a morbid taste for bones by ellis peters

Her mother influenced her life and her siblings’ lives greatly, as she was once quoted saying.Įllis attended elementary school in Dawley and then Coalbrookdale High School for Girls.

The atmosphere at Peters’s home was sympathetic, encouraging and vibrant. The family loved music and the children were encouraged to read from a tender age. They lived in a small community situated a short distance from Dawley. Her brother/eldest sibling was named Ellis, the name she later adopted as her pseudonym. She was the last-born in a family of three children. This initial Cadfael mystery introduces us to the clever and wise, yet down to earth monk who has an understanding of the true meaning of humility as well as charity.Edith Mary Pargeter, better-known by her pen name, Ellis Peters, was born in 1913, just before the onset of WWI, in Horsehay, a village on the western outskirts of Dawley, Shropshire, England. Several false leads initially take him astray, but in the end Cadfael brings about a somewhat surprising, and amusing, end to the tale which leaves everyone happy, but some in the dark. Now Brother Cadfael needs to appease both sides and find the true culprit. When the major landowner of the village, who strongly opposes the monk's mission, is murdered, the brothers are blamed. Cadfael is chosen to go on the journey because he is Welsh and speaks the language.Īs Cadfael expected, the Welsh villagers of the town where Winifrid lived and is buried are not happy that English monks have come to claim their saint. Winifrid wants her bones brought to their monastery. One of the brothers in his monastery, Columbanus, has had a vision that St. Winifred is a Welsh saint who died and was buried in Welsh soil, and Cadfael has his doubts about the mission. In this first of twenty Brother Cadfael novels, he is chosen to accompany a group of monks on a trip to Wales to recover the bones of St. As the herbalist for his monastery and the surrounding area, he has more freedom of movement than most monks of his order.

Thus he is more worldly and less naive than many of his monastic brothers.

He has come late to the cowl, having served the Lord as a Crusader in the Holy Land for many years. Paul in Shrewsbury during the twelfth century. This 'Morbid Taste for Bones,' sets the scene for the first of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael Series.Ĭadfael is a monk at the Abbey of St.

A church or monastery which had the relics (bones or other remnants) of saints could expect to collect much money in the way of alms of the pilgrims who came seeking miracles. The bones of saints were revered, collected and even fought over by churches and monasteries because they were believed to effect miracles. Medieval man believed in the power of bones.

A morbid taste for bones by ellis peters