Catena (biblical commentary)

A catena (from Latin catena, a chain) is a form of biblical commentary, verse by verse, made up entirely of excerpts from earlier Biblical commentators, each introduced with the name of the author, and with such minor adjustments of words to allow the whole to form a continuous commentary. John Henry Newman, in his preface to Thomas Aquinas' Catena Aurea, explains that a "Catena Patrum" is "a string or series of passages selected from the writings of various Fathers, and arranged for the elucidation of some portion of Scripture, as the Psalms or the Gospels".^[1]

The texts are mainly compiled from popular authors, but they often contain fragments of certain patristic writings now otherwise lost.^[2] It has been asserted by Faulhaber that half of all the commentaries on scripture composed by the church Fathers are now extant only in this form.^[3]