Adam Parvipontanus

Who was Adam Parvipontanus?

Adam Parvipontanus was an Anglo-Norman scholastic and churchman.

Adam was born in Balsham, near Cambridge, England. He studied with Peter Lombard at the University of Paris. He later taught at Paris; among his pupils were John of Salisbury and William of Tyre. Gabriel Nuchelmans surmises that he may have been the first person to introduce the term enuntiabile, which came to be used in the same sense as dictum.

Many sources have assumed Adam of Balsham and Adam, Bishop of St Asaph to be the same person, although Raymond Klibansky concludes that they were two different men.

The Petit-Pont attached to Adam's name and which crosses the Seine linking the west front of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris to the left bank St. Michel area would have been the main centre of Adam's intellectual group.