Aidan, a monk in the Irish monastery of Iona in western Scotland, arrived in Northumbria in 635 at the behest of King Oswald. Returning from exile amongst the Scots and newly victorious after having driven out the Welsh king Cadwallon and his invading army, Oswald turned to the monks of Iona for someone to lead a mission to convert the Northumbrian people to Christianity. To Aidan, who led this mission, fell the responsibility of establishing a new monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, near the royal centre of Bamburgh, on land granted by the king.
In fact, Aidan was the second choice among the Iona monks to take on this mission. The first emissary, Corman, could make no progress, finding the English intractable, obstinate and uncivilised. At a conference to review the failure, Aidan voiced the criticism that Corman had been too severe with the people to whom he was preaching: it would have been better had he started with simpler teaching and gradually led people into more complex matters. Having spoken up in this way, Aidan found all eyes upon him and he was appointed to make the second try. This incident, which Bede recounts, tells us two things. First, that the tradition of Christianity preached by the monks of Iona was a austere one. Second, that Aidan, whatever his own personal standards (and he was schooled in the austerity of the Iona tradition), understood how to put across a message. He was a communicator: in modern terms, he could empathise.
In Northumbria, Aidan and Oswald established a partnership of church and state as the basis for a new form of governance for the kingdom. Bede gives an image of the king as the servant of the church, showing Oswald acting as interpreter for the Irish-speaking Aidan when he preached at court.
Once Aidan had established himself, many others came from Iona to preach and teach, new churches were built and more monasteries founded. Bede does not discuss management or the administrative process in the way in which we would now understand these terms; but from his bald description of the progress of the mission we can see that Aidan succeeded in developing an infrastructure, in managing a process of expansion and in securing outcomes. He had the qualities and abilities which, in the modern secular state, would make for a highly effective chief executive of a nationwide organisation in the public sector.
Bede does give us some insight into Aidan's personal qualities and his ways of dealing with others. He was uncompromising in the disciplines of his own personal life, leading his clergy by example and, rejecting the opportunities for taking personal gain, he handed on to poor people gifts which he received from the rich. He had necessarily to enter the world of king and court with its conspicuous consumption. He would attend banquets at court when he had to, but would eat moderately and withdraw early. And when the king came to Lindisfarne, even he had to accept the simple fare of the monastery. Aidan dealt with the kings on his own terms and he spoke his mind, rebuking even the greatest when he saw fit. Such attitudes were not without their difficulties. For while Oswald held Aidan in great admiration, his successor, King Oswiu, appears to have quarrelled with Aidan, possibly finding his unyielding attitudes too abrasive, though Bede is opaque on this point.
It would be a mistake to take too pious a view of church-state relations from reading in Bede how Aidan encouraged Oswald in acts of charity. There is a more hard-headed realism in the episode with King Oswine. Again, charity is the focus when the king rebuked Aidan for giving away to a beggar a horse which he, the king, had just given to him. Aidan turned on the king: "is the son of a mare is more important to you than a son of God?" The king then set aside his sword and prostrated himself at the bishop's feet and begged forgiveness. This alarmed Aidan: "I know this king will not live long", he said privately to a colleague, "for I never before saw a humble king." Here is the recognition that in a brutal world a king has to be strong, Christian virtues notwithstanding.
Aidan died at Bamburgh in 651. He was buried at Lindisfarne in a position of honour in the church and, in time, miracle stories came to be associated with the place of his death. If, as it seems from these details, his monastery was set on promoting a posthumous cult of its founder, this failed to develop as Aidan's reputation was overshadowed later in the 7th century. Lindisfarne and its traditions suffered a setback when in 664 King Oswiu at the synod of Whitby preferred the Roman to the Irish strand of Christianity. The material splendours of the church, as exemplified in Bishop Wilfrid's foundations at Ripon and Hexham, proved more acceptable than the stark austerity of Aidan's Lindisfarne. And when, from the end of the 7th century, Lindisfarne's reputation was again rising, the monastery had in the relics of St. Cuthbert, a subsequent bishop, a new saint to promote.
Aidan was a pioneer and the simplicities of the pioneering stages had to give way to more complex and subtle dealings. Yet the form of governance based on a church-state axis endured; and this is the legacy of Aidan and Oswald. Though overshadowed, he was not forgotten. And when, 80 years after Aidan's death, the Venerable Bede came to reflect on how the English became a Christian people, he saw in that austere Irish monk a pivotal figure.
