Adam the Scotchman

ADAM THE SCOTCHMAN (Adamus Scotus, called also Adamus Anglicus): A mystic-ascetic author of the twelfth century. According to his biographer, the Premonstrant Godefroi Ghiselbert of the seventeenth century, he was of north-English origin, belonged to the Premonstrant order, was abbot at Whithorn (Casa Candida) in Galloway toward 1180, and about the same time also lived temporarily at Prémontré, the French parent monastery of the order. He seems to have died soon after. It is highly improbable that he was living in the thirteenth century, as Ghiselbert thinks, who identifies him with the English bishop of the Order of St. Norbert mentioned by Cæsarius of Heisterbach (Miraculorum, iii. 22). The first incomplete edition of Adam’s works was published by Ægidius Gourmont (Paris, 1518). It contains his three principal writings of mystic-monastic content: (1) Liber de ordine, habitu, et professione Præmonstratensium, fourteen sermons; (2) De tripartito tabernaculo; (3) De triplici genere contemplationis. The edition of Petrus Bellerus (Antwerp, 1659) contains also Ghiselbert’s life and a collection of forty-seven sermons on the festivals of the church year, which seem to have belonged to a larger collection of 100 sermons comprising the whole church year. In 1721 Bernhard Pez (Thesaurus anecdotorum, i. 2, 335 sqq.) published Soliloquia de instructione discipuli, sive de instructione animæ, which has been ascribed to Adam of St. Victor, but belongs probably to Adam the Scotchman. All of these works with Ghiselbert’s life are in MPL, cxcviii. 9-872.

O. Zöckler†.

Bibliography: Godefroi Ghiselbert, Vita Adami, in MPL, cxcviii.; C. Oudin, De scriptoribus ecclesiæ, ii. 1544 sqq., Frankfort, 1722 ; A. Miræus, Chronicon ordinis Præmonstratensis, in M. Kuen, Collectio scriptorum variorum religiosorum ordinum, vi. 36, 38, Ulm, 1768; G. Mackenzie, The Lives and Characters of the most Eminent Writers of the Scots Nation, i. 141-145, Edinburgh, 1708.