Origen: quoted frequently on Rom., 1 Cor., Ephesians.
Eusebius of Emesa : occasionally on Galatians.
Apollinaris: occasionally on Romans.
Diodore: occasionally on Romans.
Severian: occasionally on all the Epistles (most frequently, perhaps, on 1 Cor.) except 2 Co- rinthians.
Theodore of Mopsuestia: on all the Epistles except 2 Cor., most frequently on Rom. and 1 Corinthians.
Isidore: occasionally on Romans.
Cyril of Alexandria : frequently on Rom. and 1 Corinthians.
Theodoret : very frequently on Rom., frequently on 1 Cor., occasionally on 2 Corinthians.
Gennadius: frequently on Romans.
Theodore the Monk : occasionally on Romans.
Oecumenius : occasionally in the 2nd Catena on Rom., also on 1 Cor., 2 Cor., and Galatians.
Photius: occasionally on Rom., frequently on 1 Corinthians.
ent there seems nothing to show that the Florence Catena and the Paris Catena are the same thing : dependence on Theophy- lact is not suggested by Lamius’ text of the Florence MS.
* Similar notes from the same MSS are appended also to vol. iii. (Gal.-2 Thess.).
6. About the same period that Cramer was working at the Catenz in the libraries of Oxford and Paris, cardinal Angelo Mai was making the study of Catenz at the Vatican one of the most productive forms of his marvellous literary fecun- dity ; but, whereas Cramer published his Catense as they stood, Mai selected from his sources and separated whatever belonged to now one, now another, of the ancient writers whose remains he was rescuing from oblivion. The Scriptorwm Veterwm Nova Collectio (10 vols. 1825-1838) con- tains nothing, beyond minute fragments, of any Greek exegesis on St. Paul, though of the Latin it contains the commentaries of Victorinus Afer (vol. iii.) and the prologue to those of Claudius of Turin (vol. vii.). The Spicileqium Romanum (10 vols., 1829-1844) contains, of Latin material, the same Claudius on Philemon, and the ‘canons’ of Priscillian on St. Paul, both in vol. ix.; and in vol. iv. pp. 499-573 the Catena remains of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Romans, from MS Vat. gr. 762.* Lastly, the Nova Patrum Bibliotheca (7 vols., 1844-1854; the 8th volume is Mai’s, but was published after his death by Cozza-Luzi, 1871 ; the 9th volume is Cozza-Luzi’s own) contains, besides fragments—(@) in vol. iii. part 1, pp. 1-127, extracts from Cyril of Alexandria on Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, from a Vatican MS,} and on Hebrews from a Milan MS, Amb. E. 63 inf. ; (6) in vol. iv. part 3, pp. 114-146, extracts from Didymus on 2 Corinthians from the same Vatican MS;; (c) in vol. vii. part 1, pp. 407, 408, a few quotations from Theodore of Mopsuestia on 2 Co- rinthians, again from the same MS, Vat. gr. 762. Mai’s material for 2 Corinthians was a welcome addition to our knowledge, that being the one epistle on which Cramer had found no Catena that was not nearly related to the printed Oecumenius ; on the other hand, most of his work on Rom. and 1 Cor. is anticipated (though probably with a less pure form of text) in the Catenze which Cramer had published just before him.
It will not need pointing out to the reader who has followed the above account of the printed Catene, that many questions suggest themselves to which only a fuller examination of the still un- published MS material can supply the answer. We have at the end of the llth cent. two com- pilers, Theophylact and Euthymius Zigabenus, whose works on the Epistles are in print ; but these works are, unless reinforced by other sources, use- less for our purpose, since they systematically avoid naming the writers whose comments they incorporate. We have at an earlier date—but how much earlier is one of the questions that demand solution—one other compiler whose person is known, Oecumenius; and he adopts an inter- mediate method between the Catenz and the com- pilers, since he sometimes gives his authorities, and leaves it apparently to be understood that the vastly preponderant portion of his work, which is anonymous, is abstracted and abbrevi- ated from Chrysostom. But behind the compilers, as Cramer and Mai sufficiently show us, lies an . older and more valuable group of writings, to which the name Catena properly belongs: these consist properly of named quotations, and the catenist’s work is confined to the choice of his authorities and the selection of passages from them, The limited range of names in some of these Catense suggests a very early date, and the beginnings of the system may be sought at Antioch even as far back as the middle of the 5th century. In particular,
* The number of the MS is not given ad Joc., but in Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, vii. 407.
+ The description of Mai (p. vii) is ‘codex Vaticanus valde pretiosus, seeculi ferme xii.’ it is, in fact, the same MS from
which he drew his Theodore on Romans and his Didymus on 2 Corinthians, Vatic. gr. 762, which is now attributed to sec. x.
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488 PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
PATRISTIC COMMENTARIES
the inclusion in the Catene of material from authors such as Origen and Apollinaris, Diodore and the two Theodores (of Heraclea and of Mop- suestia), remarkable as it is under any circum- stances, would be tenfold more difficult to account for if it had originated after the middle of the 6th century. In days when Greek Churchmen, though they fought stoutly enough for dogmatic truth, had not yet enclosed themselves within the narrow ramparts of Byzantine orthodoxy, St. Cyril of Alexandria could lay down the rule (Epistola ad Eulogium presbyterum) that not all the writings of heretics are heretical: od mdvra dca déyovow ol alperikol pevyew kal mapacretoOar xp, moda yep dpuo- Noyotouw wy Kal uets dworoyoduer. Whether or no they definitely sheltered themselves under the au- thority of St. Cyril’s dictum, it was in this spirit that the first catenists went to work; the pre- cedent must have been set in the relatively un- trammelled freedom of the days before Justinian ; and all through the Byzantine middle age an occa- sional scribe found himself (doubtless much to his surprise) reproducing on equal terms, in this one form of literature, the words of those ancient writers whom he most approved and of those whom he most reprobated.