BIBLICAL CHAINS. - A title, neither original nor appropriate, given to commentaries on the Bible formed from extracts from various authors. The first compilers called them more fittingly in Greek ἐλλογάς, συναγωγή ἐξέχθασαν, παραγραφαί, in Latin excerpta or collectanea. This genre of writings arises after a period of intense production, when to the human mind, almost weary of creating, the harvest for an easy gathering offers itself abundantly. The first exegetical chains thus appeared toward the end of the patristic age, and they had their greatest flourishing, and particular importance for ecclesiastical literature, among the Greeks.
I. GREEK BIBLICAL CHAINS
The first and most illustrious author of biblical c. in the Greek language is the rhetorician Procopius (v.), of Gaza in Palestine (first thirty years of the 6th century). He commented in the aforementioned manner the Octateuch, the books of Kings, Isaiah, the 3 books attributed to Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs). Of the Octateuch, on account of the size of the work, he himself made a compendium, thus giving the example of a genre akin to the c. properly so called (partial ed. in PG 87; his program ibid., 21). Of those who followed in his footsteps, the most worthy of remembrance for fecundity and breadth of work is Nicetas, metropolitan of Heraclea in Thrace (11th century), who composed c. on Job, the Psalms, the Major Prophets, the Gospels, the Letters of St. Paul. Lesser lights are a Philotheus (7th century?), Andrew the priest (8th century?), John Drungarius (9th century), Polycronius the deacon (9th century?), Nicholas of Muzalon (12th century), Macarius Chrysokephalos. Most of the manuscripts (they number in the hundreds) are anonymous; and moreover, more than the name of the compiler, what matters is to know the internal composition.
As regards material arrangement, the biblical c. are distinguished into four classes: 1st, corona: in the middle of the page (or folio) stands the biblical text, and all around are arrayed the commentaries; this is the most grandiose and elegant form; 2nd, column: text and commentary stand facing each other in two symmetrical columns; 3rd, alternating: the text, divided into short passages and marked with repeated quotation marks in the margin, is followed by the commentary without interruption across the whole width of the page; 4th, marginal: on the margins of a codex that contained only the text, the explanations of the Fathers on the more difficult or important points are added; this is the lowest class, of little or no use.
As regards the number of authors excerpted, one observes, after Procopius, an evolution; at first only two are chosen (three at most), one of the Antiochene school and the other of the Alexandrian, so as to let the two senses be heard, the literal and the mystical; then the number gradually increases, drawing from every side without distinction; finally the very bulk of the work, grown thus like an avalanche, induces recourse to abridgements, not so much of the series of authors as of their extracts.
Capital importance, moreover, for drawing from the c. all the benefit we can hope for from them, attaches to their behavior with respect to the names of the authors excerpted and to their text. The best and most accurate indicate the author at the beginning of each extract, mostly in red and in large characters, but also with abbreviations that can give rise to misunderstandings. With the passage of time compilers and copyists were gradually less diligent, to the point of omitting the names altogether, creating for the scholar difficulties of identification and verification. As for the text, in order to set an extract into the series of the c. some adjustment of form may be necessary at the beginning and at the end. But compilers are not always content with that: some patch up in their own way, without need, the words of the cited author, muddying the pure waters of tradition.
In short, to extract from the immense and confused mass of the Greek c. sound and lasting fruits, they must first be well sifted. First of all the various c. on the same biblical book must be classified, and for this work the ground has already been cleared for the whole Bible by G. Karo and J. Lietzmann, for a great part of the Old Testament by M. (now Cardinal) Faulhaber, for the Gospels by J. Sickenberger and J. Reuss, for the Letters of St. Paul by K. Staab, all Catholics except the first two. Then each class, each type, duly reconstructed on the comparison of the copies that have come down to us, must be exactly evaluated as to its skill and fidelity in transmitting both the name and the wording of each author it excerpts. Only after such a severe examination can the copious materials preserved for us in the c. be safely put to use. A long and patient work, but profitable; it is calculated that more than half of the rich and varied exegetical literature of the Greek Church has come down to us only by way of the c. Of the method and the productivity of that critical work there have recently been many proofs in the Berlin edition of the Greek Fathers of the first three centuries, and in the volumes of K. Staab, Pauluskommentare aus der griech. Kirche, Münster 1933, and of R. Devreesse, Le commentaire de Théodore de Mopsueste sur les Psaumes (I-LXXX) (Studi e Testi, 53), Città del Vaticano 1939.
II. ORIENTAL CHAINS
The biblical c. in the Syriac, Armenian and Coptic languages are often a complement to the Greek ones, whether translated from the Greek or composed or enlarged on native authors. The Syriac literature especially must be supplied with them. Severus, a monk (9th cent.), is the best-known compiler of a c. on the whole Bible; anonymous are an earlier one
(7th cent.), of which the Syriac ms. 853 of the British Museum is a copy, and the other known under the title of Gannat büssämē or "Garden of Delights" (12th cent.) on the liturgical pericopes of the whole year. But also the commentaries of Ídā'dād of Merv (9th cent.) and of Dionysius bar Salibi (12th cent.) and the "Treasure of Mysteries" of Gregory Bar Hebraeus (13th cent.) have much of the c. From the Syrians such compilations passed, through translations or reworkings, to the Christian Arabs, and from the Arabs or the Copts to the Abyssinians.
III. LATIN C.: THE GLOSS. - Among the Latins this compilatory genre was less in use, at least at the beginning. Before the Carolingian renaissance two shadowy figures appear before us, faded by time and hidden in the obscurity of libraries: the Scholia of St. Victor of Capua (d. 553) and the Expositum in Heptateuchum of a certain John, a Roman deacon, slightly later (cf. Pitra, Spicil. Solesm., I, pp. L-LXV, 265-301). In the Carolingian age it was an understood and sought-after thing that biblical commentaries should be formed from excerpts of the Fathers; but few took the trouble to indicate accurately the author of each extract, as Rabanus Maurus did (d. 856), approaching the true type of c. (PL 107-108; to his disciple Walafrid Strabo the Glossa ordinaria was wrongly attributed, PL 113-14).
In the profound renewal of studies that took place in the 12th century, characterized by a direct return to the sources of the Fathers, just as in dogmatic theology there arose the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, which quickly became the text of the schools, so for the study and understanding of Holy Scripture the Glossa, which arose around that time and from an analogous need, rapidly won an equal place. Lombard himself composed Glosses on the Psalms and on the Letters of St. Paul, drawing the material from St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose (or the Ambrosiaster), Cassiodorus and others; and that work of his remained held in esteem as the "magna glossatura" or "glossatura magistralis." But the one that, because of its widest diffusion, was called the Glossa ordinaria, resulted from the union of particular glosses on the individual books, owed to various compilers. It seems established that the cradle and center of this work was the school of Anselm, or Anselm of Laon (d. 1117). In the manuscripts and in the editions (many from the beginnings of printing to the late seventeenth century), the Glossa usually has the form of a catena in a crown or column arrangement, and is accompanied, as a compendium or complement, by the so-called glossa interlinearis, made up of laconic explanations inserted between the lines of the biblical text. But in the immense quantity of glossed Bibles or parts of Bibles that are preserved in the great libraries, there is also great variety, which still awaits being classified and sifted, so that the criticism and history of the Glossa may be written. It is an enormous work, only begun in these last years, and by far less urgent and profitable than that on the Greek catenae, since we possess the integral writings from which the extracts making up the Glossa are composed. But among its many forms, the Expositio continua of St. Thomas Aquinas on the four Gospels should be pointed out for its abundance of texts, excellence of doctrines and felicity of exposition, soon adorned by posterity with the title of C. aurea, still today printed (Turin 1938) and read (Italian translation by P. A. Del Corona, San Miniato 1902-1903).
IV. MODERN TIMES
With the Renaissance and the new paths it opened for studies, the vein of biblical chains did not cease, especially in Italy. After the Catena aurea super Psalmos of the French Carthusian Fr. du Puis (de Puteo; Paris 1530) come the Catena in Genesim, Catena in Exodum, Catena in Psalmos of L. Lippomano (Paris 1546, 1550, and Rome 1585), the Glossae magnae in Genesim of A. Martinengo, general of the Lateran Canons (Padua 1597), the Caeli davidici of the Theatine V. Giliberto (Naples 1639-44), enormous folio volumes that become entangled in their own bulk.
More modest are the C. in Iob of A. Cermelli (Genoa 1636) and the Collectanea seu C. SS. Patrum in Acta Apost., of L. Sanseverino (Naples 1665), which are likewise nevertheless of the old style, that is, based on the ancient Fathers and with an ascetico-moral purpose. But after the magnificent flowering of commentators, on account of which the century following the Council of Trent was called the golden century of Catholic exegesis, work was begun on catenae woven only from recent authors and precisely from those who had most ably explained the literal sense of the Scriptures, such as A. Gagny (Gagnano), E. Sa, St. Menocchio, G. Tirino. With these and in addition G. Estius, the Franciscan G. de la Haye formed his Biblia magna (Paris 1643, 5 vols.). The Biblia sacra... cum selectissimis litteratibus commentariis, published at Venice (1745-57; 28 vols. in large 8vo), consists of more than double that number of authors, among them the great Bossuet. On the Protestant side, the Critici sacri (London 1660; 9 vols.) and the Synopsis criticorum of M. Pole (ibid. 1669-74; 5 vols.) can be ascribed to the genre of catenae. Meanwhile the same 17th century saw published in print the greatest number of Greek catenae, chiefly through the work of the Jesuits Cordier and Poussines (Possinus).
For the 19th century there are to be cited, for example, La chaîne d'or sur les Psalmes of the abbé J.-M. Péronne (Paris 1879; 3 vols.) and the Commentary on the Psalms from primitive and medieval writers of the Anglicans Neale and Littledale (London 1860-1874; 4 vols.). Still from our own times, the mighty work of the priest Prof. G. Bellino, Gesù Cristo nelle S. Scritture e nei SS. Padri e Dottori (Turin 1911-15, 9 vols.), is composed of commentaries and homilies on the Gospels, translated from the Greek and Latin texts of the most distinguished writers of Christian antiquity and of the Middle Ages.
The seed of the biblical catenae is not yet spent, and will probably continue still to produce new fruits.
Bibliography9 works
Alberto Vaccari