Ebook Catena Aurea

The Catena is so contrived that it reads as a running com mentary, the several extracts being dovetailed together bv the compiler. And it consists only of extracts, the com piler introducing nothing of his own but the few connecting particles which link one extract to the next. There are also a few quotations headed 'glossa,' which none of the editors have been able to find in any author, and which from their character, being brie?y introductory of a new chapter or a new subject, may be probably assigned to the compiler; though even this is dispensed with whenever it is possible: when a Father will furnish the words for such transition or connection, they are dexterously introduced. In the Gospel of S. Matthew there are only a few other passages which seem to belong to S. Thomas. These are mostly short explanations or notes upon something that seemed to need explanation in some passage quoted, and which in a modern book would have been thrown into the form of a foot-note. An instance of this may be seen in p. 405. The only important passages of this kind are some Glosses on chap. Xxvi. 26, which will be noticed in their place.