Cross-refs and Original tabs fill in the passages and the Greek words the Fathers touch on (STEPBible's Original-Language Data). Read this way, the Catena lets you hear the Gospel with the whole church listening.