Pega

ON ST. PEGA, OR PEGIA, VIRGIN, IN ENGLAND.

After the year 717.

Pega, Virgin in England (St.)

From various sources.

[1] St. Pega was the sister of the most holy hermit Guthlac (concerning whom see April 11), and today she departed to heaven. Concerning her, Hugo Menardus writes in the Benedictine Martyrology: "At Rome, the deposition of St. Pega the Virgin, sister of St. Guthlac." St. Pega, sister of St. Guthlac. Guthlac, who was living an anchoritic life at the place where, after his death, the most celebrated monastery of Croyland, or Crawland, was built, did not allow her to come into his presence; She wraps his body. he wished, however, that when he had died, his body should be wrapped in a linen shroud by her and buried.

[2] "When twelve months had elapsed after his burial," says Felix of Croyland in the Life of Guthlac, "it was put into the mind of his sister that she should lay her brother's body in another sepulcher. Having gathered the brothers and priests, and also persons of other ecclesiastical ranks, on the anniversary of his death they opened the tomb and found the entire body intact, as though he were still alive, and with the supple bending of the joints it seemed much more like one sleeping than one dead. After a year, she re-inters his body, still uncorrupted. Moreover, all the garments in which it had been wrapped were undefiled; indeed, they shone with an ancient newness and their original whiteness. When those who were present observed this, they immediately stood stunned and trembling, so that they could scarcely speak, scarcely dared to gaze upon the miracle, and scarcely knew what they should do. When the handmaid of Christ, Pega, perceived this, filled with spiritual joy, she rewrapped the consecrated body with divine praises and veneration in the linen shroud which the anchorite Ecgbert had sent in his lifetime as a service. And she not only placed the sarcophagus in the earth, but also set up a certain memorial, etc." Ordericus, book 4: "She placed the sarcophagus above ground as a kind of memorial."

[3] Whether Pega herself also led an eremitic life, I have not ascertained. Camden, writing of the Welland River among the Coritani, Where she lived. says thus: "After a few miles from here, the Welland flows past Maxey, formerly a castle of the Barons de Wake, and Peag-kirke, where in the primitive Church of the English, Pega, a holy woman who left her name to the place, the sister of St. Guthlac, together with sacred Virgins, gave proofs of piety and chastity by her life and example, and approaches the marshes which I have often mentioned." Peag-kirke, or Peakirck, or Pekirck — that is, Pega's Church — is situated in the county of Northampton. It was formerly an abbey of men, The monastery of Pegeland. called Pegeland. But in the time of King Hardecanute, the Abbot of Peterborough, having bribed the judges with money, claimed its lands and monastery for himself: soon various nobles seized very many goods which their ancestors had given to that same place, and the Abbot Wulgatus and the monks were cruelly driven out. St. Edward the Confessor afterward transferred them to Croyland, as Ingulph narrates more fully in the Croyland history, where he often mentions St. Pega. We have seen a manuscript diploma of King Wulfhere, given in the year 664, in which, along with very many other places, he bestows upon the monastery of Peterborough Peikirke as well. Whence it may be suspected that either the old name of the place was omitted by the copyist while transcribing the diploma, and the more recent one was substituted; or that certain things were added to the diploma not in good faith: for Wulfhere had died before St. Pega was born.

[4] It seems that St. Pega lived for some time on the island of Croyland after the death of St. Guthlac, as is evident from what Ordericus relates from Felix, concerning a certain blind man who at length, St. Pega dwells on the island of Croyland. being led with faith to Croyland, sought the conversation of Pega, the Virgin of Christ: with whose permission he lay within the oratory at the holy body. "She then scraped the glutinous part of the salt previously consecrated by the holy man into water, and thence dropped the water drop by drop between the eyelids of the blind man. At the touch of the first drop, the light was restored to his eyes, etc."

[5] Concerning her death, the same Ordericus Vitalis writes in book 4: "At that time (under St. Edward the Confessor) there was a monastery at Pegeland, over which the noble man, Abbot Wulfgeatus, presided. For there St. Pega, the sister of St. Guthlac, had long served the Lord. After her venerable brother died, She goes to Rome. she endeavored to examine her life with more austere labor for the love of Christ. Whence she went to Rome and humbly visited the shrines of the holy Apostles on behalf of herself and her people, and there on the sixth day before the Ides of January she gloriously ended her life. After death she shines with miracles. She rests entombed in the church which was there built in her honor by the faithful, and, shining venerably with many virtues, she piously comes to the aid of those who faithfully beseech her." I believe that church of St. Pega collapsed either from age or from some other accident, and that no memory of it survives in Rome at present; otherwise her name would have been entered in the tables of the Roman Martyrology.

[6] Ingulph writes more about her in the Croyland history, near the beginning: "St. Pega," he says, "sister of our aforesaid holy Father Guthlac, shortly after the revolution of the first year from his death, first having left behind there in the hands of Abbot Kenulph the scourge of St. Bartholomew and the psalter of her brother, together with certain other relics, returned by boat to her own cell, which was distant four leagues to the west from the oratory of her aforesaid brother. There, having completed two years and three months in mournful lamentation, she set out on a pilgrimage to the shrines of the Apostles Peter and Paul, in cold and much abstinence. And when she was entering the city of Rome, As she enters Rome, the bells ring of their own accord. a sudden ringing of all the bells, resounding for the space of one hour, declared the merit of her holiness to all the citizens. There, devoted to divine service, she finally completed her days in the fear of the Lord; She dies and is buried at Rome. and when her sacred body was committed to the earth there among many other Roman statues, her spirit ascended from the labor of the present life to eternal rest."

[7] St. Guthlac died in the year 714 (not 715 as Ordericus writes), Indiction 12, on the third day before the Ides of April, a Wednesday after Easter, which in that year fell on April 8. Pega departed for Rome at the end of the year 717: how long she survived there is not established. Nicholas Harpsfeld mentions her in Century 8, chapter 19, and Florentius of Worcester at the year 714. A different person from her seems to be St. Bega, who is commonly called St. Bees, from whom the promontory of Cumbria is called St. Bees Head. "For Bega," says Camden, St. Bega, Virgin, September 6. "was a pious and religious Irish virgin who led a solitary life there, to whose holiness are ascribed miracles concerning a tamed bull, and a most copious snowfall which, at her prayer, on the day of the solstice had deeply covered the valleys and mountain summits." Concerning her we shall treat on September 6.