Adam of Saint Victor

Adam of St. Victor († 1146 ) was a poet and composer of Latin hymns and sequences. It is believed that the extension of the poetic and musical repertoire of the Notre Dame school was heavily fertilized by his strict rhythmic and very pictorial poetry.

He is first detectable in the year 1098, in the archives of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, where he sub-deacon, and later was first Precentor. He left the cathedral at 1133 to go to the abbey of Saint - Victor, probably introduce the Rule of St Augustine at the Cathedral because of its attempts.

Adam was probably in contact with a number of major theologians, poets and musicians of his time, among them Peter Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor. Albertus Parisiensis Perhaps one of his students.

37 of his hymns were published in the Elucidatorium ecclesiasticum of Jodocus Clichtovaeus, a Catholic theologian of the 16th century. The remaining 70 hymns were preserved until its dissolution during the French Revolution in the Abbey of St. Victor. Then they came to the Bibliothèque nationale, where they were discovered by Léon Gautier, who created a first complete edition (Paris, 1858). However, most attributions to Adam are uncertain.