The life of St Aidan of Lindisfarne
When Oswald, who had spent years of exile among the Irish and had himself become a Christian and learned their tongue during that time, won back the kingdom of Northumbria in 634, he turned to Iona rather than to the Roman missions already established elsewhere in England, asking that monastery to send him someone to bring the faith to his still largely pagan people.
Consecrated in 635, Aidan chose the island of Lindisfarne, close to the royal stronghold at Bamburgh, as the seat of his new mission, and there he founded a monastery and church that became, for the whole of northern England, a center of teaching and missionary work in its own right. In the early years, before Aidan and his monks had learned the local language, King Oswald himself would often serve as their translator as they preached. Aidan became known for going from village to village on foot, drawing people toward the faith through patient, ordinary conversation rather than pressure, living all the while by the same simple discipline he had learned on Iona. He died in 651 at the royal residence of Bamburgh, having outlived Oswald, who was killed in battle nine years earlier.
