Talk:Dommoc

Merge with Dunwich?

• It seems well established that Dommoc and Dunwich are the same place, or very near each other. The name Dunwich seems to have come from Anglo-Saxon Dommoc-wïc. See http://jeremyhaslam.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/dunwich-pdf.pdf . Anthony Appleyard (talk) 18:53, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree - the articles should remain separate. Every source that I have read about the see of Dommoc has stated that there is no certainty regarding its location. Dunwich is only one several possible sites. Even if Dunwich was proved to be the see for Dommoc, they shouldn't be merged. Would the city of Norwich and the Diocese of Norwich articles ever be considered to need to be merged? No. I believe both articles have the potential to be expanded into interesting independent articles. --Amitchell125 (talk) 08:09, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

No, the article itself says they're not necessarily the same, and even if Dommoc did give rise to Dunwich the two articles discuss quite separate things - a former see and a current village. Fences&Windows 21:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Also oppose merger... AnonMoos (talk) 03:28, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Also oppose. I believe Dorothy Whitelock made a case for Dommoc being Felixstowe, and there are other possibilities. Also per Fences and windows the articles discuss different things. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:39, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

St Paulinus?

• The reference to it is highly inferred that St Paulinus of York was present at Rædwald's court around 616 is not consistent with the article for Paulinus. What is the citation that supports this inference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.240.54.10 (talk) 13:42, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

In response to this:
The inference arises from an episode in the 7th century Whitby Life of St Gregory - possibly an independent tradition, Whitby having special associations with East Anglia because Hild, its royal foundress and long its abbess, went for a year to her sister Hereswith's kingdom of East Anglia before returning to Northumbria to commence her religious life, at Aidan's bidding. King Anna's entourage favoured their bishop, as they honoured their king. If Felix gave Hild information about the Gregorian Mission it would be unsurprising, given her religious disposition and intentions, which her East Anglian visit resolved. This Life of Gregory tells that Edwin, during his exile, met St Paulinus, under circumstances similar to those described by Bede, in his Historia Ecclesiastica, of Edwin's quasi-supernatural visitor at Raedwald's court, while Raedwald was deciding whether to hand his guest over to the Northumbrian ruler who wished to kill him, or whether to summon an army and march northwards to the river Idle and to one of the most decisive battles of the 7th century. As Bede further relates, Edwin's mysterious night visitor, who had offered him the summit of the kingdom if he would receive christian teaching, gave him a secret sign to remind him of his promise to do so, if he were ever to reach that high standing.

The story moreover continues that after the death of Raedwald Edwin came to hold dominion over the English both north and south of the Humber. He took a Christian wife, the princess of Kent, and at her behest undertook Christian instruction by Paulinus, who accompanied her to York as her bishop. As a strategy for the Kentish Mission courageous: as an attribute of kingship, for Edwin it became decisive. The description of Edwin's conversion is told in some detail, and Bede says that after all his teaching, while Edwin was still prevaricating, Paulinus gave that secret sign which had first been given at Raedwald's court ten years previously - and King Edwin, considering to whom he owed his present circumstances, as he had trusted himself to Raedwald's honour now remembered his own promise. From these parts of the story the identification of Paulinus as Edwin's Bedan visitor is suggested, so far as the historical sources can be made to speak in a historical rather than a legendary voice. That would therefore place Paulinus in Raedwald's East Anglia.

It is also in accord with the possible and indeed likely activities of the Kentish mission in the phase which followed its successful royal conversion in Essex, and the baptism of Raedwald of the East Angles himself, which took place in Kent. Raedwald, as a far more powerful neighbour than the East Saxons (who were in any case ruled by the kin of Æthelberht of Kent), showed prevarication in his temple and division among his court and kin over the acceptance of Christianity, but seemed likely to supersede the ageing Æthelberht as the senior power among the southern kingdoms against the ambitious westerners and northerners. He came face to face with the reality of that threat in 616, perhaps even before Æthelberht was dead. The presence of an ecclesiastic - a man in strange apparel speaking of the gospel - in Raedwald's court at the decisive moment, a person who was in a position to know and perhaps influence those difficult deliberations, to understand Edwin's predicament and to seek his religious promise, was most likely to have been a prominent Kentish missionary. They were considering what the outcomes might be. The political implications of the decision to advance Edwin to kingship by attacking the Northumbrians directly affected the future of the Kentish mission itself.

The continued interest of Paulinus, not only in the conversion of Edwin and the north, but then in assisting Edwin to convert Lindsey - a mission which also reached into East Anglia and resulted in the baptism of Eorpwald - leaves no other dignitary of the early Kentish church more likely than Paulinus, when Bishop of Rochester, to be the person in Kent to whom St Felix and St Sigeberht turned, at least in the first instance, when seeking for teachers for their model school for boys. Of course they might have made their application for guidance and resources to Canterbury directly, but with such a friend and mediator nearer to hand, the name and beneficent intentions of Paulinus must always have been in the forefront of their minds. Paulinus was a very venerable man, as Bede takes trouble to explain.

Bede, upon whom we have so much depended, tells us in his Preface to the Historia that he has drawn his sources from so far afield as Canterbury and Rome, and his information about East Anglia 'partly from writings or prior tradition, and partly from the relation of Abbot Esi' (about whom nothing else in known). Whether therefore the historian has transposed the story of Edwin's meeting with Paulinus into the narrative at Raedwald's court, to show that those who are faithful in life may find faith and mercy with God, or whether it was an authentic survival and component within whatever narrative of Edwin was current in the later seventh century, upon which Bede drew, is difficult to decide. Bede was saying that this person, whom the story in the Whitby Life of Gregory identifies as Paulinus (though Bede forbears to name him), offered Edgar something like the Kingdom of England in exchange for his promise to hear the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven (and that was an offer he could not have made without Raedwald's command as well as the authority of his mission). And that the token of that understanding was a sign which Paulinus later uniquely repeated. That is why there is an inference, but only an inference, that Paulinus might have been the person who brought the Gregorian dedication of their Mission to Rendlesham, which remains that of the medieval church there.

That's an inference from me - and that's all it claims to be!. Eebahgum (talk) 19:29, 1 November 2016 (UTC)