Adam Of Saint Victor.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [1]
Very little is known of the life of this most fertile of the Latin hymnologists of the Middle Ages. Whether he was born in Great Britain or Brittany is uncertain. About the year 1130 he entered the religious foundation near Paris, named after St. Victor of Marseilles; hence his name. - He died in 1177, and was interred in the cloister of that abbey, where, before the Revolution of 1789, his epitaph might have been seen in fourteen verses, one of which was as follows: "Unde superbit homo? cusis conceptio culpa, Nasci pcena, labor vita, necesse mori." He wrote some treatises on devotion; among others, one in honor of the Virgin Mary. His poetical works, which M. Gautier published in 1858, speak for him. As to the merits of Adam, dean Trench speaks as follows: " His profound acquaintance with the whole circle of the. theology of his time. and eminently with. its exposition of Scripture; the abundant and admirable use which he makes of it, delivering, as he thus does, his poems from the merely subjective cast of those, beautiful as they are, of. St. Bernard.; the exquisite art and. variety with which, for the most part,' his verse is managed and his rhymes disposed; their rich melody multiplying and ever deepening at the close; the strength which he often concentrates into a singe line; his skill in conducting a narration; and, most of all, the evident nearness of the things which he celebrates to his own heart of hearts-all these, and other excellences, render him, as far as my judgment goes, the foremost among the sacred Latin poets of the Middle Ages." Some of Adam's hymns have been translated into English and German. For the English, see Neale, Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences (Lond. 1867), p. 107-153; Lyra Mystica (ibid. 1869), p. 1, 170,376; Lyra Messianica (ibid. eod.), p. 79, 116, 211, 305, 340, 343, 389, 414; and Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 53 sq. For the German, see Simrock, Lauda Sion, p. 180, 208; BiBssler, Auswahl altchristl. Lieder, p. 109 sq.; Koinigsfeld, Lateinische Hynmnen und Gesange, i, 134; ii, 181; Rambach, Anthologie christlicher Gesange, i, 284 sq.; Fortlage, Gesange cistl. Vorzeit, p. 400 sq. (See Qui Procedis Ab Utroque). (B. P.)
