Brother Cadfael is the main fictional character in a series of historical murder mysteries written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name Ellis Peters. The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in Shrewsbury, western England, in the first half of the 12th century. The stories are set between about 1135 and about 1145, during "The Anarchy", the destructive contest for the crown of England between King Stephen and his cousin Empress Maud.
As a character, Cadfael "combines the curious mind of a scientist/pharmacist with a knight-errant". He entered monastic life in his forties after being both a soldier and a sailor; this worldly experience gives him an array of talents and skills useful in monastic life. He is a skilled observer of human nature, inquisitive by nature, energetic, a talented herbalist (work he learned in the Holy Land), and has an innate, although modern, sense of justice and fair-play. Abbots call upon him as a medical examiner, detective, doctor, and diplomat. His worldly knowledge, although useful, gets him in trouble with the more doctrinaire characters of the series, and the seeming contradiction between the secular and the spiritual worlds forms a central and continuing theme of the stories.
Name origin and pronunciation Cadfael is a Welsh name derived from the words ("battle") and ("prince"). Peters wrote that she found the name "Cadfael" only once in the records, given as the baptismal name of Saint Cadog, who later abandoned it. There are differing pronunciations of the name Cadfael; Peters intended the f to be pronounced as an English v and suggested it be pronounced , although normal Welsh pronunciation would be (approximately ). The name is commonly mispronounced in English (including the television series), and Peters once remarked that she should have included a guide for this and other names in the series that have uncommon pronunciations.
Background Cadfael, the central character of the Cadfael Chronicles, is a Benedictine monk and herbalist at Shrewsbury Abbey, in the English county of Shropshire. Cadfael himself is a Welshman and uses patronymics in the Welsh fashion, naming himself Cadfael ap Meilyr ap Dafydd (Cadfael son of Meilyr son of Dafydd).
He was born in May 1080 into a peasant community in Trefriw, near Conway in Caernarvonshire in north Wales, and had at least one sibling, a younger brother. Rather than wait to inherit the right to till a section of land, he left his home at the age of fourteen as servant to a wool-trader, and thus became acquainted with Shrewsbury early in life. In 1096, he embarked on the First Crusade to the Holy Land in the force commanded by Robert II, Duke of Normandy. After the victorious end to the Crusade, he lived for several years in Syria and the Holy Land, earning a living as a sailor, before returning to England around 1114 to find that Richildis Vaughan, to whom he had been unofficially engaged, had tired of waiting and had married Eward Gurney, a Shrewsbury craftsman. Cadfael became a man-at-arms (foot soldier) in the campaigns waged by Henry I of England to secure possession of Normandy, and returned again to England in the service of a nobleman, Roger Mauduit, who had Prior Heribert of Shrewsbury Abbey kidnapped in an attempt to foil a lawsuit brought against him by the Abbey. Cadfael freed Heribert and, being released from Mauduit's service, laid aside his arms and proceeded with Heribert to Shrewsbury Abbey.
In The Devil's Novice, Cadfael describes his life: I have seen death in many shapes, I've been a soldier and a sailor in my time; in the east, in the Crusade, and for ten years after Jerusalem fell. I've seen men killed in battle. Come to that, I've killed men in battle. I never took joy in it, that I can remember, but I never drew back from it either. [...] I was with Robert of Normandy's company and a mongrel lot we were, Britons, Normans, Flemings, Scots, Bretonsname them, they were there! After the city was settled and Baldwin crowned, most of us went home over three or four years, but I had taken to the sea by then, and I stayed. There were pirates ranged those coasts, we always had work to do. [...] I served as a free man-at-arms for a while, and then I was ripe, and it was time. But I had had my way in the world. [Now] I grow herbs and dry them and make remedies for all the ills that visit us. [...] To heal men, after years of injuring them? What could be more fitting? A man does what he must do.
Secular experience Cadfael became a monk only in middle age and, as a result, is more familiar with the secular world outside the monastery than most of his brother monks. His personality reflects more modern, pragmatic attitudes and progressive ethics than those of his time, which often puts him in conflict with his brethren, particularly with his superior Prior Robert and Robert's clerk Brother Jerome, who disapprove of Cadfael for his casual attitude toward rules and for the privileges that are allowed him by their Abbot. In the stories, Brother Cadfael regularly disobeys the heads of his abbey, acts to bring about his own sense of compassionate justice (sometimes against church or feudal law), and does not condemn relationships outside wedlock. Both Abbot Heribert and his successor Radulfus recognise Cadfael's unusual skills garnered from a long life as soldier, herbalist, sailor, and traveller. As he has "lived half his life in battles", they deploy him as detective, medical examiner, diplomatic envoy (to the Welsh princes), and counsel. Abbot Radulfus, who is himself a shrewd and worldly man, allows Cadfael a certain degree of independence and appreciates that there are circumstances under which the rules of the Order must be bent to serve a greater and more practical good. Though indulgent to a certain degree, his patience with Cadfael is not limitless; he reprimands Cadfael when he feels that his lack of monastic discipline and obedience have been excessive and unwarranted.
Relationships On his many travels before the chronicles open, Cadfael had relationships with at least three women: Bianca, a Venetian girl; Ariana, a Greek boat girl; and Mariam, a young Syrian widow, with whom he lived for many years in Antioch. Through the course of the stories, it emerges that Mariam had a son by Cadfael, although he only comes to realise by accident that he is a father (The Virgin in the Ice). After Cadfael takes vows, he has a close affection for at least two young women: Sioned, the daughter of a Welsh lord (A Morbid Taste for Bones), and Godith Adeney (One Corpse Too Many). He also enjoys a platonic friendship with the equally worldly Benedictine nun, Sister Magdalen (formerly Avice of Thornbury) of the nunnery close by at Godric's Ford (The Leper of St. Giles, Dead Man's Ransom, The Rose Rent). His former fiancée Richildis, now widowed and remarried, briefly re-appears in his life (Monk's Hood).
Born in Antioch and named Daoud, Cadfael's son never knew his father, but his mother Mariam always described Cadfael (without naming him) in loving terms. Based on this praise, Daoud decides to embrace his father's Christianity rather than his mother's Islamic faith, and takes the name of his godfather at baptism, Olivier de Bretagne. After Mariam dies, Olivier offers his service to a crusading noble, and quickly becomes his favourite squire (The Virgin in the Ice). His master supports the Empress Maud, which places him on the opposing side to Cadfael's friend Hugh Beringar, though they eventually reconcile their differences. Olivier is presented as the gracious knight and paladin: skilled and brave in battle, 'fiercely beautiful', resourceful, resilient, generous and chivalrous; he risks his life to save an enemy who had been keeping him imprisoned in a dungeon (Brother Cadfael's Penance). His name echoes that of the companion of Roland, hero of the great medieval heroic epics. Olivier comes closer than any other character in the series to fulfilling the ideals of the French-Norman culture, "almost more Norman than the Normans", perhaps because he has consciously chosen it. In The Pilgrim of Hate he is described as having "a long, spare wide-browed face, with a fine scimitar of a nose and a subtle bow of a mouth and the fierce, fearless, golden eyes of a hawk. A head capped closely with curving blue-black hair, coiling crisply at the temples and clasping his cheeks like folded wings. So young and yet so formed a face, east and west at home in it, clean shaven like a Norman, olive-skinned like a Syrian, all [Cadfael's] memories of the Holy Land in one human countenance".
Cadfael works closely with his friend Deputy Sheriff (later Sheriff) Hugh Beringar of Maesbury in the north of the shire, often bending the Abbey rule to travel with or visit him. Beringar, introduced in the second novel, One Corpse Too Many (1979), is Cadfael's main ally in the pursuit of justice. Beringar swore loyalty to King Stephen when he came of age. Although initially suspicious, the king soon came to trust Beringar and appointed him Deputy Sheriff, and finally Sheriff of Shropshire. At times, Beringar has to choose between loyalty to the Crown's justice and Cadfael's private view of the injustices of the world. In modern terms, Beringar has the combined role of military governor and police chief.
Cadfael is tolerant and caring towards most of his fellow brothers, but has several particularly close friendships. Brother Mark (Monk's Hood, The Leper of Saint Giles and The Summer of the Danes) worked with Cadfael in the herbarium on joining the abbey. Cadfael describes him: "He was my right hand and a piece of my heart for three years, and knows me better than any man living". Cadfael is also close to Prior Leonard of Bromfield Abbey (The Virgin in the Ice); Brother Paul, the master of the novices and schoolboys; Brother Edmund the infirmarer, who treats the sick and supervises the Abbey infirmary; and Brother Anselm the precentor, who is in charge of music and the order of the worship services. Cadfael regards Brother Oswin, who becomes his assistant, almost as a son, caring for him deeply and revering his innocence.
He also has a special affection for the martyred maiden Saint Winifred who lies at the centre of the first book in the series, A Morbid Taste for Bones, (this novel became first of a series only when the second novel relied on Cadfael as the central character), in which Cadfael takes part in an expedition to Wales to excavate the saint's bones and bring them to the Abbey in England, establishing it as a pilgrimage site of healing relics. Later recalling the event Cadfael says: "It was I who took her from the soil and I who restored her – and still that makes me glad – from the moment I uncovered those slender bones, I felt in mine that they only wished to be left in peace [...] the girl was Welsh, like me". Through the series he petitions her for help and talks with her in Welsh, as a down to earth steward of the common people, more accessible than a remote and mysterious God, a local channel of healing and benediction, and though after being miraculously resurrected she in fact lived to a ripe old age, Cadfael always calls her "The Girl".
Faith