Saint Aidan, also known as Aidan of Lindisfarne and the Apostle of Northumbria, was an Irish saint, who lived from about 590 until 31 August 651. He first became a monk who had studied under St. Senan, at Iniscathay at the Shannon River estuary on the Clare coast. Aidan then became a monk at the monastery that St. Colum Cille had founded on the island of Iona. Aidan would later establish his own monastery on the North Sea tidal island of Lindisfarne, known as Lindisfarne Priory. In time the Abbot became known as the apostle of Northumbria.
When the Romans withdrew from Great Britain, the Anglo-Saxons became strong, and paganism returned. The Northumbrian warrior-leader Aethelfrith was killed in battle (616AD) and his children fled into exile to Scotland. Here they met the Irish monks of Iona and accepted the Christian faith. Oswald, the second son of Aethelfrith, grew up in Iona from the age of twelve and he was determined to re-gain the throne of Northumbria and to Christianize his subjects there. In 633 he fought a successful battle and established himself as king of Northumbria at Bamburgh Castle. In 634 he invited Irish monks from Iona to help him convert his subjects to Christianity. The good English king Oswald even learned how to speak in Irish through his contacts with the Irish.
The Christian mission was handed from one religious to another, from Cormán to Aidan, who then chose with the King’s blessing, the island of Lindisfarne for his new monastic base. St. Bede praised the rule of St. Aidan, and of his Irish monks in the ministry. Aidan then set out, with his disciples, to walk the length and breadth of Northumbria. In this way he converted the Northumbrians though personal piety and the power of his example. He bears the title “Beacon of the North.”
King Oswald died in 642, and Aidan then worked closely with Oswald’s successor, Oswine of Deira to continue the apostolic mission. Twelve days before Aidan’s death, the royal Bamburgh Castle had come under incendiary attack. Aidan saw the smoke from the fires from his monastery and knelt in prayer. The wind immediately changed and the smoke miraculously blew back in the faces of the attackers, who withdrew as a result. For this reason, Aidan is known as the patron saint of firefighters.
St. Aidan died at Bamborough, the town of the King’s seat of power. He died there the last day of August, 651, and his remains were borne to Lindisfarne. His memory is celebrated in the Church on the 31st of August.
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