from his very childhood to a venerable old age; after a long exercise of humility, charity, patience, meekness to others, and severity towards himself, he called his children about him, and recommending to them his successor, gave them his benediction, and arming himself with the Holy Sacrament, fell asleep in the Lord. S. FINAN, B. OF LINDISFARNE. (A.D. 661.) [Anglican Martyrology. Colgan in his Acts of the Irish Saints notes him on the same day. Same day in the Aberdeen Breviary, but Dempster says he was commemorated in Scotland on Feb. 16th. Among the Irish, Jan. 9th was regarded as a day on which S. Finan was honoured. Authority:--Bede, Hist. Eccl. lib. iii. c. 17, 21, 25, &c.] England was Christianized from two quarters; Kent and all the south received the Gospel from Rome through the mission of S. Augustine; but the whole of the north-east of the island, called Northumbria, including the modern Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, was Christianized from Iona, the great monastery of S. Columba. The first four successors of Augustine at Canterbury were all chosen from the Italian monks who had accompanied him to England; but they all belonged to that first mission; whereas the See of Lindisfarne, as it became vacant, was filled from Iona. The Scottish monks, thus placed during thirty years at the head of the Church in the North of England, showed themselves worthy of the saintly school whence they issued, and of the glorious mission to which they were consecrated. The first monk sent from Iona to replace the noble Aidan, (Oct. 22nd), was S. Finan. His episcopate was prosperous; it lasted ten years, and was not interrupted by any melancholy event, such as those which had troubled the life of Aidan, by taking from him his two royal friends. S. Finan always lived on good terms with king Oswy, and before going to join his predecessor in heaven, he had the happiness of introducing to the Church the heads of the two great Saxon kingdoms. Sigebert, king of the East Saxons, and Peada, king of the Midland English, came to seek baptism at the gates of Lindisfarne. This made way to the conversion of their respective provinces, which this holy prelate furnished with proper missioners; and after some time, he ordained the Scot, Diuma, bishop of the Midland English, and S. Cedd (January 7th), bishop of the East Saxons. In the island sanctuary of Lindisfarne, S. Finan caused a cathedral to be built, not of stone, like that which Paulinus and Edwin had commenced at York, but according to the Keltic custom, and like the churches built by Columba and his Irish monks, it was made entirely of wood, and covered with bent, that long rough sea-grass, whose pivot-like roots bind together the sands on the seashore, and which is still found in great abundance on the island, as well as on the sandy beach which has to be crossed before the traveller can reach Lindisfarne.