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Biography

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Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne, remembered as the Apostle of Northumbria, was an Irish monk of the monastery of Iona who became the first bishop of Lindisfarne in the seventh century. His year of birth is not recorded in any surviving source. He belonged to the community founded by Saint Columba on Iona, off the west coast of what is now Scotland, and was Irish by origin. After King Oswald of Northumbria, who had been baptised during exile among the Irish and the Scots of Dál Riata, recovered his kingdom, he asked Iona to send a bishop to restore Christianity among the northern English. An earlier missionary from Iona proved too austere for his hearers and returned unsuccessful. Aidan was then consecrated and sent, in the mid 630s, and chose as his episcopal seat not the royal fortress of Bamburgh but the tidal island of Lindisfarne, near the royal centre yet suited to monastic life.

From Lindisfarne, Aidan organised the conversion of Northumbria. The principal narrative source is Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede reports that Aidan travelled on foot rather than on horseback so that he might meet ordinary people on the road and speak with them of the faith. In the early years he used King Oswald as an interpreter, since Aidan's first language was Irish and the king had learned Irish in exile. He founded churches, monasteries, and schools, brought Irish monks to assist him, and educated English boys, among them the future bishops Chad, Cedd, and Eata. He was known for almsgiving, for using gifts from the wealthy to ransom captives and relieve the poor, and for a manner of life that Bede deliberately contrasts with later prelates whom Bede judged more worldly. Bede also records Aidan's freedom in rebuking the powerful, including the story that he gave away a horse presented to him by King Oswine of Deira in order to help a beggar.

Aidan's episcopate spanned the reign of Oswald, who was killed in 642, and then the divided rule of Oswiu of Bernicia and Oswine of Deira. Bede portrays a close friendship between Aidan and the devout Oswine, and recounts Aidan's sorrowful foreknowledge of that king's death. Bede also attributes miracles to Aidan, among them the changing of the wind that saved Bamburgh when the Mercian king Penda tried to burn the royal city. Aidan kept the Irish calculation of Easter, which after his death became a central issue at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Bede, though a firm advocate of the Roman reckoning, praises Aidan's holiness and pastoral zeal without reservation and treats him as a model bishop.

Aidan died on 31 August 651 at the royal township of Bamburgh, at a church he maintained there. Bede states that he died leaning against a buttress on the outside of the church. His body was taken to Lindisfarne and buried in the monastic cemetery; his relics were later translated into the church. Veneration began soon after his death, in the period before the later papal processes of beatification and canonization. His feast is kept on 31 August. He is the founder of the Lindisfarne monastic tradition that, in the following generations, produced the Lindisfarne Gospels, and he remains the central figure in the seventh-century conversion of Northumbria. After the Viking assault on Lindisfarne, his cult continued in the north of England, where he is still especially associated with Northumbria and with Holy Island.

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