Ambrosiaster : The paenula is the distinctive dress of a Roman citizen, thus a garment that Paul would have needed on his journeys to identify him as such. — COMMENTARY ON THE SECOND LETTER TO TIMOTHY John Chrysostom : "The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments." The word here translated "cloak" may mean a garment, or, as some say, a bag, in which the books were contained. But what had he to do with books, who was about to depart and go to God? He needed them much, that he might deposit them in the hands of the faithful, who would retain them in place of his own teaching. — Homily on 2 Timothy 10 John Damascene : The money-bag had the books and the paper. He teaches us as if its our last breath, that if we are in prison, the divine oracles not must not be neglected. He speaks of the Jewish propitiation of the law. Tertullian : Nay, there is more than this: for even Christ, we shall find, has ordinary raiment; Paul, too, has his cloak. If at once, of every article of furniture and each household vessel, you name some god of the world as the originator, well, I must recognise Christ, both as He reclines on a couch, and when He presents a basin for the feet of His disciples, and when He pours water into it from a ewer, and when He is girt about with a linen towel -a garment specially sacred to Osiris. — De Corona Tertullian : As, e.g., it is the custom of some to make prayer with cloaks doffed, for so do the nations approach their idols; which practice, of course, were its observance becoming, the apostles, who teach concerning the garb of prayer, would have comprehended in their instructions, unless any think that is was in prayer that Paul had left his cloak with Carpus! God, forsooth, would not hear cloaked suppliants, who plainly heard the three saints in the Babylonian king's furnace praying in their trousers and turbans. — On Prayer Theodore of Mopsuestia : The view that this paenula is some other kind of book, rather than just a garment, is ridiculous. — COMMENTARY ON 2 TIMOTHY Theodore of Mopsuestia : Paul makes a distinction here between the parchment volumina, which are in the form of scrolls, and the regular libros, which are in book or codex form. — COMMENTARY ON 2 TIMOTHY