Fortunately, the Abbot’s next recruit, Aidan, turned out to be a better choice. It was Aidan who selected Lindisfarne as a secluded and peaceful place, ideal for the monastic life – yet close enough to the Northumbrian capital, present day Bamburgh.
From Lindisfarne, Aidan preached the Gospel throughout the Kingdom of Northumbria, sometimes with the assistance of King Oswald who acted as interpreter. Aidan’s mission flourished; people donated land and money to establish churches and monasteries throughout the kingdom. Parents sent their children to be educated by the Celtic monks and four brothers who arrived there, Cynebil, Caelin, Cedd and Chad were ordained priests.
As we learn from the chronicles of St Bede the Venerable, St. Aidan earned a reputation for his pious charity and devotion to those less fortunate, such as his assistance to orphans and paying to free slaves. He insisted on traveling on foot, rather than horseback. The monastic community he founded quickly grew, as did its reputation as a place of scholarship and learning. Aidan died on 31st August, 651 AD, and his body was interred beneath Lindisfarne abbey. St. Aidan has been proposed as a patron saint for the entire United Kingdom because of his Irish origins, his Scottish monasticism and his mission to the Anglo-Saxons of northern England.
On the night St. Aidan died, a young man named Cuthbert was tending his sheep in the Lammermuir Hills in southern Scotland, near Melrose Abbey. According to the Venerable Bede, he saw a vision of Aidan’s soul being taken up by a Heavenly Host. When Cuthbert learned that Aidan had died at the exact time of his vision, he immediately entered the monastery.
Ten years later, Cuthbert became Prior of Lindisfarne, where he often spent time alone on a rocky outcrop, today known as Cuthbert’s Island. Later he went into greater isolation, retreating to the Inner Farne Island and building himself a cell and oratory. Cuthbert’s solitude would be broken by visitors seeking counsel from this wise and pious man, but when he was alone legends have it that he would mortify himself by standing in the sea up to his waist for the entire night, and sea otters would dry his feet and warm his frozen legs. He had a great love of wildlife and he is particularly associated with the Eider Duck, known locally as Cuddy’s Duck.
In 687 AD, Cuthbert’s body was buried on Lindisfarne. More than 100 years later, Vikings attacked the island, and in 875 AD Cuthbert’s loyal monks took up his body and fled. In one of the most astounding stories of Christian monasticism, these monks wandered for generations, safeguarding the incorrupt body of Cuthbert, until eventually founding a church in Durham. When the Norman French built Durham Cathedral almost 300 years later, they re-interred Cuthbert behind the altar, where he rests today.
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