Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/91

Adam flourished about the year 1217, and this date may be fairly correct, as one of his works was dedicated to John, canon of Salisbury, who is doubtless to be identified with the far-famed John of Salisbury who died in 1180. Of Adam's writings, which embraced treatises on the Old Testament as well as the New, there were existing at Sherborne in Leland's time: ‘De Naturâ divinâ et humanâ’ (verse), ‘De Serie Sex Ætatum’ (verse), ‘Super Quatuor Evangelia’ (prose). According to Tanner a manuscript of this author is to be found in the library of Clare College, Cambridge. The names of other works of his are enumerated by Pits.

[Leland's Comment. 232, Collect. iii. 150; Bale, 269; Pits, Rel. Hist. de Reb. Angl. 289; Oudin De Script. Eccles. iii. 9.]  ADAM (fl. 1300?), an English commentator on Aristotle, is praised by Bale and Pits for his love of this author and his subtlety in interpreting his works. Bale adds that he was accustomed to use Aristotle for the explanation of both natural and supernatural affairs. There still exists in Balliol College Library (MSS. ccxli.) a manuscript entitled ‘Adami Buckfield Commentarius super Aristotelis Metaphysicam.’ Coxe, in his Cat. MSS., assigns the handwriting of this manuscript to the fourteenth century; and, as the name of Alghazil, who died in 1111, occurs in it, we get two extreme dates within which Adam must have flourished. But, since Aristotle, till the thirteenth century, was known to Western Europe only as a logician (, History of Cambridge University), it is perhaps best to assign this commentator to the century in which his sole existing manuscript was written. Wadding reckons him as a Franciscan, and professes to have seen four other treatises upon Aristotle written by this Adam, besides the one above mentioned, which he had never come across. As regards the surname Buckfield or Buccenfeldus, there still remains a small village bearing the name of Buckingfield, not far from Morpeth in Northumberland; and as surnames had not yet lost all significance in the fourteenth century, it may have been the birthplace of our author.

[Leland, Comment. 269; Bale, ii. 45; Pits, 820; Wadding's Script. Ord. Min. p. 1; Biblioth. Franciscana, i. 9.]  ADAM (d. 1222), Scottish bishop, was probably a native of the south of Scotland. The tradition is that he was a foundling exposed at the church door. He first appears in 1207, when we find that he, already prior of the Cistercians at Melrose, became abbot. On 5 Aug. 1213 he was elected bishop of Caithness, and consecrated on 11 May 1214 by William Malvoisin, bishop of St. Andrews. In 1218 he went to Rome to receive the pallium, with the bishops of Glasgow and Moray. The interest of his life belongs to its tragic close, which is celebrated in Saga as well as recorded in church chronicle. It seems that the people of his diocese had reason to complain of the excessive exaction of tithes. The old rule was ‘every score of cows a spanin [12 lbs. Scots] of butter;’ Adam extorted the spanin from fifteen cows, from twelve, from ten. The Northmen remonstrated and appealed in vain; at length an angry mob sought the bishop at the episcopal manor of Halkirk in Thorsdale. He sent out Rafn the lawman to parley with them, but they began to use clubs, stones, and fire, and at length fell upon Adam and his deacon Serlo, a Cistercian of Newbattle, and murdered them both. This occured on Sunday, 11 Sept. 1222. The king, Alexander II, is said to have executed fearful vengeance on the murderers; the Saga says the hands and feet were hewn off eighty men. Adam was buried at Skinnet, but his remains were transferred to Dornoch in 1239.

[Chronica de Mailros and Records of Bishopric of Caithness (Bannatyne Club); The Orkneyinga Saga, London, 1873; Grub's Ecc. Hist. of Scotland, 1861, i. 305, 318.]  ADAM (fl. 1340) is described as a Carthusian monk and a doctor of theology. A list of his works is given in Tanners's ‘Bibliotheca,’ p. 7; but he is confused with Adam of Eynsham, the author of ‘Life of St. Hugh of Lincoln;’ and another of the works mentioned, the ‘Scala Cæli,’ is attributed to Guigo Carthusianus in the printed editions.

[Opp. S. Augustini, vi. App. 1452; S. Bernardi, ii. 647.]  ADAM (d. after 1291), monk of Glastonbury, was a native of Domerham, a village in Wiltshire belonging to Glastonbury Abbey. He wrote a history of his house, entitled ‘Historia de Rebus gestis Glastoniensibus,’ which exists in a manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, possibly the author's own copy. It has been published by Thomas Hearne in two volumes. The first volume, however, does not contain any part of the work of Adam. The history forms a continuation of the treatise of William of Malmesbury, ‘De Antiquitate Glastoniæ.’ It begins at 1126, when Henry of Blois, afterwards bishop of Winchester, became abbot, and ends with the death of Abbot John of Taunton in 1291. A large part of