Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, Volume 1: St. Matthew

St. Thomas Aquinas' Catena Aurea is a masterpiece anthology of Patristic commentary on the Gospels. It includes the work of over eighty Church Fathers. In the 13th century, Pope Urban IV, desiring that scholars of his day be better acquainted with the ideas of early Christians, assigned Saint Thomas Aquinas to compile a commentary on the Gospels based on the teachings of the Church fathers. The result is the Catena Aurea, or "Golden Chain."

Commentary on Matthew

When the writing of Latin biblical commentaries was still in its infancy, a young bishop from Poitiers, in Gaul, penned a passage-by-passage exposition on the Gospel of Matthew. It is the first of its kind to have survived almost completely intact. Published now for the first time in English translation, Hilary’s commentary offers a close look at Latin theology and exegesis before the Nicene Creed was considered the sole standard of orthodoxy. Likely the earliest of Hilary’s writings, this commentary has none of the polemic against the “Arians” that figured so prominently in most of his later works. Nonetheless, there exists in this text an oft-stated concern with those who interpreted the Incarnation as grounds for construing Christ as only a man rather than professing Christ as God and man. Other noteworthy features of the commentary include Hilary’s interest in the relation between Law and Gospel and his articulation of a Pauline-based view of justification by faith. In...