# Silk & St. Francis *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 11 Jan 1999* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Michael Straight *11 Jan 1999, 14:53* > On Fri, 1 Jan 1999, Alex David Groce wrote: > Also, read Chesterton's ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, and wondered if anyone > else found it plausible that Silk's (brief and unsuccesssful) career as burglar > was inspired in part by St. Francis' attempt to repair a ruined chapel with > money stolen from his father--Chesterton concentrates quite a bit on the event > and its meanings, and I'm certain Wolfe's read the book... The relevant > material is in Chapter IV of the book, especially p. 54 of the Image edition... > If it is a source, then Silk really is a very Chesterton-influenced figure > (given the obvious Father Brown heritage). I think someone mentioned this a while back, but the other parallel between Silk and St. Francis is that St. Francis had a vision from God which he initially interpreted literally as telling him to rebuild a particular chapel, but later came to understand as a commission to help "rebuild" the Church through his missionary order. Silk's theophany is similarly a wider commission than merely saving a few buildings. -Rostrum ---