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Cadfael likes to speak in Welsh, is exuberant when getting an opportunity to go back into Wales, and feels closer to many Welsh ways of doing things than Anglo-Norman ways: for example, letting all of a man's acknowledged children, whether born in or out of wedlock, share in his inheritance ; and recognizing degrees of crime, including homicide, which allows leniency to killers in certain circumstances, rather than the inflexibly mandatory capital punishment of Norman Law, administered reluctantly by Hugh Beringar and rigidly by his superior, Sheriff Gilbert Prestcote.
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Cadfael and Welsh
The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey, in western England, in the first half of the 12th century.
Cadfael is a traditional Welsh name derived from the words (" battle ") and (" prince ").
There are differing pronunciations of the name Cadfael ; Ellis Peters intended the " f " to be pronounced as an English " v ", and suggests it be pronounced, although normal Welsh pronunciation would be ( close to ).
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 ) as his full name.
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 ).
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 ".
Cadfael has close contacts with the other Welsh people living in Shrewsbury including the boatman Madog, who has an important role in several books.
Cadfael has, however, voluntarily chosen to join an English monastery rather than a Welsh one, and make his home in England – although close to the borders with Wales-his secular history having made him too cosmopolitan to blend in his own homeland.
Cadfael and is
Owain is a recurring character in the Brother Cadfael series of novels by Ellis Peters, often referred to, and appearing in the novels Dead Man's Ransom and The Summer of the Danes.
* In the third book of the Brother Cadfael series, Monk's Hood, the herbalist Cadfael uses aconite as an ingredient in a liniment, which is later stolen and used to poison a victim.
Brother Cadfael is the fictional main character in a series of historical murder mysteries written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name " Ellis Peters ".
Cadfael, the central character of the Cadfael Chronicles, is a Benedictine monk and herbalist at Shrewsbury Abbey in Shrewsbury, the county town of the English county of Shropshire.
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.
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 in order 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.
Through the course of the stories, it emerges that Mariam had a son by Cadfael, although he only comes to realise he is a father by accident ( The Virgin in the Ice ).
Cadfael is tolerant and caring towards most of his fellow brothers, but has several particularly close friendships.
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.
It is natural enough that Cadfael, as a world weary soldier, should seek out that flexibility of this particular order as a conversus.
As the monastery's highly literate herbalist / gardener, holding a rare skill set in demand in both town and abbey, Cadfael is the equivalent of the mediaeval physician, possessing an independent authority that sets him aside from his fellows.
When Shrewsbury is visited by an Inquisition-style orthodoxy ( The Heretic ’ s Apprentice ) or a harshly punitive version of Christianity ( The Raven in the Foregate ), the stories end with a reaffirmation of the positive, tolerant faith espoused by Cadfael.
In a sense he " creates his own theology " to suit the situation ; Pargeter herself agreed that Cadfael is a situational ethicist, basing his actions in any given situation on " the right thing to do " rather than on a strict moral code.
Peters shows Cadfael at the heart of healthy, fulfilling monastic life, which may be flawed by its humanity but is well-intentioned.
It is Cadfael, the fulcrum, who helps to maintain the health and perspective that overcomes crises of justice that arise from within and without the community.
Cadfael and into
Pargeter wrote under a number of pseudonyms ; it was under the name Ellis Peters that she wrote crime stories, especially the highly popular series of Brother Cadfael medieval mysteries, many of which were made into films for television.
* The Potter's Field is the name of one of the Brother Cadfael detective books by Ellis Peters, later turned into a television episode.
The moving of Winifred's bones to Shrewsbury is fictionalized in A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first of Ellis Peters ' Brother Cadfael novels, with the plot twist that her bones are secretly left in Wales, and someone else is put into the shrine.
Cadfael and Wales
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, ( though this was not originally the novel chosen to launch the chronicles ), 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.
" When witnessing a failed peace conference, Cadfael forms the opinion that Maud's half-brother Robert would have made a better monarch then both of them, but for his illegitimate birth ( which would not have debarred Robert in Wales, with its law having a different definition of a bastard ).
This legal difference between Wales and England is often referred to in the well-known " Brother Cadfael " series of Medieval detective mysteries, and provides the solution to the mystery in one of them.
Cadfael and many
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.
He has directed many TV programmes and series, among them I, Claudius, the television version of The Norman Conquests ( 1977 ), episodes of Tales of the Unexpected, 10th Kingdom, The Woman in Black, some of the Cadfael television films and three episodes of Inspector Morse.
His many subsequent appearances have included episodes for The Bill, Boon, Casualty, Holby City, Benidorm, Doctors, Peak Practice, Playing the Field, Robin Hood, Inspector Morse and Cadfael, The Sculptress, The Queen's Nose, Jane Hall and Yellow Thread Street and memorably as Tommy the council worker in Shameless, Being April and his own children's series Snap.
Cadfael and than
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.
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 and for
See The Cadfael Chronicles for the full list of books and stories, plus radio and TV adaptations.
Cadfael regards Brother Oswin, who becomes his assistant, almost as a son, caring for him deeply and revering his innocence.
The looser structure, run at the discretion of the abbot, would suit well a man like Cadfael who was in the secular world for forty years before entering the order.
Cadfael explains his neutrality by saying " In my measure there's little to choose between two such monarchs, but much to be said for keeping a man's fealty and word.
Such stories subsequently remained an oddity, with the current trend for historical whodunnits only really beginning in the late 1970s with the success of Ellis Peters and her Brother Cadfael novels, set in medieval Shrewsbury.
In addition to being a founder member of the Royal National Theatre and winning several prestigious theatre awards, Jacobi has also enjoyed a successful television career, starring in the critically praised adaptation of Roberts Graves ' I, Claudius, for which he won a BAFTA ; the titular role in the acclaimed medieval drama series Brother Cadfael, and Stanley Baldwin in The Gathering Storm.
An accounting of Geoffrey's outlaw actions and the taking of the Ramsey abbey provides for elements of the backstory for Ellis Peter's " Brother Cadfael " book, ' The Potter's Field '.
However, according to the version presented in Ellis Peters ' A Morbid Taste for Bones, first book in the successful " Brother Cadfael " series, the Saint's bones were in fact secretly reinterred at her original resting place, and the bones taken to England and venerated there until the time of Henry the Eighth were of an entirely different ( and far from saintly ) person.
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