Pega of Peakirk

Saint Pega of Peakirk was an anchoress in the Anglo-⁠Saxon kingdom of Mercia, the sister of Saint Guthlac of Crowland. She was born around 673 and reposed in 719.

The earliest account of her is in Felix's eighth-⁠century life of Guthlac, where she is called the holy virgin of Christ. She belonged to one of the great noble families of Mercia. She lived as an anchoress at a place now called Peakirk, Pega's church, near Peterborough, not far from her brother's hermitage. When Guthlac felt his end near, in 714, he summoned her, and she came by boat and buried him. A year later she presided over the translation of his relics to a new tomb, when his body was found incorrupt; at that time she cured a blind man by means of a piece of salt that Guthlac had consecrated.

After her brother's death she went on pilgrimage to Rome, where, according to a twelfth-⁠century account, she reposed on 8 January 719. The village of Peakirk in Northamptonshire bears her name. She is a saint of the undivided Church, commemorated on 8 January (new style).