Catena (biblical commentary)

[4] In the West, Primasius of Adrumentum in the former Roman province of Africa in the sixth century compiled the first catena from Latin commentators.

The oldest of these dogmatic compilations, attributed to the latter part of the seventh century, is the "Antiquorum Patrum doctrina de Verbi incarnatione".

[7] 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. Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, especially John Chrysostom whom all the catenae-makers pillage freely) furnishes the material.

They seem all to depend on an ancient Christian "Florilegium" of the sixth century, that treated, in three books, of God, Man, the Virtues and Vices, and was known as τὰ ἱερά (Sacred Things).

Before long its material was recast in strict alphabetical order; took the name of τὰ ἱερὰ παράλληλα, "Sacra Parallela" (because in the third book a virtue and a vice had been regularly opposed to one another); and was attributed widely to John Damascene,[8] whose authority was defended (against Loofs, Wendland, and Cohn) by K. Holl in the above-mentioned "Fragmente vornikänischer Kirchenväter" (Leipzig, 1899), though the Damascene probably based his work on the "Capita theologica" of Maximus Confessor.

The text of these ancient compilations is often in a dubious state, and the authors of most of them are unknown; one of the principal difficulties in their use is the uncertainty concerning the correctness of the names to which the excerpts are attributed.

That said, the Catena Aurea requested by Pope Urban IV and written by Saint Thomas Aquinas in 1263ff has been translated several times.

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