Irish born missionary Saint Aidan founded a monastery in 653 on which English island, which is also the name of a 1970s UK folk-rock band?
Aidan of Lindisfarne Aidan's life provides the basis for most biographical sketches (both classical and modern). One notable lacuna, which (somewhat paradoxically) reinforces the notion of Bede's reliability, is that virtually nothing is known of the monk's early life, save that he was a monk at the ancient monastery on the island of Iona from a relatively young age and that he was of Irish descent. Aidan was known for his strict asceticism. Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne, the Apostle of Northumbria (died 651), was the founder and first bishop of the Lindisfarne island monastery in England. He is credited with restoring Christianity to
Aidan of Lindisfarne Northumbria. Aidan is the Anglicised form of the original Old Irish Aodhán, (meaning “little fiery one”). Possibly born in Connacht, Aidan was originally a monk at the monastery on the Island of Iona, founded by St Columba. In the years prior to Aidan's mission, Christianity, which had been propagated throughout Britain but not Ireland by the Roman Empire, was being largely displaced by Anglo-Saxon paganism. In the monastery of Iona (founded by Columba of the Irish Church), the religion soon found one of its principal exponents in Oswald of Northumbria, a noble youth who had been raised there as a