Victor of Antioch

Of Victor himself we know almost nothing beyond his name and his city; he was likely a presbyter of Antioch in the fifth century. His significance rests on a single achievement: observing that no one had yet written a commentary on the Gospel of Mark, he compiled one — weaving together material from Chrysostom, Origen, Cyril, and others into a continuous exposition. It stands as the earliest surviving commentary on Mark, and it made him, in effect, a forerunner of the catena tradition itself: a scholar who let the fathers speak in ordered chorus, exactly as Thomas Aquinas would do eight centuries later.

Noticing that no father had yet expounded Mark, Victor stitched a commentary together from earlier writers — the earliest on that Gospel to survive.