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Is there a source for the view that this is not the same saint as Æbbe of Coldingham? I know it's difficult to prove a negative, but the sources I have seen suggest that they are the same. --Mhockey (talk) 09:59, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Blair's handlist lists her separately. I'd imagine this is an acknowledgment that there is not enough evidence to show conclusively that they are the same. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 13:16, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try to have a look at the Blair handlist. Does he have a view on which Ebbe the church at Shelswell is dedicated to? The VCH suggests some connection with Northumbria in both Shelswell and Oxford, although the Oxford connection does seem a little tenuous. A problem with having a different saint is that you would expect some reference somewhere to a saint once well-enough known to have a church dedicated to her in England. There are certainly some saints (mostly Celtic) about which there are no known legends, but there don't seem to be many others in the middle of England, where there are more documentary sources. --Mhockey (talk) 17:12, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I dunno. Once a holy-woman has a reputation, her name probably becomes more common. There are of course supposed to be two Æbbes from Northumbria. There was supposed to have been an earlier nunnery at Oxford before the 11th century ... no reason this Æbbe was not an abbess of that. C/f Domne Eafe. The name itself is either a hypocoristic Germanic name from Eadb- names or from Celtic (c/f Aife), so was probably quite common anyway.
The region in question is peripheral in the early English period lying between the heartlands of Mercia on the one hand and Wessex and the south-eastern kingdoms on the other, and is poorly documented until well after the West Saxon take-over. Even the identification of Æbbe of Oxford with Æbbe of Abingdon is conjecture, if geographically likely.
Blair doesn't say anything about Shelswell, nor argue for a Northumbria connection. He just mentions that c. 670 a Berkshire charter is witnessed by an abbess with this name, and notes that S. Kelly and himself have both elsewhere argued that Æbbe of Oxford is the same as Æbbe of Abingdon [Citing S. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters VII: Charters of Abingdon Abbey Part I, p. cxcviii and Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, p. 64]. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 18:04, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
