CATENAE
434
CATENAE
mentioned above are subsumed as species. If the
foregoing restrictions are taken into account it will
be found that the Aristotelean classification answers
its purpose — the simplification of the world of finite
reality for the sake of investigation — and that on the
whole no more workable scheme has thus far been de-
vised.
Baldwin, Diet, of Phil. (New York. 1901); Ladd, Theory of Frnlily (New York, 1899V. Maher. Psycholoau (New York, 1903)- Blanc, Did. de Philosophic (Pans, 19061; Eisler, Wor- tcrbuch der phil. Brqrifie (Berlin, 1904); Pes™, Instilutiones Log. (Freiburg, 1890), III.
F. P. Siegfried.
Catenae (Lat. catena, a chain), collections of ex- cerpts from the writings of Biblical commentators, especially the Fathers and early ecclesiastical writers, strung together like the links of a chain, and in this way exhibiting a continuous and connected interpre- tation of a given text of Scripture. It has been well said that they are exegetical anthologies. These fragments of patristic commentaries are not only quite valuable for the literal sense of Scripture, since their text frequently represents the evidence of very ancient (now lost) manuscripts; they are also service- able to the theologian (dogmatic and mystical), to the ecclesiastical historian, and to the patrologist, for they often exhibit the only remains of important patristic writings (see Mai, Pitra: cf. Hull, Fragmente vornikanischer Kirchenvater, Leipzig, 1899). With the disappearance of the great Scriptural theologians, investigators, and commentators of the fourth and fifth centuries, there arose a class of Scriptural com- pilers, comparable to Boethius and Isidore of Seville in the provinces of philosophy, church history, and general culture. The very antiquity of the patristic commentators, so close to the origin of the Sacred Books, and the supreme value set by Catholic theol- ogy on the unanimous consent of the Fathers in the exposition of Scripture, naturally led, in an age of theological decadence, to such compilations. The earliest Greek catena is ascribed to Procopius of Gaza, in the first part of the sixth century, but Ehrhardt (see Krumbacher, 211) points to Eusebius of Ca?s- area (d. about 340) as the pioneer in this branch of Scriptural exegesis. Between the seventh and the tenth centuries appear Andreas Presbyter and Johannes Drungarios as compilers of catena? to vari- ous Books of Scripture, and towards the end of the eleventh century Nicetas of Serra?, perhaps the best representative of Byzantine scholarship in this re- spect. Both before and after, however, the makers of catena; 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 (Wright, de Lagarde, Martin, in Krumbacher, 216).
In the West, Primasius of Adrumetum in Africa (sixth century) compiled the first catena from Latin commentators. He was imitated by Rhabanus Mau- rus (d. 865), Paschasius Radbertus, and Walafrid Strabo, later by Remigius of Auxerre (d. 900), and by Lanfranc of Canterbury (d. 1089). The Western catena', it musl be noted, have not the importanceat- tached to the Creek compilations. The most famous of t lie medieval Latin compilations of this kind is that of St. TIh.iih- tauinas, generally known ;i-< the "Catena Aurea" (Golden Catena) and containing ex- cerpts from some eighty (Ireek and Latin commenta- tors on the Gospels (ed. J. Nicolai. Paris, lsii'.L •'! vols.'. Since the sixteenth century much industry has been expended in collecting, collating, and editing these exegetical remains of the early Christian Fath- . rs, fully one-half of whose commentaries, Paulhaber asserts (see bibliography), have reached us in this way. Among the modern editors of Greek catena; much credit is due to the Jesuit Bartholomew Cordier, who published (1628-47) important collections of
Greek patristic commentaries on St. John and St.
Luke and, in conjunction with his confrere Possin, on
St. Matthew; the latter scholar edited also (1673)
similar collections of patristic excerpts on St. Mark
and Job. The voluminous catena; known as Biblia
Magna (Paris, 1643) and Biblia Maxima (Paris, 1660),
edited by J. de la Haye, were followed by the nine
volumes of well-known "Critici Sacri, sive clarissi-
morum virorum annotationes atque tractatus in
biblia" (edited by Pearson, London, 1660; Amster-
dam, 1695-1701), containing selections, not only
from Catholic but also from Protestant commenta-
tors. An important modern collection of the Greek
catena; on the New Testament is that of J. A. Cramer
(Oxford, 163S-44). See also the twenty-eight vol-
umes of the Migne commentary in his "Scripturae
sacra; cursus completus" (Paris, 1S40—45).
Similar collections of Greek patristic utterances were constructed for dogmatic purposes. They were used at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, at the Fifth General Council in 533, also apropos of Iconoclasm in the Seventh General Council in 787; and among the Greeks such compilations, like the exegetical catenas, did not cease until late in the Middle Ages. The old- est of these dogmatic compilations, attributed to the latter part of the seventh century, is the " Antiquorum Patrum doctrina de Verbi incarnatione" (edited by Cardinal Mai in Scriptor. Vet. nova collectio, Rome, 1833, VII, i, 1-73; cf. Loofs, Leontius von Byzanz, Leipzig, 18S7). Finally, in response to homiletic and practical needs, there appeared, previous to the tenth century, a number of collections of moral sentences and parsenetic fragments, partly from Scripture and partly from the more famous ecclesiastical writers; sometimes one writer (e. g. Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, especially St. John Chrysostom whom all the catenae-makers pillage freely) furnishes the material. Such collections are not so numerous as the Scriptural or even the dogmatic catenae. They seem all to depend on an ancient Christian " Flori- legium" of the sixth century, that treated, in three books, of God, Man, the Virtues and Vices, and was known as ra iepd (Sacred Tilings). Ere long its material was recast in strict alphabetical order; took the name of to. lepd. irapd\\r)\a, "Sacra Parallela" (because in the third book a virtue and a vice had been regularly opposed to one another); and was attributed widely to the great Greek theologian of the eighth century, St. John Damascene (Migne. P.G., XCV, 1040-1586; XCVI, 9-544), whose authorship has lately been defended with much learning (against Loofs, Wendland, and Conn) by K. Holl in the above- mentioned " Fragmente vornikanischer Kirchen- vater" (Leipzig, 1899), though the Damascene prob- ably based his work on the "Capita theologica" of Maximus Confessor. The text of these ancient com- pilations is often in a dubious state, the authors of most of them are unknown, and many are still un- edited; one of the principal difficulties in their use is the uncertainty concerning the correctness of the names to which the excerpts are attributed. The carelessness of copyists, the use of "sigla", contrac- tions for proper names, and the frequency of tran- scription, led naturally to much confusion. For the Byzantine collections of ethical sentences and prov- erbs (Stoba;us, Maximus Confessor. Antonius Melissa, Johannes Georgides, Macarius, Michael A post olios) partly from Christian and partly from pagan SO see Krumbacher, 600-4, also A. Liter. De tinomo- logiorum Gracorum historia atque origine (Bonn, 1893).
The best modern treatise on the catena is thai of Ehrhardt, in Kiu'Mbaohek. Gcsi'h. d. Infant tnis<l<> ' Munich, 1897), 206-18 — bibliography and manuscript indica- \mong the older works cf. Ittio, D« ' M'Wio-
Iheeis ( Leipzig. 17071, and Fahriciis, liihliotha-a Grmca, VIII, 639-700. A verv full list of catena- is given in Haknack. Ge.ich. d. altchri.ithch. Utemlur (Leipzig, 1893), I. 83S 12 For the catena 1 manuscripts in the Vatican, see Pitra, Analecta
