Note 294 — Chapter IV · THE FAMILY OF IONA.

The expression, ‘whatever kind of person he was himself,’—verum qualiscumque fuerit ipse,—has been held to imply that Bede had no great opinion of St. Columba’s sanctity, or, at all events, referred to traits in his character which were unfavourable, and Dr. Reeves suggests that he may refer to current stories of the saint’s imperious and vindictive temper; but the expression appears to the author to refer to the immediately preceding sentence—‘de cujus vita et verbis nonnulla a discipulis ejus feruntur scripta haberi’—which surely refers to the Lives by Cummene and Adamnan. As Bede was acquainted with Adamnan’s work on the Holy Places, he could hardly have been ignorant of his Life of St. Columba; and probably all Bede meant to express was that he had some hesitation in accepting as true all that Adamnan said of him.