Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/197

Aidan arise. ‘See, Lord,’ he cried in an agony of prayer, ‘what evil Penda is doing.’ His prayer was heard. The wind changed, and the smoke and flames were blown back on the besiegers. Their plan failed, and Bamborough was saved.

In these years of trouble in Bernicia, Aidan found more scope for his missionary activity in the Deiran kingdom, where he exercised over King Oswini the same spell as had charmed Oswald. Oswini gave Aidan a valuable horse to aid him in his journeys. Soon afterwards Aidan met a poor man who asked for alms; having nothing else to give him, he gave him the horse. Oswini, when next they met, gently chid him for his unthinking charity. ‘Is the foal of a mare,’ said Aidan, ‘more valuable in your eyes than the Son of God?’ Oswini stood by the fire and reflected; presently he fell at Aidan's feet and asked pardon for his thoughtless speech. Aidan raised him, but sat in deep sorrow. When asked the cause, he answered, ‘I grieve because I know that so humble a king is too good to live long.’ Aidan's prediction was soon verified. Oswiu had regained the Bernician kingdom, and longed to unite again under himself the dominions of Oswald. He marched against Oswini, who was murdered by a treacherous thegn. Aidan's heart was broken when he heard of his friend's death. He only survived him twelve days, and died on 31 Aug. 651. When he felt that death was approaching, he had a hut built against the west wall of the church of Bamborough. There he died, leaning against a post which had been erected to buttress the wooden wall. On the night on which he died, a shepherd lad, Cuthbert, as he watched his sheep on the Lammermoor hills, saw stars falling from the sky. When he heard the news of Aidan's death, he recognised them as angels bearing heavenward Aidan's soul. Moved by the marvel, he entered Boisil's monastery of Melrose.

The body of Aidan was buried at Lindisfarne, and was afterwards translated to the right side of the high altar. When, after the synod of Whitby in 664, the Columban Church was defeated by the Church of Rome, Bishop Colman departed to Iona. He carried with him part of the bones of Aidan, and left only a portion for the ungrateful land which had forsaken Aidan's ritual (, H. E. iii. c. 26).

 AIKENHEAD, MARY (1787–1858), foundress of the Irish sisters of charity, was born on 19 Jan. 1787. She was the eldest daughter of Dr. David Aikenhead, of Cork, and was brought up a protestant, like her father; but on his deathbed he was received into the church of Rome, to which his wife belonged, and soon afterwards Mary, when in her sixteenth year, became a catholic. After the death of her mother some years later, Archbishop Murray proposed that she should join him in founding a congregation of sisters of charity, the first of the kind in Ireland. Having consented, she went, with one other lady, by Dr. Murray's desire, to a convent at York, where they spent three years as novices. Returning to Dublin, they made their profession, and opened the first convent of sisters of charity in North William Street, Dublin, Mary Aikenhead being appointed superior-general of the new foundation. The congregation was ‘canonically erected’ in 1816.

Miss Aikenhead, who was a woman of remarkable energy and generosity of character, although for many years almost entirely confined to her couch, lived to superintend the foundation of ten houses belonging to her order, viz. eight convents, an asylum for penitents, and the hospital of St. Vincent, in Dublin, the first hospital in Ireland served by nuns. She died 22 July 1858.

 AIKENHEAD, THOMAS (1678?–1696–7), executed for blasphemy, was the son of an apothecary at Edinburgh. He is described as ‘not vicious and extremely studious.’ His religious opinions became unsettled by the perusal of ‘some atheistical writers,’ put into his hands, as he asserted, by a fellow student who afterwards informed against him. He was accused of ridiculing the Scriptures, and of declaring that Ezra had invented the Old Testament, that Moses and Christ were impostors, that the doctrine of the Trinity was self-contradictory, and all theology a ‘rhapsody of ill-contrived nonsense.’ Persistent assertion of such opinions was punishable under one statute with death upon a third conviction. Aikenhead made a full recantation before his trial, in which no counsel was assigned to him. His case was brought, by a strained interpretation, under another statute, which made the ‘cursing God or any persons of the Blessed Trinity’ a capital offence. He was accordingly 