Who does Aquinas quote most in the Catena Aurea?

Across the Catena Aurea on St Matthew and St Mark, Aquinas sets down 6,269 quotations from 44 named voices, and the most quoted is John Chrysostom, with 929 (14.8%), ahead of Jerome (853) and Augustine (733). The two gospels lean on different men: on Matthew, Jerome (845) and Chrysostom (835) lead; on Mark, Bede (432) and Theophylact (364) supply 55% of everything quoted, and Theophylact does not appear in the Matthew volume at all.

The whole count

The Catena Aurea on St Matthew and the Catena Aurea on St Mark are made of almost nothing but other people's words. Aquinas sets out a verse, then strings quotations under it, each with a name. Count the names and this is the shape of the chain.

Thirteen voices supply 6,038 of the 6,269 quotations — 96.3%. The other 31 share 231 between them, and fourteen of those are quoted exactly once, among them Josephus, Anselm, Lanfranc and the Council of Ephesus.

Who is quoted most in the Catena on St Matthew?

Jerome, by ten: 845 quotations to Chrysostom's 835, out of 4,822. Augustine is third with 641. Those three supply 2,321 quotations, 48.1% of the volume, and all three appear in every one of Matthew's 28 chapters. So do Remigius, the Gloss, Hilary and Rabanus. Chrysostom's own homilies on St Matthew are on the shelf as a book of their own.

Who is quoted most in the Catena on St Mark?

Bede, with 432 of 1,447 quotations (29.9%), then Theophylact with 364 (25.2%) and Pseudo-Jerome with 226 (15.6%). Those three supply 1,022 quotations, 70.6% of the volume, and each appears in all 16 chapters of St Mark. The Matthew leaders almost vanish: Jerome is quoted 8 times on Mark, Hilary twice, Rabanus not at all.

The first verse of Mark shows the new cast at work. Pseudo-Jerome glosses the word gospel, and Bede sets the opening against Matthew's:

The beginning of this Gospel should be compared with that of Matthew, in which it is said, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” But here He is called “the Son of God.”Bede, in the Catena on Mark 1

Why is Theophylact in the Catena on Mark but not on Matthew?

The count cannot say why; it can only say how sharp the line is. Theophylact is quoted 364 times on Mark and 0 times on Matthew, and Pseudo-Jerome 226 times and 0 times. In the other direction Rabanus is quoted 300 times on Matthew and never on Mark. Bede and Theophylact each left a commentary on Mark, and it is those two who carry the Mark volume, which is consistent with Aquinas drawing on whatever full commentary on each gospel he had to hand. Twenty-five voices appear only in the Matthew volume and four only in the Mark volume.

Who does Aquinas quote at the greatest length?

Augustine. He is third by number of quotations but first by words: 81,306 of the 485,634 words inside named quotations, or 16.7%, against Chrysostom's 71,275 (14.7%). Augustine's quotations average about 111 words; Jerome's about 64. Jerome is the brief, philological voice — on Mark 1:2 he notes in one line that the prophecy is “not written in Isaiah, but in Malachi” — while Augustine is quoted in whole arguments.

Does Aquinas say whom he is quoting?

Yes. Every quotation counted here carries a name, and 1,519 of them also carry a reference to the work it comes from. Of the paragraphs in the two volumes, 397 have no name, and nearly all of those are the verses of St Matthew and St Mark that the quotations expound. That is what makes this a count of quotation rather than a guess: unlike two books that happen to name the same people, a named quotation in the Catena is the compiler telling you whose words these are.

Where to read them

The two volumes are at Catena on Matthew, chapter 1 and Catena on Mark, chapter 1. Every voice above can be searched across the whole library — try Theophylact or Remigius. For the other commentaries on the shelf, see how much of St Luke Cyril of Alexandria commented on.