Pseudo-Chrysostom

“Pseudo-Chrysostom” labels works handed down under the name of John Chrysostom but not actually written by him. Chief among them is the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum (“the Unfinished Work on Matthew”), an anonymous fifth-century Latin commentary — probably by an author with Arian sympathies — that circulated under Chrysostom’s prestige and was quoted heavily in the medieval West, including Aquinas’s Catena Aurea. The prefix “Pseudo-” is a scholarly flag for uncertain authorship, not the name of a single person.

Chief among these works is the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, an anonymous fifth-century Latin commentary on Matthew that — despite probable Arian sympathies in its origin — was widely read and was quarried by the Catena Aurea for its vivid comment. Like the other "Pseudo-" collections, it shows how the church valued useful exposition while later scholarship has had to sift its true authorship.