The Cadfael Chronicles

The Cadfael Chronicles is a series of historical murder mysteries written by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name "Ellis Peters".

Set in the 12th century during the Anarchy in England, the novels focus on Benedictine monk Brother Cadfael who aids the law with solving murders.

In all, Pargeter wrote twenty Cadfael novels between 1977 and 1994. Each draws upon the storyline, characters, and developments of previous books in the series. Pargeter apparently planned the 20th installment as the final book of the series; Brother Cadfael's Penance brings together the loose story ends into a tidy conclusion. Pargeter herself died shortly after its publication, following a long illness. Many of the books were adapted into both radio episodes in which Ray Smith, Glyn Houston and subsequently Philip Madoc played the monk, and a television series starring Derek Jacobi as Cadfael.

Pargeter's Cadfael Chronicles are sometimes credited for popularizing what would later become known as the historical mystery.

As a character, Cadfael is a conversus, only entering the cloister in his forties after being both a soldier and a sailor; this experience gives him an array of talents and skills useful in monastic life. He is a skilled observer of human nature and a talented herbalist (which skill he learned in the Holy Lands from the Muslims). He is inquisitive by nature, energetic, 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. By contrast, some men entered the cloistered life as young boys just old enough to attend school, or in their early teens; such a monk was termed puer oblatus or oblate in the time of these novels. Many of Cadfael's brother monks had been sent as children to the monastery. Abbot Radulfus instituted a policy of not accepting such young ones except for schooling.

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