The Catenz, then, have a special and unique value as preserving, however imperfectly, no small mass of the work of authors on whose writings, as a whole, a ban was set by later generations; and ‘the study of Catenz is therefore an indispensable preliminary to intelligent acquaintance with the development of Patristic exegesis. Unfortunately, even the few texts that are printed, such as Oecu- menius and Cramer, fall far below the standard required in a modern edition. It would have seemed, therefore, in any case, essential to supple- ment this introductory section by attempting to give some idea of the Catene MSS contained in the libraries of Europe, especially of such as are earlier than the end of the 11th cent.; and this task is greatly facilitated since the appearance in 1902 of a work now to be described, which constitutes a very important addition to our knowledge of the subject.
7. In the Nachrichten von der kénigl. Gesell- schaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen for 1902 (philologisch-historische Klasse, Heft i. pp. 1-66, iii. pp. 299-350, v. pp. 559-620), G. Karo and J. Lietz- mann * published a classified list of Greek Catena MSS on both Old and New Testaments. Although in the total mass the Pauline epistles hold but a subordinate position, occupying only 13 pages (pp. 597-610) against 46, for instance, for the Psalms and 33 for the Gospels, yet eight different forms of Catenz on them—besides that of Nicetas on the Hebrews—are distinguished and separately de- seribed ; a summary account of all matter hitherto printed is prefixed, of which occasional use has already been made in the preceding portion of this article. Under each of the eight Catenz some one passage is selected,—for the six which contain
tomans the passage is Ro 7®:,—and the incipit and explicit are given of every comment on the passage or on any part of it: in this way additional MSS could without difficulty be assigned their proper place in the classification. The reasons for the order in which Karo and Lietzmann arrange their eight Catenz are not easy to see, and a different order will here be adopted, a reference to the corresponding place in their account being given at the end of each section.
(a) A very large majority of the MSS described, 37 out of 49, give the Catena of Oecumenius ; but
* Lietzmann had already, in 1897, published a pamphlet, Catenen: Mitteilungen tiber ihre Geschichte und handschrift- liche Uebertieferung (Freiburg i. B. : 85 pp-), which, however, contains no special material for the Epistles.
a new test is supplied for grouping Oecumenian MSS, according as they do or do not contain cita- tions from Photius. ‘Thus for Ro 7° the extreme in one direction is represented by three MSS which give four passages from Photius by name ; two or three others give the Photius passages, but without name and with minor transpositions ; and one gives them in the margin only. All the rest, though they differ among themselves by omissions and transpositions, agree in containing no Photius ; and ten of them agree further in giving the same 12 scholia on these verses in the same order. It would seem, therefore, to be certain that the Photius element is alien to the original Oecu- menius, and that MSS in which the Photius element is present, whether with or without name, can be set aside as representing a later recension —a recension, however, already current in the 10th cent., to which two of its MSS belong. Among the ‘ Photius’ MSS that group is, no doubt, the more ancient which gives the Photius pas- sages under their author’s name, since names are much more likely to have been omitted by the progressive carelessness of scribes than inserted by the accurate research of scholars. Tried by these tests, the printed Oecumenius comes out but badly ; the four Photius passages are all present, but only one of them by name, and none of them in quite the same place as in the other MSS. On the other hand, the amount of agreement in detail between several of the earliest of the non-Photian MSS appears to be so considerable that a revised edition of Oecumenius, based on these alone, ought not to involve excessive labour in comparison with the advantage to be expected from it. [Karo- Lietzmann, vi. pp. 604-609: see below, p. 523].
(6) Of non-Oecumenian Catenze only one covers the whole of St. Paul, and that one is represented only by a single MS, Paris gr. 216, sec. x.; the scholia appear to be very brief, and to represent the same relatively late stage of the Catena tra- dition as Oecumenius, in not attaching to ever citation the author’s name. Nothing of this Catena is as yet published. [K. L. ix. pp. 610, 595).
The remaining Catene are all partial; and it may be convenient to mention first those which are in print. Two of them, with portions of a third, are contained in Cramer; Mai published from a completer MS further extracts of the third; the other three are still unprinted.
(c) Cramer’s Catena for Galatians— Hebrews is drawn from a unique MS, Paris coislin 204, see, x. It is noteworthy on the one hand for the number of epistles which it covers, and on the other for its entire immunity from later accretions ; it is almost, if not quite, the only Catena in which the name of Oecumenius does not occur. [K. L. iv. p. 602: see further below, p. 521°).