Aidan of Lindisfarne

Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne, hierarch, was an Irish monk, the first bishop of Lindisfarne and missionary of Northumbria, called the Apostle of Northumbria. He fell asleep on 31 August 651. He is commemorated on 31 August.

Beginnings

Bede, in his detailed account of Aidan, says nothing of his youth, except that he was of Irish descent and an early monk at the old monastery on the island of Iona. According to Catholic tradition, in youth he was a disciple of Saint Senan. His name means “little fiery one”. He was probably born in Connacht, around 590-600. He was known for his strict asceticism. In the years before his mission, Christianity in Britain was largely being displaced by Anglo-⁠Saxon paganism. At Iona, the monastery founded by Saint Columba in 563, Christianity found a great supporter in Oswald of Northumbria, a young noble raised there as a king in exile from 616, who, baptized, vowed to bring Christianity to his people; the occasion came in 634, when he received the crown of Northumbria.

The call to Northumbria

Because of his tie with the monastery of Iona, King Oswald asked that missionaries be sent to him from there, not from the Roman-⁠supported monasteries of southern England. At first a bishop, Cormán, was sent, who alienated many by his harshness and returned to Iona, saying the Northumbrians were too stubborn to be converted. Aidan criticized Cormán’s methods and was sent in his place, as bishop, in 635 or 636.

The mission

Allied with the pious king, Aidan chose for his diocese’s seat the island of Lindisfarne, near the royal fortress of Bamburgh. A gifted missionary, he walked from village to village, speaking politely with the people he met and slowly awakening their interest in Christianity; following the apostolic model, he gave them first “the milk of gentle doctrine”, to lead them by degrees, nourishing them with the word of God, to the understanding and practice of the higher precepts. Talking patiently with the people at their own level and showing interest in their lives and communities, Aidan and his monks slowly restored Christianity in the Northumbrian countryside. King Oswald, who after the years of exile knew Irish well, often had to translate for Aidan and his monks, who did not at first speak English. In the years of the mission he built churches, monasteries and schools throughout Northumbria. He won great fame for his mercy and dedication to the needy, lodging, feeding and teaching orphans and paying with the gifts he received for the freedom of slaves. The monastery he founded grew and helped raise churches and religious institutions in the area; it was also a center of learning, in which many of his young disciples prepared for the priesthood. Although Aidan belonged to the Irish branch of Christianity, his character and zeal won him the respect of Pope Honorius I and of Felix of Dunwich.

His end

After Oswald’s death, in 642, he received the support of King Oswine of Deira, with whom he became a close friend, and his work went on almost unchanged until the rise of pagan hostilities in 651. He fell asleep on 31 August 651. According to tradition he was buried at Lindisfarne, beneath the monastery he helped build.

Veneration

His veneration waned in the following years, but in the eleventh century the monks of Glastonbury obtained some supposed relics of his, and through them his day appears in the calendars of Wessex. He is venerated as a saint by the Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox Churches, as a saint of the undivided Church. In the Russian Church he is also commemorated on the third Sunday after Pentecost, on the day of the Synaxis of the British and Irish saints.