Confessor Finnan

Saint Finan, whose name is also written Finnan or Fionán, was an Irish monk of the seventh century who became the second bishop of Lindisfarne and a central figure in the Irish mission to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The principal early authority for his life is the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, composed in the early eighth century. Bede identifies Finan as an Irishman by birth and as a monk of Iona, the island monastery in the Hebrides founded by Saint Columba. No contemporary source preserves the year of his birth, the place of his upbringing, or the names of his family. He was trained in the Columban monastic tradition, which joined austere communal life to missionary work and which, in the dating of Easter and in the form of the tonsure, followed usages long established in the Irish and British churches rather than the customs then dominant in Rome and in much of Gaul.

After the death of Saint Aidan in 651, the community of Iona sent Finan to Lindisfarne to take up the Northumbrian episcopate. He was consecrated according to Irish rite and governed the see for approximately a decade. Bede records that in 653 Finan baptized Peada, son of King Penda of Mercia, together with the nobles who accompanied him, when Peada sought marriage with Alhflaed, daughter of King Oswiu of Northumbria. From that baptism followed the mission to the Middle Angles; Finan consecrated the Irishman Diuma as bishop for the Mercians and Middle Angles. Finan likewise baptized Sigebert, king of the East Saxons, who had been persuaded toward Christianity while in Northumbria, and at Sigebert’s request he consecrated Cedd as bishop of the East Saxons. Cedd’s work in Essex and the later foundation of Lastingham thus derived their episcopal authority from Finan. In this way the Lindisfarne mission under Finan reached well beyond Northumbria into Mercia and Essex.

On the island of Lindisfarne Finan constructed a cathedral church after the Irish manner, using hewn oak for the walls and reeds for the thatch, and dedicated it to Saint Peter the Apostle. The building stood as a visible sign of Iona’s material and liturgical culture in the north of England. Finan remained a resolute defender of the Irish computation of Easter and of the Irish tonsure. Bede reports that an Irishman named Ronan, who had learned the continental Easter reckoning in Gaul or Italy, disputed the question with Finan, and that the controversy became increasingly bitter; Bede describes Finan as unwilling to yield. The issue was not settled during Finan’s lifetime. It was his successor Colman who represented the Ionan party at the Synod of Whitby in 664, when King Oswiu accepted the Roman practices and the Columban bishops eventually withdrew from Lindisfarne.

Finan died in 661 and was succeeded by Colman, another monk dispatched from Iona. Later medieval martyrologies assign him the title of confessor and keep his feast on 17 February. He was venerated in Northumbria, Ireland, and Scotland as one of the fathers of the northern English church. Because he lived centuries before the papacy reserved canonization to itself, no pope is recorded as having formally canonized or beatified him; his cult rests on early ecclesiastical memory and on Bede’s narrative. He should not be confused with earlier Irish saints of similar name, notably Finnian of Clonard and Finnian of Movilla, whose work belonged to the sixth-century monastic schools of Ireland. Beyond the events Bede selected for his history, the inner life of Finan, miracles later attributed to him, and the precise circumstances of his burial are not securely documented in the earliest sources.