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 Premontre, 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 Caesarius of Heisterbach (Miraculorum,
iii. 22). The first incomplete edition of Adam's works was published
by Aegidius Gourmont (Paris, 1518). It contains his three principal writings
of mystic-monastic content: (1) Liber de ordine, habitu, et professione
Praemonstratensium, 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 animae, 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. ZOCKLER_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Godefroi Ghiselbert. Vita Adami, in MPL, cxcviii.;
C. Oudin, De scriptoribus ecclesiae, ii. 1544 sqq., Frankfort, 1722;
A. Miraeus, Chronicon ordinis Praemonstratensis, 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.