The catena manuscripts present the biblical text together with various commentary fragments with named authors. More than eighty Greek manuscripts with catenae on the Psalms from the 9th to 16th century have survived. They offer an astonishing variety in the way they present and organize the material and in their interpretation of Scripture. They show a pre-modern, but highly professional way of collecting and presenting extensive knowledge about a biblical book. For a long time, research on catenae focused on the restoration of biblical commentaries that would otherwise have been lost in the direct tradition. It is only in recent years that this has changed and that manuscripts have become the focus of research as a whole. This article ties in with this and aims to examine the creation and use of catenae and their place in the intellectual history of Byzantium and the Middle Ages.