Biblical Catenae as a Model for the Creation of Constantine VII’s Collection of Historical Excerpts? Some Preliminary Remarks

This paper examines the links between the enterprise of Constantine the VII (d. 959) and the 10th-century Catenae. Under Constantine's supervision, a team of collaborators set out to reorganise the entire historical heritage – the works of 27 historians – from antiquity (Herodotus) to the 9th century (George the Monk). The historical works were divided into collections of extracts according to fifty-three topics. From a methodological point of view, the similarities with Constantine's enterprise can be seen in the running commentary catenae. The latter also contain meaningful passages, selected from biblical commentaries by various Christian authors (3rd to 5th century and beyond). The method used for both Constantine's historical excerpts and the early catenae is that of ἐκλογή: the selected passages are placed in the new contexts with only the necessary adjustments. Even in the new contexts, the origin of the excerpts is recognisable thanks to the attributions to the respective authors. As far as the catenae are concerned, encyclopaedic collections appear in the 10th century which contain a huge mass of excerpts, such as the Paris Psalter (Par. gr. 139). These catenae may be alternating, in which the script is arranged full-page, or frame catenae, in which the biblical text is centred as a separate block with surrounding excerpts. Whether there is sufficient evidence to suggest that new, larger catenae were created for all the books of the Bible in parallel with the Constantinian enterprise is a question that this paper will attempt to address.