The Private Life of Brother Cadfael Quiz

Answer: Wales

Cadfael ap Meilyr ap Dafydd is a Welshman, born in Gwynedd, although he spent most of his youth overseas as a soldier and retired to the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul in Shrewsbury. In the introduction to "A Rare Benedictine," Peters notes that due to Shrewsbury's proximity to the Welsh border, the hero of these historical novels "had to be Welsh, and very much at home there." She chose an extremely unusual name, of which she writes that she could find no mention after the christening of St. Cadog (who apparently "had no further need" of it after his childhood).

Cadfael returns to Wales several times throughout the series; in fact, the very first novel, "A Morbid Taste for Bones," sees him accompanying as translator an expedition for relics for the abbey.

Answer: the Crusades

At fourteen, Cadfael had pledged his service to a wool merchant, but when he dies the boy decides to quit and become a Crusader -- despite the lovely girl, Richildis, with whom he is in love. He spends the better part of two decades in the Middle East in the early 1100s (the time of the First Crusade) before serving as a man-at-arms in Normandy and in England.

This particular aspect of his worldly life is the subject of great awe and speculation by his fellow monks, most of whom grew up in the cloister.

Answer: 40

Asked to reminisce about the Crusades or provide advice on a secular problem, Cadfael often refers to his "forty years in the world." He left for the Crusades when he was about 17, wandering throughout most of the known world, before finding peace and fulfilment in the monastery.

The short story "A Light on the Road to Woodstock" tells the story of Cadfael's decision to take vows. Disgusted with what a man-at-arms is occasionally called on to do, Cadfael has his moment of revelation when he walks into a chapel on a whim. A child touches the hilt of his sword to ask, "Should not all weapons of war be laid aside here?" Cadfael ponders briefly and lays the sword as an offering beneath the altar. "It looked strangely appropriate and at peace there. The hilt, after all, was a cross."

Answer: Heribert

In "A Light on the Road to Woodstock," Prior Heribert is kidnapped while traveling to the king's court to present a case against Cadfael's master, Roger Mauduit -- who hopes that, with the abbot unable to present himself, the case will be dismissed. Cadfael has no patience for this type of wickedness, and so he takes the first opportunity to free the monk when he realizes what has happened. Prior Heribert pleads his case successfully, and Cadfael quits Roger's service and follows the monk to Shrewsbury.

Heribert is an old man by the time the series begins, and in the third book ("Monk's Hood") he is replaced by the younger, more robust Abbot Radulfus. This greatly upsets Prior Robert, who had hoped for the position himself, and Robert's nosy sycophant Brother Jerome. Cadfael makes a noble but futile effort not to take satisfaction in their disappointment.

Answer: the Benedictines

The Benedictines (often called "Black Monks" after the color of their robes) were the oldest and most numerous monastic order in England. Cadfael's abbey, the Shrewsbury Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, is still active as an Anglican church, more than 900 years after its founding in 1083.

Cistercian monks tend to live more ascetic lives in more remote locations; Dominicans focus their efforts on education; and Franciscans beg for their keep as part of their more extreme vows of poverty.

Answer: He is the abbey's herbalist.

His travels as a man-at-arms gave him a broad familiarity with herbs and their uses for various wounds. This specialty certainly has its uses during murder investigations: not only does his knowledge of healing help him detect methods of violence, but his frequent errands of mercy about the town give him cover to miss the monastic offices while flushing out murderers.

Brother Edmund is the abbey infirmarer; most of his charges are elderly monks on the cusp of death, although he must occasionally deal with an acute injury -- such as Brother Haluin's fall from the roof in "The Confession of Brother Haluin." The abbey prison is not occupied frequently enough to require a full-time keeper, but the porters are in charge of the keys. Brother Paul is the master of the novices and head of the abbey school.

Answer: No one; he wishes only for the killing to end.

Neither Stephen nor Maud really won this war, often referred to as the Anarchy. A contemporary historian, writing the "Peterborough Chronicle", referred to it as a time when "Crist and alle his sayntes slept". The situation finally evolved into an uneasy truce where Stephen finished out his days as king and Maud's son -- Henry II -- became king after him.

The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael are infused with events from this period. The second book, "One Corpse Too Many," deals with the siege of Shrewsbury Castle (loyal to Maud) by the forces of Stephen, and a murder in the aftermath of Stephen's victory. Cadfael's friend, the sheriff, is loyal to Stephen; his son is loyal to Maud. As for Cadfael, he is mainly concerned with the disastrous impact of this civil war on the lives of the common people.

For example, three books -- "The Virgin in the Ice," "An Excellent Mystery," and "The Holy Thief" -- are directly concerned with the aftermath of sacks by both sides (as well as by magnates who see an opportunity to better their own situations). Political concerns drive people to murder in "St. Peter's Fair," "The Devil's Novice," "The Pilgrim of Hate," "The Hermit of Eyton Forest," and "Brother Cadfael's Penance." Life, in Cadfael's view, is nasty, brutish, and short enough without hopeful monarchs making matters worse.

Answer: Hugh Beringar

Hugh and Cadfael are separated by Hugh's nobility, Cadfael's vows and an age difference of more than thirty years, but for all that they are close friends. They meet as adversaries in the second novel, "One Corpse Too Many," and end the book fast friends united in the cause of justice. "They sharpened minds, one upon the other, for the better protection of values and institutions that needed defence with every passing day in a land so shaken and disrupted" ("The Devil's Novice"). Cadfael plays a large part in Hugh's successful courtship of the gracious, intelligent and beautiful Aline Seward, and is godfather to their son Giles (born in "The Virgin in the Ice").

As Cadfael struggles to fulfill what he sees as God's will, which often conflicts with the will of his monastic superiors, he often commits some rather serious acts that he nevertheless doesn't feel right confessing. He plans to wait for his protege, Brother Mark, to become a priest: "I'm saving for him ... all those sins I feel, perhaps mistakenly, to be no sins" ("The Pilgrim of Hate"). In the meantime, Cadfael can confide in Hugh, who never fails to let him off without penance.

Answer: Her son stands accused of murdering his stepfather, her second husband.

To add to Cadfael's involvement in the case, the murdered man has been poisoned with one of Cadfael's own concoctions (the monk's-hood oil in the title), which he prepares as a rubbing oil to ease arthritic pain. Richildis's son, Edwin, has motive and opportunity, but Richildis is confident in his innocence. Eventually, with Cadfael's help, this confidence is borne out.

Seeing her former fiancé in a monk's robes, Richildis mistakenly believes that her marriage to another had driven him to it; Cadfael lets her hang onto that belief, not knowing a kind way to disabuse her of it.

Answer: The squire, Olivier de Bretagne, is Cadfael's own son.

Cadfael hides Olivier as he prepares to bring two jointly rescued children back to their uncle, and they get to talking. It is when Olivier, child of a Crusader and a widow of Antioch, mentions his mother's name -- Mariam -- that something clicks in Cadfael's mind, "turning the proud male face into a woman's face, one known and remembered through twenty-seven years of absence."

Cadfael makes up his mind not to tell Olivier that he is his son, conceived just before the crusader's voyage home. "But I have seen him, rejoiced Cadfael, I have had him by the hand in the darkness, I have sat with him and talked of time past . . . I have had cause to be glad of him, and shall have cause to be glad lifelong."

Olivier, having married the rescued niece, appears again in "The Pilgrim of Hate" as an emissary of Empress Maud, and reveals that he thinks of Cadfael as a brother who "used [him] as a father." His next (and final) appearance comes in "Brother Cadfael's Penance," when the young man is captured and imprisoned by an adversary in the Civil War, and Cadfael flees his vows in order to save his child. Only at this time does young Olivier learn the reason behind Cadfael's devotion -- just before his wife gives Cadfael a grandchild.