St. Aidan of Ferns

Aidan of Ferns — known in Irish as Maedoc of Ferns — connects three of the great centres of early Irish Christianity in a way characteristic of how the monastic tradition worked in that period: through the personal relationships of abbots and the movement of monks between communities. He was educated at the great school of St. David in Wales, came back to Ireland, placed himself under the direction of Columba of Iona, and eventually founded the monastery at Ferns in Leinster that became the principal see of the province. He died in 632.

The early Irish Life represents him as a man of severe personal austerity — extended vigils, minimal food, the kind of physical discipline that the Irish penitential tradition encouraged to an extreme — combined with genuine warmth toward his monks and considerable diplomatic skill with the kings of Leinster whose patronage was necessary for the community to survive and expand. He was on good terms with Branduff, king of Leinster, and with his successor Áed Rón, and the relationship between the monastery at Ferns and the Leinster kingship shaped the political as well as the ecclesiastical map of the province for generations.

The typical elements of the Irish hagiographical tradition appear in his Life without particular emphasis: the miracles of multiplication, the healing of the sick, the confrontation with the druids of the pagan past that lingers into the seventh century. These belong to the conventional language in which this tradition expressed certainties about a man's relationship with God and with the created world rather than as literal biography. More substantial is the enduring importance of Ferns — its scriptorium, its school, its liturgical tradition — which gave the see a character in the Irish church that outlasted any single bishop and that Aidan's foundation had made possible.