published some Latin Lives, and a few isolated "Lives" have been
published from time to time by other more or less competent editors.

The Irish Lives, though more numerous than the Latin, are less
accessible. The chief repertorium of the former is the Burgundian or
Royal Library, Brussels. The MS. collection at Brussels appears to have
originally belonged to the Irish Franciscans of Louvain and much of it
is in the well-known handwriting of Michael O'Clery. There are also
several collections of Irish Lives in Ireland--in the Royal Irish
Academy, for instance, and Trinity College Libraries. Finally, there
are a few Irish Lives at Oxford and Cambridge, in the British Museum,
Marsh's Library, &c., and in addition there are many Lives in private
hands. In this connection it can be no harm, and may do some good, to
note that an apparently brisk, if unpatriotic, trade in Irish MSS.
(including of course "Lives" of Saints) is carried on with the United
States. Wealthy, often ignorant, Irish-Americans, who are unable to
read them, are making collections of Irish MSS. and rare Irish books, to
Ireland's loss. Some Irish MSS. too, including Lives of Saints, have
been carried away as mementoes of the old land by departing emigrants.

The date or period at which the Lives (Latin and Irish) were written is
manifestly, for half a dozen good reasons, a question of the utmost
importance to the student of the subject. Alas, that the question has
to some extent successfully defied quite satisfactory solution. We can,
so far, only conjecture--though the probabilities seem strong and the
grounds solid. The probabilities are that the Latin Lives date as a
rule from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when they were put into
something like their present form for reading (perhaps in the refectory)
in the great religious houses. They were copied and re-copied during
the succeeding centuries and the scribes according to their knowledge,