By Avril Lumley Prior
Our knowledge of the Fenland Saints - Guthlac of Crowland and his sister, Pega of Peakirk, is extracted mainly from an eighth-century Life of Guthlac, compiled by a monk named Felix, probably at Repton Abbey in Derbyshire.
It is upon this text that all subsequent biographies of the siblings and the early history of Crowland are based.
Felix revealed that Guthlac and Pega were the offspring of a Mercian nobleman named Penwalh and his wife, Tette. After an exemplary childhood, Guthlac enjoyed a profitable career as a soldier but, growing weary of pillaging, he took his religious vows at Repton.
Finding the monastic regime too comfortable, he withdrew from society to endure a self-inflicted ‘martyrdom’ in the mosquito-infested Fens, emulating Christ’s retreat to the wilderness. Upon his arrival at Croyland (Crowland), then an island in the undrained Fens, Guthlac took up residence in a Bronze Age barrow. He bore many ordeals, contracted malaria, suffered malnutrition and was plagued by jackdaws and Welsh-speaking demons.
He was comforted by the ghost of St Bartholomew, who provided him with a psalter (prayer book) and a whip to ward off his tormentors. Guthlac also found time to build a chapel and to act as an advisor to Ethelbald of Mercia, forecasting his peaceful ascent to the throne.
Pega’s first recorded act was to officiate at her brother’s funeral c.714. Felix related that a year later, Guthlac’s body was exhumed for re-burial in a sephulchre and was found to be incorrupt. Shortly afterwards, Pega healed a blind man with some salt that Guthlac had blessed. These two miracles signified sainthood and were a fitting place for Felix to conclude his biography. There is no reference to the foundation of a monastery at Crowland by the grateful Ethelbald, as local folklore dictates - Felix merely recorded that a Christian convert named Cissa inherited Guthlac’s cell. Although it is feasable that Crowland continued to attract hermits, there is no reliable evidence to suggest that a conventional monastery occupied the site before Abbot Turketyl of London established his Benedictine house c966AD.
Moreover, Felix said little about Pega, except that she was a nun, who apparently lived ‘a day’s journey’ from Crowland by boat, a premise supported by the illustration at the top of the page which shows Pega boarding a vessel in response to her brother’s deathbed summons.
The Anglo-Norman historian Orderic Vitalis, writing c1124/5, is the first known historian to maintain that Pega lived at Peakirk prior to her arrival at Crowland. The early fifteenth-century chronicler, Abbot Ingulph, did not mention Pega’s abode by name, but explained that it lay four miles to the west of Crowland. Local tradition dictates that Pega founded her cell on the site of the present ‘Hermitage’, formerly a chapel - but now a private residence. Indeed, the place-name Peakirk,
meaning ‘Pega’s church’, suggests a close association with the saint.
Orderic and Ingulf supply us with further information concerning Pega’s virtuous career, claiming that after Guthlac’s reburial, she embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome, where according to Ingulph, church bells rang out in recognition of her sanctity.
She died in the city in 719 ad and was entombed in a church consecrated in her honour, the site of numerous miracles. The church fell into a state of decay and collapsed with the loss of Pega’s relics during the seventeenth century.
A charming legend, perpetuated by Miss Bertha James, a former resident of Peakirk Hermitage, claims that Pega’s heart was returned to England and enshrined within a stone which now rests on a windowsill in the south aisle of Peakirk church. Sadly, this notion must be dismissed as a romantic fable. The so-called ‘Heart-stone’ appears to be a fragment of a fourteenth-century grave-slab depicting the deceased with his hands held together in prayer. Morover, the church’s unique dedication in St Pegas honour is post-medieval, since a charter of 1016 and a will of 1539 disclose an ‘All Saints’ consecration. Pega’s feast day is celebrated at Peakirk each January 8th - the anniversary of her death.
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