Saint names

b sharp · 27 Jul 2006, 12:29 · from 2006-July.txt.gz

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From: bsharporflat at hotmail.com (b sharp)
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 08:29:23 -0400
Subject: (urth) Saint names
Message-ID: <BAY103-F25E43EE54A7C28D061AB43D7580 at phx.gbl>

Dan'l writes:

>I suspect that he _does_ [have a purpose in his choice of saint names] but 
>that we haven't >worked out the relationships yet. I'm certainly not 
>familiar enough with the ancient saints to do this.

Using the internet I've been able to explore the lives of some saints. There 
are a lot of convenient sites available. This one provides a thumbnail 
sketch of each-
http://www.catholic-forum.com/Saints/patron02.htm-  and there are sites 
which go into greater detail for each saint.

I've perused the main characters in BotNS and the only clear (to me) 
parallels I've found are that Saint Dorcas was resurrected and Saint Thecla 
wore men's clothing to avoid being molested as she travelled with Paul.  I 
am interested in any further connections people can find.

(I'll note that, like Dorcas in BotNS, Saint Thecla sat in a window, but 
maybe that is an incidental connection? you could drive yourself crazy with 
those)

Since Gene Wolfe wrote BotNS pre-Internet, I have to imagine he wrote 
thinking people would have only The Catholic Encyclopedia and other 
inconvenient sources to interpret his work and didn't make the references 
hopelessly obscure and impenetrable. What purpose in that?

-bsharp

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