Another notable miracle of the same father Aidan is told by those in a position to know the facts. While he was bishop, Penda and his enemy army of Mercians spread ruin far and wide throughout the lands of the Northumbrians and reached the very gates of the royal city, which takes its name from Bebba, a former queen. Unable to enter it either by force or after a siege. Penda attempted to set fire to it. Pulling down all the neighbouring villages, he carried to Bamburgh a vast quantity of beams, rafters, wattled walls, and thatched roofs, piling it high around the city wall on the landward side. Directly the wind became favourable, he set fire to this mass, intending to destroy the city. Now, while all this was happening, the most reverend Bishop Aidan was living on Fame Island, which lies nearly two miles from the city, and which was his retreat when he wished to pray alone and undisturbed: indeed, his lonely hermitage can be seen there to this day. When the saint saw the column of smoke and flame wafted by the winds above the city walls, he is said to have raised his eyes and hands to heaven, saying with tears: ‘Lord, see what evil Penda does!’ No sooner had he spoken than the wind shifted away from the city, and drove back the flames on to those who had kindled them, so injuring some and unnerving all that they abandoned their assault on a city so clearly under God’s protection.1
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Penda’s attack on Bamburgh would have been unknown but for this passage describing Aidan’s saintly powers. He mounted at least one more invasion before his disastrous confrontation with Oswy at Winwaed (iii. 24). Aidan seems to have been the first to use the island of the Inner Fame as a hermitage, but he was followed by Cuthbert (iv. 28), Ethelwald (v. 1) Felgild (AB 100–01) and subsequently by several monks from Durham. ↩