Saint Aidan
| Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne | |
|---|---|
Stained glass at Holy Cross Monastery
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| Bishop | |
| Born | Around 590 Ireland |
| Died | 31 August 651 Parish Churchyard, Bamburgh, Northumberland |
| Venerated in | Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism |
| Major shrine | originally Lindisfarne Abbey, Northumberland; later disputed between Iona Abbey & Glastonbury Abbey (all destroyed). |
| Feast | 31 August (Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Communion), 9 June (Lutheran Church) |
| Attributes | Monk holding a flaming torch; stag |
| Patronage | Northumbria; Firefighters |
Aidan of Lindisfarne (died 31 August 651) was an Irish monk and missionary credited with restoring Christianity to Northumbria. He founded a monastic cathedral on the island of Lindisfarne, known as Lindisfarne Priory, served as its first bishop, and travelled ceaselessly throughout the countryside, spreading the gospel to both the Anglo-Saxon nobility and to the socially disenfranchised (including children and slaves).
He is known as the Apostle of Northumbria and is recognised as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion and others.
Bede's meticulous and detailed account of Aidan's life provides the basis for most biographical sketches (both classical and modern). One notable lacuna, which (somewhat paradoxically) reinforces the notion of Bede's reliability, is that virtually nothing is known of the monk's early life, save that he was a monk at the ancient monastery on the island of Iona from a relatively young age and that he was of Irish descent. Aidan was known for his strict asceticism.
In the years prior to Aidan's mission, Christianity, which had been propagated throughout Britain but not Ireland by the Roman Empire, was being largely displaced by Anglo-Saxon paganism. In the monastery of Iona (founded by Columba of the Irish Church), the religion soon found one of its principal exponents in Oswald of Northumbria, a noble youth who had been raised there as a king in exile since 616. Baptized as a Christian, the young king vowed to bring Christianity back to his people—an opportunity that presented itself in 634, when he gained the crown of Northumbria.
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