Explanatory notes or treatises on the Scriptures. Of many and varying sources, they may be classed under Jewish, patristic, medieval, and modern commentaries. Among the Jewish are Philo, the Targums, Mishna and Talmuds, Midrashim, and Karaites. The Patristic were grouped in schools, the Alexandrian, Antiochene, and Intermediate. Among the medieval are the Greek and Latin catenists (catena, a chain), so called because they selected passages and linked them together. Among the modern are the great Jesuit commentaries, principally that of Cornelius a Lapide, rivalled by equally capable Dominicans, Franciscans, Oratorians, Carmelites, and Benedictines. Protestants have also labored in this field, many of them very reverently, but others in a rationalistic spirit.