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Summary
- Aiden is not in the Bible. It is the anglicised Irish Aodhán, from Aodh, from Old Irish Áed, meaning “fire” — a name borne in Irish mythology and by several high kings, traditionally anglicised as Hugh.
- Aidan of Lindisfarne was sent from Iona in the seventh century after the first missionary reported the English too stubborn to teach; Aidan suggested he had been too harsh.
- He refused a horse and walked, so he could stop and talk with whoever he met. When the king gave him a fine one, he gave it to a beggar.
- Fire in Scripture is what God is — the bush that was not consumed, the pillar at night — and what God does: the refiner who watches the crucible because the point is the silver, not the burning.
- At Pentecost the fire divided and a tongue rested on each of them. Not one blaze; a flame apiece.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Behind the Name entries for Aidan and Aodh (anglicised form of Aodhán, from Old Irish Áed, “fire”; anglicised as Hugh); Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, III.5, for Aidan of Lindisfarne, the horse given to a beggar, and the remark about harshness; Scripture from the NIV via BibleGateway (Deuteronomy 4:24; Exodus 3:2; Exodus 13:21; Malachi 3:2-3; Acts 2:3).
