ADAM SCOTUS (or Anglicus, or Magister Adam, or Adam of Dryburgh). - Ascetic writer, first Premonstratensian, then Carthusian. He is to be distinguished from the two namesakes, who likewise had connections with the charterhouse of Witham (in Somersetshire, England): A., a Benedictine of Eynsham, near Oxford, chaplain and biographer of St. Hugh of Lincoln, and A. Anglus, a Carthusian of the 12th century at the charterhouse of Witham.
Miss E. M. Thompson found at the London charterhouse an ancient manuscript Chronicle of the charterhouse of Witham (founded by Henry II of England in 1181) entitled: De vita et conversatione Magistri Adae Cartudensis secundum quod habetur in chronico domus de Witham. This biography was written by a confrere of A. (cf. f. 220), and from it we learn that A. was born on the borders of England and Scotland, of a modest family. Having entered the Premonstratensian Order at Dryburgh, at the age of 25 he received the priesthood. He was of perspicacious intellect, of singular eloquence, of an irreproachable life that attracted general admiration. Appointed coadjutor abbot of the abbey of Dryburgh, the general of Prémontré, because of his fame as a preacher and as a saint, summoned him to himself. Finding himself at Prémontré, A. went to visit the charterhouse of Val St. Pierre and was enthused by it. Having returned to England, he entered (ca. 1188) the charterhouse of Witham with a recommendation from St. Hugh of Lincoln. After four months of novitiate, a letter from the abbot and general chapter of Prémontré announced to him excommunication for having left the Order; through the intercession of St. Hugh of Lincoln, that general chapter lifted the excommunication.
A. lived from then on in the Charterhouse in prayer and study. The archbishop of Canterbury Hudelebertus visited the celebrated monk and wished him to preach in his presence; it seemed to him that he was listening to an angel. A. died saintly at the charterhouse of Witham in 1212 or 1213, after 24 years of Carthusian life.
Before entering the Charterhouse, he had written several ascetic treatises, of which the principal is Soliloquium de instructione animae (PL 198, 842-72), and many sermons (47 are in PL 198, 11-842; another 28 edited by W. Gray Birch, Sermones fratris Adae, London 1901; others finally Ad Firos Religiosos: 14 Sermons d'Adam Scot, Tongerloo 1934). At Witham he composed, among other things: Libellus super Canonem Missae; De quadripertio exercitio cellae (under the name of Guigo, in PL 153, 787-884); Libellus super Dominica Oratione; Speculum disciplinae; Dialogus Magistri Adae; Exameron; Libellus de consanguinitate Annae matris B. Mariae et B. Elisabeth; Libellus: Secretum meum mihi.