St Thomas Aquinas presenting his book to Pope Urban IV
Trinity Coll. MS B.4.19, f. 1r
Aquinas, Catena on the Gospels of Luke and John
England, ca 1300

Image reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge

Both volumes of the Trinity College Catena are illuminated at the beginning of the Prologue with historiated initials showing the kneeling St Thomas presenting his book to a seated pope, with a full border populated with dogs, rabbits, a lion and a bird. The Catena was begun in 1263 and perhaps not finished until 1267, but the dedication at the beginning of Matthew is to pope Urban IV (1261–1264) even if the completion of the work was after Urban’s death in 1264. St Thomas supposedly wrote the Office of Corpus Christi, a new feast day introduced by Urban IV, at the request of the pope, and also the Contra errores graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks) for him. In 1265 the newly elected pope, Clement IV, appointed St Thomas as papal theologian and he left Orvieto for the Dominican convent of Santa Sabina in Rome where he wrote his magnum opus, the Summa theologiae. At the beginning of each Gospel is an historiated initial with the evangelists with their symbols shown writing, as here at the beginning of Luke.