7Lacey, Brian. "Constructing Colum Cille." Irish Arts Review 21.3 (2004): 120-23.
Regarding the uncertainty of the dates of the Colum Cille's death, the author writes, "Despite the widespread belief that he died in 597 (his alleged 1400th anniversary was commemorated in 1997), it is now almost certain that he died in 593."
Colum Cille, siimilar to other early saints of the Celtic church, was a possessed of characteristics that may not today be regarded as "saintly." Lawrence Taylor writes, "The wandering Irish saints prophesy, cure, win battles, even raise the dead. They also curse. They are indissolubly associated with the landscape, and share its ambivalence and bouts of tempter...Like the Hebrews they were tribespeople, not townspeople, the shamans of a pastoral folk who themselves moved in the landscape." Taylor, Lawrence J. Occasions of Faith: an Anthropology of Irish Catholics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1995. 43.