Editing Cadfael (section)

{{Short description|Fictional character}}
{{About||media in which he features|The Cadfael Chronicles|the TV series|Cadfael (TV series)}}
{{Use British English|date=September 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2017}}
{{Infobox character
| name        = Brother Cadfael
| series      = [[The Cadfael Chronicles|Brother Cadfael Chronicles]]
| image       = 
| caption     =
| first       = ''[[A Morbid Taste for Bones]]''
| last        = ''[[Brother Cadfael's Penance]]''
| creator     = [[Edith Pargeter|Ellis Peters]]
| portrayer   = [[Ray Smith (actor)|Ray Smith]] (radio)<br>[[Glyn Houston]] (radio)<br>[[Philip Madoc]] (radio)<br>[[Derek Jacobi]] (TV)<br>[[Gareth Thomas (actor)|Gareth Thomas]] (stage)
| alias       = Cadfael ap Meilyr ap Dafydd.
| occupation  = Benedictine Monk
| title       = Brother
| children    = Olivier de Bretagne
| religion    = Christianity (Roman Catholic)
| nationality = [[Welsh people|Welsh]]
}}

'''Brother Cadfael''' is the main fictional character in a series of [[Historical whodunnit|historical murder mysteries]] written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar [[Edith Pargeter]] under the name Ellis Peters.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Whodunit? : a who's who in crime & mystery writing|last=Rosemary |first=Herbert|date=1 January 2003|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0195157613|pages=[https://archive.org/details/whodunitwhoswhoi0000unse/page/27 27]|oclc=252700230|url=https://archive.org/details/whodunitwhoswhoi0000unse/page/27}}</ref> The character of Cadfael himself is a [[Welsh people|Welsh]] [[Benedictine]] monk living at the [[Shrewsbury Abbey|Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul]], in [[Shrewsbury]], western England, in the first half of the 12th century. The stories are set between about 1135 and about 1145, during "[[The Anarchy]]", the destructive contest for the crown of England between [[Stephen I of England|King Stephen]] and his cousin [[Matilda of England|Empress Maud]].<ref name="Kaler 1998 page=11">{{harvnb|Kaler|1998|page=11}}</ref>

As a character, Cadfael "combines the curious mind of a scientist/pharmacist with a knight-errant".<ref>{{harvnb|Kaler|1998|page=2}}</ref> He entered monastic life in his forties after being both a soldier and a sailor; this worldly experience gives him an array of talents and skills useful in monastic life. He is a skilled observer of human nature, inquisitive by nature, energetic, a talented herbalist (work he learned in the [[Holy Land]]), 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.