README.md

metadata

license: other
license_name: public-domain
language:
  - en
  - la
tags:
  - theology
  - catholic
  - christianity
  - aquinas
  - summa-theologica
  - church-fathers
  - catena-aurea
  - patristics
  - bible
  - vulgate
  - citations
  - knowledge-graph
  - retrieval
pretty_name: 'Catena: an open, cited corpus of the Catholic tradition'
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K
configs:
  - config_name: summa
    data_files: summa.jsonl
  - config_name: catena_aurea
    data_files: catena_aurea.jsonl
  - config_name: roman_catechism
    data_files: roman_catechism.jsonl
  - config_name: douay_rheims
    data_files: douay_rheims.jsonl
  - config_name: clementine_vulgate
    data_files: clementine_vulgate.jsonl
  - config_name: scripture_edges
    data_files: scripture_edges.jsonl
  - config_name: father_edges
    data_files: father_edges.jsonl
  - config_name: internal_edges
    data_files: internal_edges.jsonl

Catena: an open, cited corpus of the Catholic tradition

A clean, machine-readable, public-domain corpus of the Catholic tradition where every unit of text carries a canonical citation, the text is stored verbatim (never paraphrased or truncated), and the tradition's own citation graph is included as loadable data. Built for grounded, cite-or-refuse retrieval.

Source, ingest code, a live web explorer, and an MCP grounding server: https://github.com/AlvaroBalbin/catena

Subsets

config	rows	what
summa	3,115	The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, one row per article, with its canonical citation (ST I, q.2, a.3) and full verbatim text.
catena_aurea	814	The Catena Aurea - Aquinas's patristic "golden chain" on the four Gospels, one row per verse-pericope: the verse commented on, the Church Fathers in the chain, and their full verbatim commentary.
roman_catechism	929	The Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent), one row per subsection, with its Part and heading and full verbatim text. Public-domain McHugh & Callan translation (1923).
douay_rheims	35,786	The Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner revision), one row per verse, English.
clementine_vulgate	35,809	The Clementine Vulgate (Sixto-Clementine, 1592), one row per verse, Latin - keyed identically to the Douay-Rheims so a citation resolves to both languages.
scripture_edges	9,449	The citation graph: one row per (Summa article -> Scripture verse) edge.
father_edges	3,783	The patristic golden chain as edges: one row per (Catena Aurea pericope -> Gospel verse it comments on), with the Fathers who speak - which Fathers weigh in on which verse.
internal_edges	3,775	The citation graph: one row per (Summa article -> Summa article) edge.

from datasets import load_dataset

summa   = load_dataset("TheAlvaroBalbin/catena", "summa")
fathers = load_dataset("TheAlvaroBalbin/catena", "catena_aurea")
verses  = load_dataset("TheAlvaroBalbin/catena", "douay_rheims")
latin   = load_dataset("TheAlvaroBalbin/catena", "clementine_vulgate")
edges   = load_dataset("TheAlvaroBalbin/catena", "scripture_edges")

Every verse shares a verse_key (john/1/14) across the two Bibles and the edge tables, so the subsets join cleanly: an article's Scripture citations resolve to real verse text in English and Latin.

The three disciplines

1. Lossless. Text is captured verbatim from the source edition; only whitespace is normalized. Nothing is summarized or silently truncated.
2. Addressable. Every unit has a stable, canonical citation and a join key.
3. Grounded. The reference demo (in the GitHub repo) answers only from retrieved units, always cites, and refuses when the corpus does not contain the answer.

Sources and rights

All texts are public domain by age and are redistributed with their edition attributed. Full provenance and the per-text rights reasoning are in data/SOURCES.md.

• Summa Theologica - trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd rev. ed. (1920-22). Public domain.
• Catena Aurea - Aquinas's compilation of the Church Fathers on the Gospels, in the Oxford translation edited by J. H. Newman (1841-45). Public domain.
• Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent) - tr. J. A. McHugh & C. J. Callan (1923); public domain in the US (pre-1929). A different work from the copyrighted modern Catechism, which is not included.
• Douay-Rheims Bible - Challoner revision (1749-52), via Project Gutenberg #1581. Public domain.
• Clementine Vulgate - Sixto-Clementine (1592); electronic edition by The Clementine Vulgate Project (ed. M. Tweedale, 2005), released to the public domain.

Copyrighted texts (the modern Catechism, modern Bible or encyclical translations) are not included. The license: other tag denotes public-domain-by-age; there is no rights holder to waive rights, and none is implied.

Citation graph coverage

96.8% of the Summa's Scripture citations parse (8,491 of 8,768). Because a single citation to a verse range or a whole chapter touches several verses, those expand to 9,449 verse-level article -> verse edges here (scripture_edges); chapter-level citations and the full adjacency maps are in graph/. 99% of the Summa's internal cross-references resolve into 3,775 article -> article edges (internal_edges). The graph builder and coverage details are in the GitHub repository.