Thomas Aquinas

The Dominican master whose Summa Theologiae crowned medieval thought, Thomas is also this commentary's compiler: at the request of Pope Urban IV he assembled the Catena Aurea, the 'Golden Chain,' linking sentence to sentence from the fathers so that all four Gospels are expounded continuously in their words rather than his own. For it he had translations made from Greek authors the Latin West barely knew, including Theophylact and the Greek catenae. Teaching at Paris and in Italy, he wrote with astonishing speed until a mystical experience in December 1273, after which he set down his pen for good. He died in March 1274.

After a mystical experience in December 1273 he stopped writing entirely: 'All that I have written seems like straw compared with what I have seen.'