About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Brother Cadfael

Encyclopedia : B : BR : BRO : Brother Cadfael

Brother Cadfael is the fictional detective in a series of murder mysteries by the late Edith Pargeter writing under the name "Ellis Peters."

Cadfael is a Benedictine monk and herbalist at Shrewsbury Abbey in Shrewsbury, the county town of the English county of Shropshire. Cadfael himself is of Welsh extraction; his full name is Cadfael ap (son of) Meilyr ap Dafydd and he was born around 1080 to a villein (serf) family in Trefriw, in Gwynedd (northern Wales). The stories are set between about 1135 and about 1145, during the civil war between the forces of King Stephen and Empress Maud. Several true historical events are described or referred to in the books. For example, the translation of Saint Winefride to Shrewsbury Abbey is fictionalised in the first chronicle, A Morbid Taste for Bones, and the siege of Shrewsbury by Stephen in 1138 forms the setting for One Corpse Too Many.

Cadfael became a monk in middle age, after going on the First Crusade as both a soldier and later, a sailor. As a result, he is more familiar with the secular world than most of his brother monks. In addition, his personality more reflects modern attitudes and progressive ethics than his own time which often puts him in conflict with his brethren on matters of justice and conscience. Among other things, Brother Cadfael disobeys his superiors (in Monk's Hood), excuses a young couple for impulsively making love in a chapel (in The Sanctuary Sparrow) and condones euthanasia for a dying man in extreme agony (in the TV version of The Rose Rent).

Arguably, however, this very background makes him a more worthy foil for Hugh Beringar (Deputy Sheriff and eventually Sheriff, of Shropshire) than would have been a cloistered brother. Over time Beringar — and Heribert and Radulfus, Cadfael's abbots — come to recognise his slightly unusual skills, and use him as detective, medical examiner, diplomatic envoy (to the Welsh princes), and counsel.

One interesting twist which Pargeter develops over the course of the novels is that, unlike his fellow monks, Cadfael proves to have a son whom he unknowingly conceived during his crusading days. Cadfael meets his son on only on a few, nevertheless cherished, occasions, quickly realising the truth behind the young man's origins. Cadfael's son, Olivier de Bretagne, is clearly the ideal knight and paladin - skilled and brave in battle, endlessly resourceful and resilient however difficult the predicament in which he finds himself, generous and chivalrous to the point of risking his life to save an enemy who had just before kept him imprisoned in a dungeon. Not by chance is he named for the companion of Roland, hero of the greatest of the Medieval heroic epics. The writer's ability to depict such a paragon and still make him a beliveable, three-dimensional character can count as a significant literary success.

Olivier comes closer than any other character in the series to fulfilling the ideals of the French-Norman culture - perhaps precisely because it is not his native culture, but one which he had aquiered by a deliberate conscious decision in his teens - having grown up an Arab and a Muslim, born of Cadfael's liaison with Mariam, an Arab widow who never told him of her pregnancy but did instill in her son an admiration for the father he was to meet only as a grown man.

Cadfael also has an ex-fiancée from before he embarked on Crusade, long since married to someone else, who briefly enters Cadfael's life again in Monk's Hood. He also enjoys a purely platonic relationship with an equally worldly Benedictine sister of a nearby convent. And finally, he has a special relationship with Saint Winefride, following his unique part in the expedition to fetch her bones which was the subject of the first book in the series. He talks to her in Welsh, his native tongue as well as hers, invariably thinks of her as "The Girl" and (though he would reject the suggestion as sacrilageous) seems to be more than a bit in love with her.

A distinctive feature of the series is that in nearly every book there is a pair of star-crossed lovers, who invariably get the full sympathy of Brother Cadfael (and of the reader). Typically, Cadfael bends his full energy and ingenuity to the double task of solving the mystery and bringing the lovers to a happy reunion, in the second of which he seems the literary descendant of Shakespeare's Friar Lawrence who made great (though unlimately futile) efforts to help Romeo and Juliet. Cadfael is far more successful, with virtually all pairs of lovers in the series getting off to a happy consummation, except when one of them turns out to be the wanted murderer. (In one case, indeed, the lovers get their happy end with Cadfael's active help, even though one of them IS indeed the murderer - which, even though there are extenuating circumstances, is quite unusual in detective literature whether set in the present or the past.)

Lovers in the Cadfael books face a whole series of obstacles, which sometimes seem insurmountable (in one book, it seems that they are relatives too close to marry) but are invariably overcome. However, in none of the cases is the problem a significant difference in social status between the two. In this series, aristocratic boys always fall in love with aristocratic girls, prosperous artisans fall for the daughters of artisans, and a lowly wandering juggler is charmed beyond measure by a lowly kitchen maid.

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The message that everyone should know his or her place is driven home very explicitly in Saint Peter's Fair, where a merchant's daughter entertains the dream of marrying above her and nearly loses her life for this presumption - and finally marries very happily the heroic young shoemaker who saved her life.
Spoilers end here.

Thirteen of the books were adapted for a series of television movies starring Sir Derek Jacobi although the sequence of the television episodes differs from the sequence of the novels. Within the individual teleplays, most are reasonably faithful to the books, being modified primarily to minimise the size of the speaking cast, the running time of the script, or the need for extravagant special effects. One episode, however, The Pilgrim of Hate, bears almost no resemblance to the eponymous book save the presence of a few of characters sharing the names (but not the actions) of the characters in the book. Furthermore, in The Holy Thief, one of the characters is turned into a villain, whereas in the novel, he is not.

Contents

The Brother Cadfael stories

(book cover)
Enlarge
(book cover)

Short stories

Novels

  1. A Morbid Taste for Bones (written in 1977, this episode is set in 1137)
  2. One Corpse Too Many (1979, set in August 1138)
  3. Monk's Hood (1980, set in December 1138)
  4. Saint Peter's Fair (1981, set in July 1139)
  5. The Leper of Saint Giles (1981, set in October 1139)
  6. The Virgin in the Ice (1982, set in November 1139)
  7. The Sanctuary Sparrow (1983, set in the Spring of 1140)
  8. The Devil's Novice (1983, set in September 1140)
  9. Dead Man's Ransom (1984, set in February 1141)
  10. The Pilgrim of Hate (1984, set in May 1141)
  11. An Excellent Mystery (1985, set in August 1141)
  12. The Raven in the Foregate (1986, set in December 1141)
  13. The Rose Rent (1986, set in June 1142)
  14. The Hermit of Eyton Forest (1988, set in October 1142)
  15. The Confession of Brother Haluin (1988, set in December 1142)
  16. The Heretic's Apprentice (1990, set in June 1143)
  17. The Potter's Field (1990, set in August 1143)
  18. The Summer of the Danes (1991, set in April 1144)
  19. The Holy Thief (1992, set in August 1144)
  20. Brother Cadfael's Penance (1994, set in November 1145)

right
right

Starring Glyn Houston as Cadfael

  • 1 --- A Morbid Taste for Bones
  • 2 --- One Corpse Too Many
Produced by Bert Coules and starring Philip Madoc as Cadfael, with Geoffrey Whitehead and Timothy Bateson.
  • 3 --- Monk's Hood
  • 6 --- The Virgin in the Ice
  • 9 --- Dead Man's Ransom

Telemovies

Produced by Central for ITV, two hours per episode. Filmed on location in Hungary and starring Sir Derek Jacobi.

Season I (1994):

Season II (1995-1996): Season III (1997): Season IV (1998):

Reference

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: