06 — The Lindisfarne Community
Aidan’s most enduring achievement was not a building or a doctrine but a community and a line — the church of Lindisfarne, governed after him by the Irish bishops Finan and Colmán, and the school that produced or shaped a remarkable generation of English saints: Chad, Cedd, Eata, and, in the next generation, Cuthbert. These files follow the Irish succession at Lindisfarne and the holiness it bred, which outlived even the Ionan governance of the see.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic; apostle of Northumbria)
A founder is judged by what survives him, and Aidan is to be judged by the community and the saints he left. This section follows two lines of continuity. The first is the episcopal succession — the unbroken line of Irish, Columban bishops, Aidan to Finan to Colmán, who held Lindisfarne until the Synod of Whitby and the customs of Iona with it. The second is the line of sanctity — the men formed in or shaped by the Lindisfarne mission who carried Christianity outward across England and who became, in their own right, saints of the English church: Chad and Cedd, who evangelized Mercia and Essex; Eata, of the original English boys; and Cuthbert, the later glory of Lindisfarne, formed in the ascetic tradition Aidan had planted.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Line of Bishops | The Irish succession Aidan → Finan → Colmán; the continuity of Columban governance and customs at Lindisfarne until Whitby (664) and Colmán’s withdrawal (cross-link St. Colmán). |
| The School and the Saints | The Lindisfarne school and mission as a seedbed of sanctity: Chad and Cedd, Eata, and the shaping of Cuthbert; how Aidan’s foundation reproduced holiness (cross-link St. Cuthbert). |
See Also
- The Mission on Foot — the school of English boys at the root of the community
- The Celtic Reckoning at Lindisfarne — the custom the Irish line carried to Whitby
- Relics and the Cult — the later fame of the community and its relics
- St. Colmán of Lindisfarne — the last Irish bishop of the line
- St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne — the community’s later glory
References
- Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People III.21–28, IV.3, IV.27–28. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
- Colgrave, Bertram, ed. and trans. Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940.
- Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.