Catena aurea

Catena aurea

English	Golden chain
Author	Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P.
Contents	Patristic commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
Occasion	Compiled in connection with Urban IV; Matthew dedicated to that pope
Doctrinal standing	A Doctor's exegetical compilation; the Fathers cited have their own authority, not a new definition

The Catena aurea is Saint Thomas Aquinas's golden chain of excerpts from Greek and Latin Fathers, arranged as a continuous commentary on the four Gospels and dedicated, as to Matthew, to Pope Urban IV.

Theological status: Theological synthesis

A chain of the Fathers on the Gospels

A catena is a chain: excerpts from biblical commentators strung so as to form a continuous interpretation of a text. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia's article 'Catenae' identifies Saint Thomas's Catena aurea as the most famous medieval Latin compilation of this kind, containing excerpts from some eighty Greek and Latin commentators on the Gospels. The work is not Thomas's independent running gloss in his own voice. It is his memory and judgment used to let the Fathers speak in order.

The same Encyclopedia's life of Thomas records that the commentary on Matthew was dedicated to Urban IV, and that an English translation was edited by John Henry Newman in four volumes at Oxford between 1841 and 1845. Newman's edition is public-domain in the ordinary course of dates. It is a translation of a compilation, not a third inspired Gospel. The Latin title Catena aurea, golden chain, is the received name.

Method and sources

Thomas selects, arranges, and sometimes abridges. The art is in the sequence: a verse is followed by a series of patristic sentences that together yield a reading. Greek witnesses appear alongside Latin. The compilation therefore has value for the history of exegesis and, as the Encyclopedia notes of catenae generally, for fragments of otherwise lost patristic comment. It is not a critical edition in the modern sense. It is a thirteenth-century Dominican's working library made public.

Because the voices are many, the Catena cannot be cited as 'Aquinas holds' without looking at which Father is speaking. Thomas's own biblical lectures and the Summa remain the places to find his determination. The Catena shows what he thought worth chaining. That is already a theological act: a judgment of the tradition. It is not a substitute for the determination.

Dedication and later use

Urban IV's commission belongs to Thomas's years of service to the papal court. The Catena sits beside other works of that period in the older catalogues. Later Catholic preachers used it as a repertory of the Fathers on the Sunday Gospels. The Leonine project and modern catalogues keep it among the authentic works. Spurious chains should not be loaded onto this title.

The work's later prestige can mislead. A golden chain is still a chain of excerpts. A sentence of Augustine in the Catena has Augustine's authority, as received by Thomas's selection. A sentence of a lesser commentator has a lesser weight. The compilation does not flatten those differences. Readers who treat the Catena as a single oracle have missed its genre.

How to weigh a compilation

The Church honors Thomas as a Doctor. She does not make an anthology of the Fathers into a council. The Catena is a servant of Scripture and Tradition: it displays the Gospel interpreted by the Church's older teachers, as a thirteenth-century master could assemble them. When it helps a reader hear the Fathers, it has done its work. When it is used to skip the Gospel text or to skip Thomas's own questions, it has been misused.

Exact citation names the Gospel, the verse, and the Father quoted, and distinguishes the Catena from the Summa and from Thomas's literal expositions of Matthew and John. The golden chain is one book in a large corpus. It is among the most useful for preaching. It is among the easiest to mis-cite. Both facts belong on the same page.