|
ADAM OF SAINT VICTOR
(12th century)
Adam of St. Victor has been ranked among the
most prominent and prolific Latin hymnists of the Middle Ages, though few
details of his life are known. Around the year 1130, after having been
educated in Paris, Adam entered the Abbey of St. Victor there as a young
man. He passed the rest of his life in that community of Canons Regular.
The Abbey, especially during that time, was distinguished as an outstanding
school of theology. Adam spent his life there in study and musical
authorship. He died somewhere between the years 1172 and 1192. Many of his
hymns and sequences have come down to us, though there seems to be little
doubt that many more may have been lost entirely or are extant without his
name attached to them. In any case, his extant sequences were used during
festal liturgies in the Abbey church and, most probably, beyond. Lotario
dei Segni (later Innocent III) and John de Matha, both of whom studied in
Paris at the time, could have easily come to know this liturgical music and
its composer. In particular, there is the theologically precise sequence of
Adam in honor of the Holy Trinity. Interestingly, this 12th
century Trinitas sequence is found in the Bayeux Missal for the feast
of the Holy Trinity published at Caen (Normandy) in 1783.
|