A RARE BENEDICTINE

Ellis Peters

The Advent of Brother Cadfael

INTRODUCTION

BrotherCadfael sprang to life suddenly and unexpectedly when he was alreadyapproaching sixty, mature, experienced, fully armed and seventeenyears tonsured. He emerged as the necessary protagonist when I hadthe idea of deriving a plot for a murder mystery from the truehistory of Shrewsbury Abbey in the twelfth century, and needed thehigh mediaeval equivalent of a detective, an observer and agent ofjustice in the centre of the action. I had no idea then what I waslaunching on the world, nor to how demanding a mentor I wassubjecting myself. Nor did I intend a series of books about him,indeed I went on immediately to write a modern detective novel, andreturned to the twelfth century and Shrewsbury only when I could nolonger resist the temptation to shape another book round the siege ofShrewsbury and the massacre of the garrison by King Stephen, whichfollowed shortly after the prior’s expedition into Wales tobring back the relics of Saint Winifred for his Abbey. From then onBrother Cadfael was well into his stride, and there was no turningback.

Since the action in the first book was almost all in Wales, and evenin succeeding ones went back and forth freely across the border, justas the history of Shrewsbury always has, Cadfael had to be Welsh, andvery much at home there. His name was chosen as being so rare that Ican find it only once in Welsh history, and even in that instance itdisappears almost as soon as it is bestowed in baptism. Saint Cadog,contemporary and rival of Saint David, a powerful saint in Glamorgan,was actually christened Cadfael, but ever after seems to have been‘familiarly known’, as Sir John Lloyd says, as Cadog. Aname of which the saint had no further need, and which appears, asfar as I know, nowhere else, seemed just the thing for my man. Noimplication of saintliness was intended, though indeed when affronted