The surviving Lives naturally divide themselves into two great
classes--the Latin Lives and the Irish,--written in Latin and Irish
respectively. We have a Latin Life only of some saints, and Irish Life
only of others, and of others again we have a Latin Life and an Irish.
It may be necessary to add the Acts which have been translated into Latin
by Colgan or the Bollandists do not of course rank as Latin Lives.
Whether the Latin Lives proper are free translations of the Irish Lives
or the Irish Lives translations of Latin originals remains still, to a
large extent, an open question. Plummer ("Vitae SSm. Hib.," Introd.)
seems to favour the Latin Lives as the originals. His reasoning here
however leaves one rather unconvinced. This is not the place to go into
the matter at length, but a new bit of evidence which makes against the
theory of Latin originals may be quoted; it is furnished by the well
known collection of Latin Lives known as the Codex Salmanticensis, to
which are appended brief marginal notes in mixed middle Irish and Latin.
One such note to the Life of St. Cuangus of Lismore (recte Liathmore)
requests a prayer for him who has translated the Life out of the Irish
into Latin. If one of the Lives, and this a typical or characteristic
Life, be a translation, we may perhaps assume that the others, or most
of them, are translations also. In any case we may assume as certain
that there were original Irish materials or data from which the formal
Lives (Irish or Latin) were compiled.

The Latin Lives are contained mainly in four great collections. The
first and probably the most important of these is in the Royal Library
at Brussels, included chiefly in a large MS. known as 'Codex
Salmanticensis' from the fact that it belonged in the seventeenth
century to the Irish College of Salamanca. The second collection is in
Marsh's Library, Dublin, and the third in Trinity College Library. The