A Morbid Taste For Bones Summary

A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters is a novel set in 1137 based around the life of the fictional Brother Cadfael from the real Benedictine monastery, Shrewsbury Abbey. In the novel, the monastery desires to move a relic, the bones of Saint Winifred, from a Welsh village, Gwytherin, to Shrewsbury Abbey in order to improve the monastery’s reputation. Brother Cadfael is brought along with the Prior of the monastery because of Brother Cadfael’s knowledge of the Welsh language. Soon after their arrival, a rich man in Gwytherin named Rhisiart is murdered. Then, Brother Cadfael decides to solve the mystery of who the murderer is. A Morbid Taste for Bones depicts both the social importance of marriage as a means of transaction and wealth and

In the novel, Abbot Heribert needed to approve Brother Cadfael’s request to leave Wales. According to the web site “Medieval Benedictine Monks”, monks could not leave the monastery without permission from the abbot, so this necessity is accurate (Alchin). Also in the novel, the different roles in a monastery are accurately depicted. The novel has the novices Columbanus and John, the Brother Cadfael, and the abbot Heribert. In real life Benedictine monasteries, these roles were all real positions in a monastery with the addition of priors, so the organization of Benedictine monasteries is depicted accurately. The Benedictine monastery life depicted in A Morbid Taste for Bones is also accurate because the abbey that Brother Cadfael is a part of, Shrewsbury Abbey, is a real abbey in England that has been in existence since 1083 (“History”, Shrewsbury Abbey). An inaccuracy in the organization of Benedictine monasteries is that the novel does not mention any schooling or teaching in Shrewsbury Abbey. In reality, Benedictine monasteries were centers of teaching for youths in the middle ages as St. Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine monasteries, believed that schooling was a fundamental part of his monastery and a fundamental part of worship