Hedda of Peterborough

Saint Hedda, venerable martyr, was abbot of the monastery of Peterborough in England, killed by the Danes in the year 870 together with eighty-⁠four monks. He is commemorated on 9 April.

His name also appears as Haeddi. The monastery of Peterborough stood in the land the Danes were ravaging along the English coast, in the same years as the death of King Edmund. Hedda and his brethren were slain by the pagans, and all of them are honoured as martyrs.

Over their grave there stood, until late in the Middle Ages, a stone called Hedda's Stone, in the churchyard. It had holes made for candles, so that it could serve as an altar on which services were held from the time of Abbot Godric. In the eighteenth century pilgrims would put their fingers into these holes, to keep as a remembrance the dust found there.

We know of no formal act of canonization; his veneration comes from the old tradition of the Church in England, from before the separation of the Churches.