Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

Summa on the Decretum

Rufinus of Bologna · 12th century

The first full commentary on Gratian, defining natural law and working out where custom, papal decree, and conscience each hold.

Summa on the Decretum

Stephen of Tournai · 1128–1203

A lucid commentary on Gratian written for French students, later followed by a bitter letter complaining that theology students now argue about the Trinity in the street.

The Biblical Commentaries

Dionysius bar Salibi · d. 1171

Commentaries on the whole Bible giving both the literal and the spiritual sense, alongside treatises against Muslims, Jews, Armenians, and Chalcedonians.

Commentaries on the Canons

Theodore Balsamon · c. 1130–after 1195

A commentary on the whole body of church canons, reconciling them with imperial law and ruling on what remained in force.

Exposition on the Apocalypse

Joachim of Fiore · c. 1135–1202

Revelation read as a map of church history in seven ages, with the present standing just before the final crisis and the renewal that follows it.

The Hexaemeron

Robert Grosseteste · c. 1168–1253

A commentary on the six days combining patristic exegesis with optics, astronomy, and the author's own observations of the natural world.

The Golden Chain

Catena Aurea

Thomas Aquinas · 1225–1274

A continuous commentary on the four gospels assembled entirely from patristic quotations, chained together so the fathers appear to comment in sequence.

Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics

Thomas Aquinas · 1225–1274

A close reading of Aristotle's ethics on its own terms, using the new translations made from Greek rather than through Arabic.

The Literal Postill on the Whole Bible

Postilla Litteralis

Nicholas of Lyra · c. 1270–1349

A commentary on the entire Bible insisting on the literal sense first, and drawing throughout on Rashi and other Jewish exegetes whose Hebrew he could read.

Commentary on the Book of Wisdom

Robert Holcot · c. 1290–1349

A commentary crammed with classical anecdote, moral tales, and cheerful digression, and unusually generous about what pagans could know of God.

Commentary on the Divine Liturgy

Nicholas Cabasilas · c. 1322–c. 1392

An explanation of the eucharistic liturgy prayer by prayer, arguing against the excesses of allegory and keeping close to what the rite actually says.

The Collected Works

Denys the Carthusian · 1402–1471

Commentaries on the whole Bible, on Dionysius, on Peter Lombard, plus treatises on contemplation, on death, and on reform — filling forty-two printed volumes.

Commentary on the Psalms

Denys the Carthusian · 1402–1471

A verse-by-verse commentary gathering the whole patristic and scholastic tradition on the psalter and adding a contemplative application to each psalm.

Exposition of the Canon of the Mass

Gabriel Biel · c. 1420–1495

A detailed commentary on the eucharistic prayer combining nominalist theology with the devotional temper of the Common Life.

The Biblical Commentaries

John Calvin · 1509–1564

Commentaries on nearly the whole Bible, written to lucid brevity, attending to the author's intention and refusing to find doctrine where the text does not put it.

The Epistle to the Romans

Der Römerbrief

Karl Barth · 1886–1968

A commentary that reads less like exegesis than an explosion: a Swiss village pastor, disillusioned by his teachers' support for the war, insists that God is not the highest human value but the one who confronts every human project as its crisis.