FINXS
564
FIR
superintendency, Bede says " he erected a church on the ishuul of Lindisfarne fit for an episcopal see, which, nevertheless, he built after the manner of the Scots [Irish], not of stone, but of sawn oak, and covered it with thatch" {Eccles. Hist. lib. iii, c. xxv). Years af- terwards, when the British clergy took possession of these churches in Northumberland, Theodore, arch- bishop of Canterbury, rccjuired this church to be re- consecrated, and dedicated to the patronage of St. Pe- ter. Finnan, having for ten years superintended the abbacy of Lindisfarne and the churches of Northum- berland under the simple title of "bishop," died A.D. 6G1. He left a treatise entitled Pro Vetei-i Pusduili Ritu, regarding the Irish and Oriental time of keeping Easter as the old and true time, and that of Kome as of recent date. See Bede's Eccles. Ilist. ; Illust. Men of Ireland, vol. i. (D. D.)
Finns, "geographically the name of the inhab- itants of Finland, but in ethnology that of a consider- able branch of the Ugrian race, dwelling for the most part in Finland, though with some representatives in Sweden and Norway as well. The Ugrians have been classed among the nations said to have a Mongolian origin. Dr. Latham places them among the ' Taurani- an Altaic Mongolidfe,' and divides them into LTgrians of the East and Ugrians of the AVest. The Western Ugrians consist of Lapps, Finns, Permians, and other nations or tribes in the north and north-west of Rus- sia, and of the Magyars in Hungary'. The IMagj'ars are the most numerous, and next after these come the Finns, comprising about 2,000,000 of individuals. All the other tribes of Western Ugrians do not together comprise so man)'. The Finns, in common with the other Ugrians, ai-e of the JMongolian type. The Finns, from having been originally a nomadic race, have for many centuries been stationary and civilized. Long before the arrival of the German and Slavic nations in the north of Europe, the Ugiians, or Ogres (for the name, so common in fiction, is really of historic ori- gin), possessed it, and were gradually pushed further north and east by the new invaders. Both Finns and Lapps, there is good reason to believe, originally ex- tended much further south than thej' do at present, occupying, perhaps, the whole of Svvedeu and Norway. 'The Finns,' says Prichard, 'were in the time of Ta- citus as savage as the Lapps; but the former, during the succeeding ages, became so far civilized as to ex- change a nomadic life for one of agricultural pursuits, ■while the Lapps have ever continued to be barbarous nomades, as well as the Siberian tribes of the same race — namely, tlie Woguls and OstialvS. The Finns, as well as their brethren the Beormahs, or Finns of the White Sea, had proljably undergone this change long before the time when they were visited by Otther, the guest of Alfred. When the Finns were conquered by tlie Swedes, they had long been a settled people, but one of curious, and singular, and isolated charac- ter.' " — Chambers, Cyclopcvdia, s. v. See Finland.
Pintaniis orFintan, the founder of the monastery of liheiuau (q.v.), in the canton of Zurich. He descend- ed from a noble family in the province of Leinster, Ire- land. In a war between tvvo cliieftains, one chieftain killed Fintan's brother, and, fearing tl.at Fintan would avenge the brother's death, caused him insidiously to be carried oft' by the Normans. Having changed his master several times within a few days, Fintan was to be taken to Scfitland, liut escaped wlien the vessel landed at one of the Oi kney Islands. He had to spend three days on this uninliabited island, after which he swam, miraculously supjiorted, to Scotland. He re- mained for two j'ears with a i)ishop who had studied in Ireland; t lien, in com|)liance with a voWj he j(uir- neyed, through (lallia, Alemannia, and Lomljardy, to Eome. .\fter iiis return he' fust went to tiie nmiKis- tery of Pfatt'ers, and from there to liheinau, where he completed, conjointly with Wolfen, a scion of the
house of the Welfs, the monaster}' which the grand- father and father of Wolfen had begun. After work- ing at Kheinau for five j'ears as a priest, he entered the monastery in 851, remained there five years, and thereupon became a hermit, leading for 22 years, from 856 to 878, the j-ear of his death, a life of extreme as- ceticism. Thus he came to be venerated as a saint, even during his lifetime, throughout the whole region. When his friend Wolfen, who in the mean time had become abbot of Kheinau, returned from Eome with the relics of St. Blasius, Fintan took a portion of them to a cell in the Black Forest, which subsequently was called St. Blasien. — Herzog, Real-EncyUop. xix, 491. (A. J. S.)