Aidan of Lindisfarne

Aidan of Lindisfarne, known also as Saint Aidan, was an Irish monk and missionary of the seventh century who restored organised Christian life in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria after a period of relapse following earlier Roman missions. Almost nothing certain is recorded of his birth or youth. He was Irish and entered the monastic community of Iona, the island monastery founded by Saint Columba in the sixth century off the western coast of what is now Scotland. Iona was then a principal centre of Irish monastic Christianity, observing distinctive practices in tonsure and in the dating of Easter. When Oswald, a prince of the Northumbrian royal house who had been baptised during exile among the Irish of Dál Riata, recovered the Northumbrian throne around 634, he asked Iona to send missionaries to his still largely pagan or only partly converted people. An unnamed first envoy, described by Bede as austere and unsuccessful, returned to Iona. Aidan, who according to Bede had criticised that envoy’s harshness and recommended patience with a newly evangelised people, was then consecrated bishop and sent to Oswald, arriving about 635.

Oswald gave Aidan the small tidal island of Lindisfarne, within sight of the royal stronghold of Bamburgh, as the seat of his bishopric. The site recalled Iona itself: a monastic island, cut off by the tide yet close to a centre of royal power. There Aidan established a monastery that served as cathedral, school, and missionary base. Bede, writing in the early eighth century and relying on Northumbrian tradition, is the principal narrative source for Aidan’s life. He portrays Aidan as travelling continually through Bernicia and Deira, preaching to nobles and to the poor, walking on foot rather than riding so that he could converse with those he met. Oswald, who knew Irish, at times interpreted Aidan’s preaching. Aidan used royal and aristocratic gifts to relieve the needy and to ransom captives from slavery; some of those he redeemed were trained for the Church. He observed Wednesday and Friday fasts until the ninth hour, except in Eastertide, and he founded churches and monastic cells across the kingdom. Among those formed at Lindisfarne was Eata, later abbot of Melrose and bishop.

Aidan’s episcopate spanned the reigns of Oswald, who was killed in battle in 642, and of Oswiu of Bernicia, and he also enjoyed the friendship of King Oswine of Deira. Bede recounts that Oswine once gave Aidan a richly caparisoned horse; Aidan gave the horse to a beggar, which briefly angered the king. Oswine then knelt before the bishop to ask forgiveness. Aidan, weeping, told an attendant that he had never seen so humble a king and that such a man would not live long, because the people were unworthy of him. Oswine was murdered in 651. In the same year, the twelfth of Aidan’s episcopate, the bishop fell ill at Bamburgh. He died on 31 August 651, according to Bede, leaning against a wooden buttress of the church there. His body was carried to Lindisfarne and buried in the cemetery of the brethren; it was afterwards translated into the church. Bede, though a champion of the Roman Easter, praised Aidan’s faith, humility, and charity in the highest terms and treated him as a model bishop.

The monastery Aidan founded remained the episcopal see of Lindisfarne until the ninth century and became one of the most influential religious houses in early England. Later figures associated with the community include Saint Cuthbert and the artists and scribes of the Lindisfarne Gospels. Aidan’s mission helped establish a durable Christian culture in Northumbria and trained native clergy who continued the work after the Synod of Whitby in 664 aligned Northumbria with Roman practice. He has been venerated as a saint from the early Middle Ages, with his principal feast on 31 August in Western and Eastern calendars. He is commonly called the Apostle of Northumbria. No contemporary formal act of papal canonisation exists; like other saints of the period he was recognised by liturgical cult and popular devotion well before the later medieval processes of beatification and canonisation.