ADAMO di SAN VITTORE. — Regular canon, one of the most renowned authors of liturgical sequences. Biographical information is scarce. According to the Victorine abbot Guglielmo di Saint-Lô (d. 1349), A., «nazione Brito» (Breton), is said to have lived in the time of Ugo di S. Vittore and to have composed «valde multas prosas», perfect in content and form, on the Most Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the Madonna, the apostles, and many other saints (E. Martène, Ampl. Coll., VI, 220–221). He died during the second half of the twelfth century.
While the attribution to A. of the Prosae, such as Summa de vocabulis Bibliae, De discretione animae et spiritus, and Super cantica expositio, remains uncertain—the Victorine sources on the matter are late and often inaccurate—his fame is rightly connected with the Sequentiae. It is interesting that this genre of poetry, which began in the Benedictine Order in a still somewhat awkward and irregular form, developed splendidly in the Order of the Regular Canons, especially at S. Vittore, where A., apparently, had more than one competitor and imitator, and at S. Floriano (Upper Austria), from which sequences no less fine than those attributed to our author had already emerged in the eleventh century.
A. is commonly credited with 45 of the 72 sequences contained in one of the oldest graduals of S. Vittore (cod. B. N. 14452, thirteenth century). But this attribution rests almost exclusively on internal criteria, which are not entirely reliable and at times even misleading (cf. C. Blume, Anal. Hymn., 54 [1915], p. VIII ff.). Nevertheless, some direct and unpublished testimony, as well as the milieu and period in which the use of these sequences is documented, authorize us to maintain that at least a considerable number of the 45 sequences must be attributed to Victorine inspiration.
At the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Innocent III gave special approval to A.’s compositions together with the works of Ugo, Riccardo, and others. A.’s poetry is based on accent, rhyme, and the counting of syllables, according to which the verses may have 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, or 12 syllables. The meter is iambic or trochaic. The most common stanza—which would remain typical until the sixteenth century—is the trochaic stanza, composed of two octosyllabic lines and one heptasyllabic line, with the caesura after the second foot: Ave virgo singularis, | Porta vitae, stella maris, | Ave decus virginum.
Usually the sequence begins with an invocation, followed by the development of the thought with a remarkable variety of nuances, and concludes with a new invocation. Elegance of form and profundity of thought explain the great success that many of these sequences enjoyed in the medieval Latin Church.