Okay, I did not say that he is unreliable or that he was telling a lie. I was saying why historically speaking, the story as written in the sefer is not historically considered a valid source. You are correct- I should have searched his name to find out more about him. I don’t think he invented anything. I also don’t see him as having portrayed the story as history- having started from the beginning of the intro to Akdamus (page 21), he mentions many actual historical details about R Meir Sha”tz, in a very historically thorough way, to the extent that the addition of the story seems very much like a nice story he heard, not an essential part of his biography. He never makes a claim of the historicity of the story, which is all I was talking about.
(I’m either getting a minor or second major in Jewish history, which is why I have hangups about things like this. Yes, that only makes it worse that I didn’t look up the mechaber of this sefer.)