Adam of Kinloss

The Scottish Cistercian Trail

Melrose

Dundrennan

Newbattle

Kinloss

Saddell

Glenluce

Sweetheart

Cupar-Angus

Culross

Balmerino

Deer

Nunraw

Sermon on the Feast of Saint Benedict

by Adam Elder of Kinloss Abbey

Although the translator has supplied the essential source notes, printed at the end of his interesting contribution, Fr Aelred, our late editor, had added the following details, some of which will serve to bring out the Cistercian context of the sermon: Adam of Kinless, or Adam Senior, some time after 1529, entered the Monastery of Kinloss, former Cistercian Abbey of St Mary within the county and old diocese of Moray, Scotland. Founded by David I in 1150 or 1151, the abbey is today a ruin. Adam Elder has left us his Conciones capitulares (Sermons preached in Chapter) whose standard is admit­tedly not of classic Cistercian quality. The Sermons themselves however are probably the only representative writings of the time and place by a Cistercian. Fr Ambrose Conway of Sancta Maria Abbey, Scotland, has made this translation-the first in English, to our knowledge=-keeping faithfully to the original. While it would undoubtedly be better to have an historico-spiritual commentary to accompany it, yet the obvious first step is to have a translation made. Kinloss appears to be the most promising area for research among .the Scottish abbeys, and the scholars are expected to get working on it soon.

We would draw the attention of the editors of the "Dictionnaire des Auteurs Cisterciens", Rochefort 1975, to page 7 where they misplace Adarn Elder in the 13th century.

'Lo! we have left all things and followed thee! (Mt 19.27)

In olden times, my brethren, it was usual to celebrate and praise the illustrious men, the heroes, who had merited well of the state and had then passed from this mortal life. Men of old were convinced that this was the best way to raise up many others like them, willing to follow their example called to mind in these solemn commemorations. And so I myself (if I may compare the small with the great) will do what my poor abilities allow to give some measure of that praise due to our hero, our Lawgiver, Benedict. It is not, indeed, that I have to urge you and you are running well already, but I would give a little prick of the spur to urge on my own laziness to imitate a little more the virtue of this great man. Indeed I am hard put to it to find words to describe the merits of a man so great that my mind can scarcely envisage his greatness. So I have good reason to fear that I will collapse under the attempt to praise him as he deserves and, rather than give a fitting picture of him, betray my own foolishness. Why should I not confess the truth? I have certainly always thought it more honest for a man openly to make profession of the truth which that faithful witness, his conscience, cannot hide. My comfort is that your kindness is favourable to me; so, that I may be emboldened to my task, let us turn together to our Virgin Mother, offering her the praise of the Angelic Salutation: Ave gratia plena.

Brethren, as you have heard so often when the life of our Lawgiver has been read for our example and imitation, the Blessed Benedict was born in the province of Nursia of a good family as the world reckons it. When he had passed his boyhood, his good parents sent him for education to the city of Rome, at that time famous above other places for its schools of learning. In these early years, thanks to his sharp intellect and the help of God's grace, he acquired rapidly a sound scholarship. But he saw also of how little worth were all the successes of this world. He ceased to care for his family riches or for anything else in this world, seeing in such things only an obstacle to divine contemplation; and it was to this life of contem­plation that he resolved to devote himself, seeking to please God alone and mindful of the words of the Gospel: 'Everyone who has left house or brothers, or father or mother or children or lands for my name's sake will . receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life' (Mt 19.28-9). He clearly saw, moreover, that man is born with the seed of vice within him, and that all the delight of the flesh is the enemy of the soul. He judged, and rightly so, that early youth is the time to fly from whatever would nourish carnal pleasure. He quickly made up his mind that all the glory and the evil pleasures of this world, all temporal things, were but sham goods of no lasting value and fit only to be rejected as the evil mothers of shame and wickedness i the real goods were heavenly contemplation, religion, mercy and the other virtues, and these must be sought whole-heartedly. Blessed he was by name, blessed by grace, and the Lord filled him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, and would give to him a robe of glory, the reward of eternal life.

He turned sharply from worldly glory and from all evil pleasures and enrolled in the .service of Christ, service which gives true glory and real triumphs, and bent his neck to the yoke of religious profession, donning its holy habit. In this profession he made such progress in a short space by the care, the zeal, the diligence with which he strove to mould his life on that of Christ and His Apostles that, as St Gregory tells us, his life, his conduct, his miracles, might make him seem himself an Apostle. Admiration was first aroused by the remedies for sin he made use of: fasting, abstinence and other bodily afflictions. Such was his zeal in this respect that he hid himself in a dark and narrow cave, content with a little bread and water, as happy with this as with every delicacy, living long unknown to men. He knew that concupiscence, which lurks deep in the hidden places of the soul, is by these means smothered and killed, but that indul­gence is the beginning and the mother of lust. These were the means also by which he could give himself more easily and securely to the study of divine wisdom day and night.

It often happens that a stream when it rises in the heights of a mountain and starts out on its way is narrow because of the weakness of the waterspring whence it rises, but that later, fed by continual inflows, it joins and intermingles with other bubbling fountains and before long becomes a full-flowing river, deep and plentiful. So did the virtues of our hero, Benedict, have their small beginnings in his infancy but grew like a flood in time, fed by the streams of God's grace, of that God who 'prevented him with the blessings of his sweetness', and swelled into a great and boundless river as he became practically the foremost leader of the religious state. Given totally to God, he began with ardent zeal to spread His glory, teaching lessons of piety, justice, kindness, patience and all the other virtues, but above all charity to others, remembering the words of the Apostle: 'If I speak with the tongues of men and angels but have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal' and so on (I Co 13.1). As he became better known and as his miracles won recognition as setting the seal on the holiness of his life, men hastened to honour and venerate him as an authentic saint. But let us go back to the point where we digressed.

We have said that his great care and set purpose was to imitate Christ and His Apostles in their life and virtues. Let us, so far as time allows, look into this. For love of Christ the Apostles became poor, uncultured, unrespected, weak, despised. Like them our hero, Benedict, although he had once been rich, noble and powerful, cast away his family possessions, his inheritance, estates, honours, the pleasures of this world and all those things for which men cross the seas and toil and quarrel and fight and wrangle. And why should he not do so? It was for the love of Christ, to imitate Christ and His Apostles, that he became poor and ignoble, vile and abject. In fine, he was in this mortal life in utter want, but when the flesh was given up to devouring worms, his soul, in all the beauty of its good works, was rejoicing with the angels.

I am sorry, brethren, that I have to pass over much else, but time is getting short. My advice is, and I hope I can convince you to adopt it, that while we are in this mortal life, so full of troubles and sorrows, while we still run our course and play our part on this world's stage, we should make it our care and resolution to follow the example of St Benedict. First of all, after the example of our hero, we must turn our mind from things earthly and temporal so as never to be soiled by the dust of vain thoughts. Rather indeed should our mind be fixed on heavenly things and united with God through careful custody of the heart and the guarding of a good conscience which will stand secure before the dread tribunal of God, the Just Judge, in the day when the earthly vessel of our body is dissolved and reduced to ashes. Thus, doing always the will of our Creator we will also be imitators of the Apostles, so that we can truly say with St Paul, 'Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to fall and I am not indignant?' (II Co 11.29), as we 'commend ourselves in every way as servants of God in endurance', and so on (II Co 6.4).

Let us shrink from no difficulty in this life nor fall away from the rules and precepts of this our Lawgiver whom we so much love and honour and venerate, today and every day. Let us give ourselves with all our power to continence, devotion, mildness and, above all, to mutual charity and kindness. Finally, let us devote ourselves thoroughly to the study of Scrip­ture and divine wisdom, strenuously seeking to overcome ignorance: so, always straining towards the things that are above, we shall deserve to win through to eternal happiness in the kingdom of heaven with our Legislator Benedict, through the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ and His eternal Father and the Holy Spirit.

Translated by Fr Ambrose Conway

Sancta Maria Abbey

NUNRAW, Scotland

Bibliographical notes

(1) ADAM ELDER entered the Monastery of Kinloss some time after 1529 when Abbot Robert Reid was appointed and blessed. Nothing is recorded about his early life or about his family. In the chronicles and in his signature to a legal document his name appears as Adamus Elder but in wnnngs aspiring to literary elegance such as his sermons it is "Adamus Senior". His talent was recognised and he was entrusted with the formation of the younger monks. It was in the discharge of this office that his sermons in Chapter were composed. In 1541 Abbot Robert Reid was appointed Bishop of Orkney by the Holy See on the recommendation of King [ames V with permission to retain the office of Abbot for some years. He installed his nephew WaIter Reid as Abbot in 1553. The new Abbot, still a boy, was immediately sent to Paris to complete his studies and Adam Elder was sent as his tutor. When making report on his pupil's progress to the Bishop, Fr Adam asked more than once that his sermons, left in the Abbey, should be sent to him. After some delay they came but very much mutilated, possibly damaged on the journey. He re-edited them and had them printed in 1558. To the revision seemingly belong the expansion of the sermon on St Bernard to include admonitions to Abbot WaIter on his duties as Abbot, and possibly the vehemence of his attacks on the arch-heretics here and in the Corpus Christi sermon. Adam passes from history. His pupil finally changed his religion and made Kinloss the property of his family. (From Preface of John Stuart to "Records of Monastery of Kinloss", Edinburgh 1872; and Life of Abbot Robert Reid, id.)

(2) Elder, Adam: Conciones Capitulares, 1158. Pressmark: National Library of Scotland: BCL 549.

ADAM ELDER

SERMON ON THE FEAST OF SAINT BENEDICT

Offprint from « Cistercian Studies », n° 1, 1981