What this is
Not a commentary of his own but a chain — the gospel set out phrase by phrase with the Fathers speaking in turn on each, each one named. Sixteen chapters, 1,447 quotations, sixteen voices.
How it survives
Complete. Aquinas assembled it in the 1260s at the request of Pope Urban IV, working from Greek sources that had not been read in the Latin west for centuries.
What is here
All 16, complete and in order.
Reading it beside the gospel
Each piece carries the verses it is on and a door straight into that chapter of St Mark; each chapter of the gospel offers the pieces that expound it. A piece covers from its own text to the next one’s, so a chapter nobody began a sermon on is still reached by the sermon it falls inside.
The chapters
- 1 Mark 1 — 140 voices
- 2 Mark 2 — 60 voices
- 3 Mark 3 — 57 voices
- 4 Mark 4 — 79 voices
- 5 Mark 5 — 61 voices
- 6 Mark 6 — 103 voices
- 7 Mark 7 — 61 voices
- 8 Mark 8 — 88 voices
- 9 Mark 9 — 123 voices
- 10 Mark 10 — 106 voices
- 11 Mark 11 — 77 voices
- 12 Mark 12 — 77 voices
- 13 Mark 13 — 78 voices
- 14 Mark 14 — 169 voices
- 15 Mark 15 — 91 voices
- 16 Mark 16 — 77 voices