Dinooth, Dinothus, abbat of Bangor Iscoed,
a Welsh saint, placed by Rees between 500 and 542. Originally a North British chieftain, reverses drove him into Wales, where he found a protector in Cyngen, prince of Powys. Like many other British chieftains who lost their lands in the Saxon conquest (Rees, Welsh Saints, 207), Dinooth embraced a life of religion, and, under Cyngen, founded, in conjunction with his sons, Deiniol, Cynwyl, and Gwarthan, the monastery of Bangor on the Dee, of which he was the first abbat. Bede mentions his name in his narrative of the second conference at Augustine's Oak (H. E. ii. 2), but merely says, cautiously, "Tempore illo Dinoot abbas praefuisse narratur." Bede, who wrote a century and a quarter after Augustine's time, shews no special acquaintance with the internal affairs of the Britons, and we cannot help suspecting that the present uncertainty as to the chronology of Welsh hagiology existed when Bede wrote. A later statement makes the founder of Bangor alive in 602 or 603, and brings him to the conference, though he must have been in extremest old age, and would have had a mountain journey from the Dee to the lower Severn (see D. C. A. "Augustine's Oak"; also Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 40, 41, on Augustine's journey); it even reports the speech he is said to have made in the name of the British church in answer to Augustine. For this document see Haddan and Stubbs (Councils, i. 122), where the answer is quoted in the original Welsh with Spelman's Latin translation. Two copies of the original MS. exist in the Cottonian collection. It is accepted as genuine by Leland (Tanner, Biblioth. 1748, art. "Dinotus," p. 228), Stillingfleet (Orig. Brit. i. 536), Lappenberg (Hist. of Eng. i. 135). On the other hand, the document does not mention the name of Augustine, nor allude to one subject of the conference which is markedly noted by Bede, the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxons. In fact it contains no name whatever, but is a firm and temperate repudiation of papal authority, and an assertion of the supremacy of "the bp. of Caerleon upon Usk" over the British church. For any internal evidence to the contrary, the "Answer" might have been penned in reply to some demand made upon the British church by the see of Canterbury centuries after Dinooth. It bears upon that subject, and that alone.