Library › St Adamnán of Iona › Life of St Columba

Life of St Columba

St Adamnán of Iona, tr. Reeves, 1874

First Preface

IN beginning, with the help of Christ, in compliance with the urgent requests of my brethren, to write the life of our blessed Patron, I shall take care to warn, in the first place, others who may read it, to believe the facts which it records, and to attend more to the matter than to the words, which, as I think, sound harsh and barbarous. Let them remember that the kingdom of God consisteth not in richness of eloquence, but in the blossoming of faith, and let them not for any names of men, or tribes, or obscure places in the base Scotic tongue, which, as I think, seem rude when compared with the various languages of foreign nations, despise a record of useful deeds wrought not without the help of God. We must also warn our readers that many other things regarding this man of blessed memory, well worthy of being told, have been omitted for the sake of brevity; in order not to tire their patience, a few only out of many have been recorded here. And this, as I think, every person who reads the following work will perhaps observe, that of the great actions of the same holy man, popular fame has published the less important, when compared even with the few which we shall now briefly relate. From this point, in this our first brief preface, I now proceed, with the help of God, to explain in the commencement of the second, the name of our holy prelate.