Monday, April 20, 2009

Aquinas - Catena Aurea - Index Page

Catena Aurea, commentary on the four Gospels; collected out of the works of the Fathers, translated by John Henry Newman (toward the end of his Protestant days).

This series is a translation of Aquinas' Catena Aurea (Golden Chain), which provides quotations attributed to various of the church fathers with whom Aquinas was apparently familiar. It can be enlightening, especially regarding passages such as Matthew 16:18, where none of the fathers that Aquinas identifies interpret the passage as Peter being the Rock. John Henry Newman is, apparently, the translator of the work. Thus, one should note that it is possible that apologetic bias may have entered into the translation, and (as with any translation of the fathers) one should be cautious before either hanging one's hat on an alleged patristic quotation or regurgitating the material found in the work.

Archive.org has more or less complete sets of several editions of the work. The entire series was put out initially during the tractarian controversy, in which Newman was involved. The last volume on John's Gospel was released in 1845, the year that Newman left the Church of England for Rome.

Additional editions were also printed in the 1860's and 1870's, and I have tried to sort those out below. I have included a few links to Google's collection for the 1874 edition, although I haven't attempted an exhaustive search of Google. There was also a reprinting of this series in 2007, which is available with a limited preview at Google Books (link).

1874 Edition ("A New Edition")


Matthew - Volume 1

Chapters 1-10 - Part 1
Chapters 11-28 - Part 2

Mark - Volume 2

All Chapters

Luke - Volume 3

Chapters 1-10 - Part 1 (missing from Archive.org) (Google 1)
Chapters 11-24 - Part 2 (Google 1)

John - Volume 4

All Chapters (Google 1)

1864-5 Edition

Volume 1 - Matthew

Chapters 1-10 - Part 1

(Remaining parts missing from Archive.org)

Volume 2 - Mark

All Chapters

Luke and John missing from Archive.org

1841-5 Edition

Volume 1 - Matthew

Chapters 1-10 - Part 1 (Copy 2)(Copy 3)
Chapters 11-21 - Part 2
Chapters 22-28 - Part 3 (Copy 2)(Copy 3)

Volume 2 - Mark

All Chapters (Copy 2)

Volume 3 - Luke

Chapters 1-10 - Part 1

Chapters 11-24 (Copy 2)

All Chapters (Copy 2)

Volume 4 - John

Chapters 1-10 - Part 1 (Copy 2)(Copy 3)(Copy 4)

Chapters 11-21 - Part 2 (Copy 2)(Copy 3)

All Chapters

***

I should note that I have also found this same work in other formats, such as in a web page format at Catechetics On-line.

Enjoy!

-TurretinFan

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