The Authenticity of the Letters of St Nilus of Ancyra Cameron, Alan Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Summer 1976; 17, 2; ProQuest pg. 181

The Authenticity of the Letters 
of St Nilus of Ancyra 

Alan Cameron 

THE CORRESPONDENCE of Nilus of Ancyra is a mess and a puzzle. 
The only available edition is Migne's inaccurate reprint (PG 

79 [1865] 81-581) of the only (more or less) complete edition 
ever published, that of Leo Allatius (Rome 1668). And the recent re­
searches of]. Gribomont have admirably demonstrated how arbitrary 
and unsatisfactory was Allatius' treatment of a complex yet basically 
soluble manuscript tradition! (see below, p.191). A proper critical text 
is urgently needed, but even so it is not in further detailed study of the 
MSS that the major problems will find their solution. 

Most were fully and fairly set out by K. Heussi in his indispensable 
Untersuchungen of 1917.2 Many of these so-called letters are intolerably 
short, abrupt and impersonal, a bare scriptural quotation and a word 
of commentary, some consisting of only one sentence. Often the MSS 

present as a series of separate letters with fresh headings what would 
appear to be the consecutive paragraphs of a single letter. No less 
often, on the other hand, such snippets recur verbatim or nearly so in 
other letters. The two most startling examples are Ep. 3.33 to Thau­
nlasius, which contains material reappearing in fourteen other letters;3 
and what Heussi christened the C 53-chapter letter' (quoted in a number 
of MSS though not printed as such in any edition), no fewer than 52 
chapters of which reappear in or as other letters!4 In both these cases 
Heussi argues, probably rightly, that the longer documents were put 
together out of the shorter rather than vice versa. Either way the 
consequences are disturbing. Even more disturbing, a large number 
prove to be extracts from other writings of Nilus and (worse) other 
writers altogether, in particular, Irenaeus, Athanasius, the two 

1 "La tradition manuscrite de saint Nil: 1. La correspondance," Studia Monastica 11 
(1969) 231-67 (hereafter. GRIBOMONT). 

2 Untersuchungen zu Nilus dem Asketen (Texte und Untersuchungen. III Reihe, XII.2, Leipzig 
1917) 31-117 (hereafter, HEUSSI). 

3 Heussi 41f, Gribomont 252. 
'Heussi 44f, Gribomont 248-51. 

181 



182 AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTERS OF ST NILUS OF ANCYRA 

Gregories and Basil, Isidore of Pelusium and, above all, John Chrysos­
tom.1) 

On the most favourable verdict Nilus proves to be a very lazy 
correspondent, apparently content to send his many friends extracts 
from his own and others' writings without any personal matter, not 
even bothering how often he sent out the same letters. More sceptical 
scholars have preferred to describe it as nothing more than a moral 
florilegium, merely embellished with some of the external trappings 
of a correspondence. 

Heussi's sympathetic and balanced defence of the corpus (now 
generally approved) certainly deserves careful study.6 But it is doubtful 
whether it can explain everything; and if it cannot explain everything, 
is it an explanation at all? That is to say, if we are going to have to 

allow a certain amount of <editorial' intervention in any case, there is 
no clear case for supposing it to have been minimal rather than 
substantial. 

The most disturbing feature of the whole correspondence has yet 
to be unmasked. The wide circle of Nilus' friends has never failed to 
impress. Gribomont has recently written most warmly of Nilus' 
importance as a witness to his age-CCson temoignage est surtout 
interessant parce qu'il est concret, bien situe et date. Ne fUt-ce que 
pour la prosopographie byzantine du ve siecle, la liste de plusieurs 
centaines de correspondants, dont les noms sont accompagnes souvent 
du titre de leur fonction civile ou ecclesiastique, donnerait du prix ala 
collection."7 Alas, many of these imposing titles did not exist in 
Nilus' day. 

According to Heussi's cautious assessment of the evidence, 
Nilus died ca A.D. 430. Now Ep. 2.372 bears the heading '!etowpo/ 
JgKOV{3t'TOpL. The excubitores (a crack guards regiment) were formed 
in the reign of Leo (457-474).8 Ep. 2.204 is headed OVaAEJI'TL CKpt{3WJlL. 

5 Heussi 45-62; for some further quotations from the Cappadocians, see Gribomont 
247-48. 

6 See, for instance, J. Quasten, Patrology III (Utrecht/Antwerp 1960) 498 [hereafter, 
QUASTEN], though Christ-Schmid-Stahlin, Gesch. d. griech. Literatur 116 (Munich 1924) 1471, 
were unconvinced, and voiced the suspicion that a closer study would reveal inauthentic 
material (on this point see below, p.193). 

7 Gribomont 265. 
8 R. 1. Frank, Scholae Palatinae (American Academy, Rome 1969) 204f. It is true that the 

word itself is found much earlier meaning 'sentry' (TLL V.2, 1288), and even of an imperial 
guard: Suet. Claud. 42.1, and even two fourth-century examples, Lactant. De mort.peTs. 30.4 
and Amm.Marc. 2004.21. Whether or not it was a term applied to praetorians in the early 



ALAN CAMERON 183 

The scribones (an officer corps of the excubitors) are first attested in 
545.9 

No less certainly anachronistic are the vindices Dracontius (2.327) 
and Martyrius (2.282). The vindex, an official who superintended tax 
collection in the cities, was unquestionably a creation of Anastasius. 
The earliest known date from 512.10 

Ep. 2.319 is headed Nlpwvt fl-aytcrpcp Kat. «?TO tJ1Td.TWV, Epp. 3.62-63 
'AKVt.~ cbo U1TClTWV. No Nero or Aquila held the ordinary consulship 
during this period, and (the suffect consulship being out of the 
questionll ) the only possibility left is the honorary consulship, a rank 
first attested under and doubtless created by Zeno (474-491).12 

Ep. 2.243 is addressed to a Cyprianus Ott.TJyd.TWp, i.e. delegator. We 
first meet this official in the West, in Cassiodorus, Variae 1.18, con­
cerned with the assignment ofland to barbarians in the 490's; in the 
East not till Justinian, Novel 130 of A.D. 545, as an overseer of supplies 
for troops in transit. Then there is thepoY(lTwp of2.314, presumably an 
erogator, 'paymaster', not known before Anastasius (491-518).13 
aVTLK1}vcWP, antecessor, in the sense of 'professor oflaw' (1.192-94) is not 
found before Justinian.14 

empire (Fiebiger, RE 6 [1909] 1577), in the two latter examples it appears to be used in­
formally as a general (perhaps literary) word for 'guard' (Ammianus proceeds to reveal 
that the guards he has in mind are the domestici, and he was probably influenced in his 
choice of word by the curious coincidence that their commander was actually called 
Excubitor!); eXCllbitor was not in Nilus' day an official title to be transliterated into Greek. 

9 E. Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire II (Paris 1949) 446 n.1 [hereafter, STEIN], rightly observed 
that the title of Nilus' letter could not be authentic. It was accepted without qualms, how­
ever, by J. B. Bury, Imperial Administrative System in the Ninth Century (London 1911) 58, and 
is not mentioned in A. H. M. Jones' account, The Later Roman Empire 284-1502 III (Oxford 
1964) 203 n.118 [hereafter, JONES]. 

10 Stein II 210-11; Jones III 42 and 122 n.111. 
11 Suffect consulships seem never to have existed at Constantinople and were no longer 

prominently recorded at Rome either: A. Chastagnol, "Observations sur Ie consulat suffect 
et Ie preture du Bas-Empire," RHist 219 (1958) 235 (with the reservations of M. T. \V. 

Arnheim, The Senatorial Aristocracy in the Later Roman Empire [Oxford 1972] lZf) and Chas­
tagnol, Le Senat romain SOliS Ie regne d'Odoacre (Bonn 1966) 55. 

12 Stein II 68-159; C. Courtois, "Ex-consul: observations sur l'histoire du consul at a 
l'cpoque byzantine," Byzantion 19 (1949) 37f; R. Guilland, "Le consul at byzantin," Byzantion 
24 (1954) 545f. There is no basis for T. D. Barnes' recent suggestion (Phoenix 29 [1975] 162) 
that honorary consuls might go back to ca 437. The lnraTLKI)c Plotious (1.51-53) is probably 
a mere consularis, a provincial governor (cf Marcus Diac. V. Porph. pp.63.2, 99.7 Gregoire­
Kugener, and, for inscriptions, E. Hanton, Byzantion 4 [1927] 133), perfectly acceptable at 
this period. 

13 TLL V.2, 799. 
14 Jors, RE 1 (1894) 2347-48. 



184 AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTERS OF ST NILUS OF ANCYRA 

Less certainly anachronistic are the spatharius Sisinnius (1.277) and 
the referendarii Theoctistus (2.1-3) and Hyacinthus (3.83-84). Spathars 
are not attested before the 440'S,15 referendaries first in 427.16 

More problematic are the four men styled KovpaTwp (Amblichus, 
or perhaps Iamblichus, 2.179; Aglaphon, 2.222; Phalcon, 2.295; 
Chrysippus, 3.177). From the middle of the sixth century onwards 
curator, tout court, would most naturally be taken as an abbreviation 
of the illustrious rank of curator dominicae domus, first certainly attested 
in 531.17 There are a couple of other earlier examples: the Helladius 
addressed as such in Theodoret, Ep. 46, written some time probably 
between the 420' sand 440' s, and the Elias acclaimed by the orthodox 
of Tyre in 518, <RAta KovpaTopoc 7ToAAa Ta ETTj, in Acta Cone. Dee. 
3.86,23. They could all be holders of the more modest office of curator 
civitatis, which would not be an anachronism. But the problem with 
Nilus' curatores is that curator civitatis is normally represented by 
Aoytcnlc, or (later) by 7TarYJp 7T()AEWC in Greek,18 and there is another 
letter of Nilus addressed to a 7TarYJp 7T()AEWC, the Demosthenes of 2.36. 

Of course, if there were no doubts about the authenticity of the 
correspondence, no one would hesitate to accept Nilus as our first 
evidence for (say) spathars and referendaries. Nor is it impossible that 
even erogatores or delegatores existed this early. But it would be an odd 
coincidence if all these titles happened to occur for the first time in 
Nilus. 

There are other cases where there is no positive anachronism but a 
certain improbability nonetheless, as with 2.221 to Eurycles the patri­
cian. The patriciate was very sparingly bestowed in Nilus' lifetime­
though, like the honorary consulship, it was to become relatively 
common by the sixth century. The six patricians known during Nilus' 
lifetime in the early fifth-century East had all been prefects, generals 
or consuls ;19 nothing else is known of this Eurycles. Nor is there any 
parallel this early for ladies bearing the title of count, KOp:r}TtCca 
(Iulia, 2.213; Stephanis, 2.218). 

The excubitors, scribones, vindices and honorary consuls alone are 
decisive. Unless we have got his dates very wrong indeed, Nilus cannot 

15 Jones III 162 n.7 (a couple of earlier wesrern examples are nor rhe same rhing: cf Th. 
Mommsen, Gesammette Schrifren [Berlin 1910] VI 454). 

16 Jones III 166 n.24. 
17 Jones I 426; III 103 n.39. 
18 Jones II 726; J. and L. Robert, BullEpigr 1965, no.419, pp.171-72. 
It Jones II 534, III 155 n.28; Barnes, Phoenix 29 (1975) 167. 



ALAN CAMERON 185 

have written these letters-or at any rate the titles. And we cannot 
have his dates that much wrong, since on the prima facie evidence of 
the correspondence he wrote to the Gothic general Gainas, killed in 
400, and the emperor Arcadius (2.265, 279), who died in 408 (see 
below). 

We could of course, simply exclude the (relatively few) letters with 
anachronistic titles. But that would be a very questionable method. 
These happen to be the only titles that are demonstrably anachronistic. 
IfI am not mistaken, not one of the host of other titles borne by Nilus' 
supposed correspondents-candidati, domestici, protectores, silentiarii 
and some thirty others-had fallen out of use by the sixth century. 
Not one has to belong to the early fifth. How then can we be sure that 
any are authentic? If the editor that we are now bound to postulate 
invented this many tides, might he not equally have invented them 
all? 

Heussi himself drew attention to two headings which cannot have 
been original. Ep. 3.4, MapTLvqJ 7TAovclqJ Y€POVTL </)LA07T6pVtp, and 1.54, 
AVP7JALav~ lAAovcTplqJ am) fEAA~VWV. Nothing in the letters suggests 
either that Martin was rich or that Aurelian had been a pagan-nor 
is it easy to believe that <whorelover' formed part of the actual address 
of Martin's letter.2o Heussi, however, found this reassuring rather than 
the reverse. Such information, he argued, must derive from a person 
who knew the men in question; proof, he thought, that the editing of 
Nilus' correspondence, even if done by someone other than Nilus 
himself, must at least be placed in or near Nilus' lifetime.21 

But there are many other such headings where this is not at all the 
obvious explanation: those where the description that follows the 
name appears to be nothing more than a guess from the contents of 
the letter. There are some where it is difficult to be sure: for example, 
2.260 to 'Basilius the businessman' on the evils of business; 2.263 to 
'Symmachus the vegetable seller' on food; 2.264 to 'Aphrodisius the 
philosopher' on philosophy; 2.266 to 'Dioscoria the widow' on widow­
hood; 3.24 to 'Asclepius the grammaticus' and 3.10 to 'Elpidus the 
goldsmith', where their profession is made clear by the letters. These 
are all perfectly reasonable headings that would certainly help the 

20 Papyrus letters (as one would expect) are normally folded and the address written on 
one side of the packet formed by the blank verso. 

21 "Die Sammlung der Briefe bis in die Zeit der Enstehung der Briefe zuriickreichen 
muss," p.68. 



186 AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTERS OF ST NILUS OF ANCYRA 

postman, though it must be counted a little suspicious that in each 
case (and there are many similar) the relevant information should be 
contained in the letter. But there are a number ofless helpful headings 
that can hardly be Nilus' own: for example 1.67, 'to the monk who 
used to be a soldier' (guessable from the letter); and three more simi­
lar, 3.49, 56 and 73 to monks who used to be, respectively, a school­
master, a lawyer and a rhetor. Then there is 2.267 'to Crisp us the 
ex-captive', dealing (surprise!) with his recent ransom from captivity 
among 'impious barbarians' (presumably the Persians, and so to be 
dated soon after Theodosius II's Persian War of 421-22). Nor do 'to 
Lucian the Christian sophist' (2.224) or 'to Carpio the follower of the 
Valentinian heresy' (1.234) look like genuine addresses, still less 3.171 
'to Quintus the subdeacon who had lapsed (1TEC6v'TL)', 3.228 'to Terentius 
the deacon who had lapsed and long afterwards made a worthy 
repentance', or 3.243, 'to Charicles the presbyter, who was very strict 
with backsliders and insisted that confession was not enough for 
repentance'. These are more in the nature of editorial lemmata than 
addresses proper. 

Now we have already seen that some at least of the addresses cannot 
have been added before the sixth century, and the batch just discussed 
are at any rate not the original addresses of Nilus. Is it really likely 
that the original addresses were tampered with twice, once shortly 
before or after Nilus' death, when the correspondence was being 
assembled, and then again a century or so later? Is it not more natural 
and economical to assume that the false titles and what are surely no 
more than the idle guesses about Martin and Aurelian were both 
added at the same time, quite possibly when the corpus was being 
assembled, at least in its present form-but in the sixth rather than 
the fifth century? (On the date, see further below.) 

It seems almost perverse to deny a connection between the two 
most suspicious features of the correspondence; the false addresses 
and the disjointed, impersonal nature of so many of the letters. Both 
are the work of our 'editor', the two sides of the same forged coin. 
Anxious to improve on what he presumably felt to be an inadequate 
stock of letters by Nilus, he expanded his material by the crude device 
of breaking up the larger genuine letters and equipping them with 
what he considered appropriate looking headings. Nilus was thus 
provided with a correspondence more on a par with those of the other 
great eastern Fathers-and a more impressive circle of friends. 



ALAN CAMERON 187 

The existence of this sixth-century editor must, I think, be accepted, 
even if the precise nature and extent of his activity may have to remain 
uncertain. But it may be suggested that, provided we ignore his 
additions to the letter headings and the more obvious false letter 
divisions, no argument has so far been produced why we may not 
continue to regard the correspondence itself as basically authentic. 
This (as we shall see) is a question that requires careful formulation. 
Before we are in a position to tackle it we must submit the few 
apparently datable letters to a more critical scrutiny than they have 
so far received. 

Only three of Nilus' correspondents are known from other sources. 
The emperor Arcadius, Gainas the Goth, and a general called Candi­
dianus (2.245). Candidianus may reasonably (though not certainly) be 
identified with the general of that name attested in 425, or perhaps 
the comes domesticorum who was an imperial representative at the 
Council of Ephesus in 431.22 Nothing in the letter contradicts this 
assumption. 

Nor is there anything obviously suspicious about the two letters to 
Arcadius (2.265 and 279). Ep. 2.265 indeed seems faultlessly circum­
stantial. Nilus tells the emperor that he will not pray for relief from 
the earthquakes then troubling Constantinople until the exiled patri­
arch Chrysostom is restored. The reference must be to Chrysostom's 
second exile, which lasted from June 404 to his death on 14 September 
407. Now there was an earthquake at Constantinople on 1 April 407 
(Chron.Min. 2.69). The letter presupposes that Chrysostom is still 
alive; prima facie, then, it was written between April and September 
407. A forger so careless of anachronism is scarcely likely to have taken 
such pains to forge so plausible a context. We may surely presume 
that this letter at least is genuine. So far so good. 

The eight letters to Gainas (1.70,79, 114-16,205-06,286) look no less 
plausible. They attack Arianism, and we know that Gainas was an 
Arian. Nonetheless, one at least of them, 1.286, is prima facie an out­
right forgery. 

Ep. 1.286 is one of the 45 letters borrowed from the oeuvre of 
Chrysostom. It is a miniature sermon on Hebrews 1.3, palpably draw­
ing on Chrysostom's homily thereon (PG 63,22). Of this there can be 
no doubt. To start with, it is clearly from Chrysostom that the letter 
derives its improbable and absurd idea of interpreting Hebrews as a 

22 PLRE II (forthcoming), S.v. Candidianus 2 and 4. 



188 AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTERS OF ST NILUS OF ANCYRA 

preemptive attack on Arianism and sundry other heresies. Then, like 
Chrysostom, it goes on to quoteJohn 8.12,Eyw Elp.& TO t/>Wc TOU KOCP.OV, 

followed by the wordst/>Wc EK cPWTOc, and concludes by copying its last 
sentence almost verbatim from Chrysostom: 

C ·' , HRYSOSTOM. 0 yap xapaKTTJp 
lIP" '\ " \ a""oc T&C ECT& 1Tapa 
, , -"'\ \ '" , 

TO 1TPWT071J1TOV' al\l\OC aE" 
, , -'_\\ \ '\ 

OV 1Tavrn WV\a KaTa TO 

lvtnr6cTaTov Elva£. 

N • , ILUS. a xapaK77Jp 
~\ '\ " \ al\l\0 n E"cn 1Tapa 

, , .!'!\\ "" 
TO 1TPWTOTV1TOV' al\l\0 aE" 

t , -'.\\' '\ OV 1TaJI7!I al\l\a KaTa TO , , 
E"VV1TOCTaTOV. 

This is not in itself a decisive argument against authenticity. What is 
decisive is the fact that Chrysostom's Homilies on Hebrews were written 
at least three years after Gainas' death. Both dates are known with 
certainty: Gainas died in 400 and the Homilies on Hebrews were com­
posed in 403/4 and published after Chrysostom's death from short­
hand notes by a priest of Antioch, called Constantine.23 F. Degenhart 
desperately argued that, as a close associate of Chrysostom, Nilus 
could have had advance knowledge of his interpretation of Hebrews.2' 

This is a hypothesis that might have merited consideration (a) if we 
had any real evidence for this supposed close association with Chrysos­
tom, rather than a dubious and in other respects certainly erroneous 
notice in the eighth-century chronicle of George the Monk ;26 and 
(b) if there were no other grounds for suspicion. As things are, we are 
surely bound to acknowledge the telltale slip of the forger. Wanting 
a notorious Arian contemporary of Nilus as the addressee for an 
attack on Arianism, he chose Gainas, whose Arianism, as manifested 
in ft famous clash with Chrysostom, is prominently recorded in all the 
ecclesiastical histories.26 

Ep. 2.114 is something of a puzzle. It is addressed to Nikandros the 
Stylite, reproaching him in the strongest terms for the folly and vanity 
of his undertaking, underlined with an apt quotation: Kat 0 v.pwv 
Eav-rov Ta1TEwwlh]C€TaL (Mt. 23.12; Lk. 14.11; 18.14)! Now Nilus' lifetime 
falls a little early for a stylite. The first of the breed was the great 
Symeon, who did not clamber onto his first pillar till about 422, and 

la Quasten, m 450, and (for Gainas), PLRE I p.380. 
14 Der HI. Nilus SifUlita (BeitTitge {1'T Geschichte des alten Mih1chtums 6, Munster 1915) 16-17. 
iii For the details see Heussi 11-16. 
It Socrates, HE 6.5.8; Sozomen, HE 8.4.6-10; Theodoret, HE 5.32-33. 



ALAN CAMERON 189 

not onto the tall one on which he spent his last 30 years till 429.27 

Nilus' chronology being (pace Gribomont) somewhat approximate, 
we cannot rule out the possibility that he lived into the 430's and got 
to know an early follower of Symeon. Even so it would remain sur­
prising that we have no other information about this Nikandros. 

Yet the letter itself does contain at least one pointer to authenticity. 
We know from an interesting passage of the Life of Daniel the Stylite 
(§7) that in the early days of Symeon's elevation, pillar squatting was 
sharply criticized in monastic circles. Ep. 2.114 would be a plausible 
enough letter for a monk to have written in the late 420's or 430's. 
There may be something to be said for accepting the letter as genuine 
and concluding that Nikandros escaped fame and biographers either 
by dying young or by renouncing his <aerial penance', perhaps chas­
tened by Nilus' rebuke. 

No mention has been made so far of the two best known of Nilus' 
letters: 4.61 to Olympiodorus the Prefect on the proprieties of church 
decoration and 4.62 to Heliodorus the Silentiary mentioning icons of 
St Plato of Ancyra, both known to us only from quotation in the 
iconoclast controversy.28 The fact that neither is transmitted along 
with the rest of the corpus of Nilus' letters has naturally given rise to 
some doubt about their authenticity.29 

The reference to the icons of the obscure local saint Plato of Ancyra 
points to a man who had lived in Ancyra (such icons did not normally 
travel, except in the possession of Ancyrenes).30 A better argument 
than it might seem in the light of the later but dominant false tradi­
tion (based on the certainly forged Narrationes)31 which placed Nilus' 
monastery on Sinai. 

The letter to Olympiodorus is at any rate not an iconoclast forgery, 
since to suit their case the iconoclasts suppressed a damaging para­
graph allowing the representation of biblical scenes and substituted 
an injunction to whitewash church walls.32 The interpolation was 

Z7 H. Delehaye, Les saints stylites (Subsidia Hagiographica 14, ParisfBruxelles 1923) x ff. 
Z8 For details see my paper "A Quotation from S. Nilus of Ancyra in an Iconodule Tract," 

]ThS 27 (1976) 128-31. 
19 See Heussi 77-80 and Gribomont 254-55 and 261. both cautiously concluding in their 

favour. 
10 Peter Brown. ERR 88 (1973) 19. 
31 Heussi 123ff, 91; cf Quasten 496f. The most explicit evidence for Ancyra is the title 'TOV 

';'ylov N£o..ov TOV &'CICTJTOVTovi" 'A'YKVp~ rilc ra~C%T{ac in Ottob.gr. 250, f.38 r (cf. Gribomont 234). 
12 See G. Millet, HeR 34 (1910) 99. 



190 AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTERS OF ST NILUS OF ANCYRA 

triumphantly unmasked at the second Council of Nicaea in 787; the 
correct text was formally read out from two different exemplars.33 

There are also art-historical grounds for placing the letter (like 
2.114) at any rate in Nilus' lifetime. The prefect (:Trapxoc- ? of Con­
stantinople) had evidently given Nilus a full account of the decor he 
was proposing for his church, a striking mixture of pagan and Christian 
themes. What Nilus took particular exception to was the projected 
hunting scenes, "snares being stretched on the ground, fleeing animals 
such as hares, gazelles, and others, while the hunters, eager to capture 
them, pursue them with their dogs ... every kind of fish being caught 
... pictures of different birds and beasts, reptiles and plants."34 Now 
precisely this mixture of Christian themes and hunting scenes with 
elaborate animal and bird decoration can be paralleled from two re­
markable mid-fourth century mausolea, Sta Constanza in Rome35 
and the so far unidentified mausoleum (perhaps of Constans J) at 
Centumcellae in Spain.36 

At this date the mixture is not surprising. Wealthy Roman patrons 
had always liked hunting scenes, and what was good enough for their 
palaces was good enough for their churches. But half a century later 
the Church had managed to impose its own taste on its patrons, so 
that (in H. Stern's words) 'Tart chretien prend un aspect plus sev­
ere."37 There are no such frivolities in any fifth-century church mosaics 
we know of. 

Olympiodorus was the sort of patron who still hankered after the 
old classicizing themes; and Nilus the sort of churchman who was 
concerned to make the Church's position clear. Nilus' letter was not 
just a reply to Olympiodorus; like so many of the letters of the 
church fathers it was intended for wider circulation, to provide 
general guidance on church decoration. What Nilus says of the value 
of Old and New Testament scenes on church walls for the illiterate 

33 J. D. Mansi, SacroTUm Condliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio xii (Florence 1766, repro 
Paris 1901) 31-38. 

34 From the translation by Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1435: Sources 
and Documents (Englewood Cliffs [N.J.] 1972) 34. 

35 H. Stern, "Les mosaiques de l'eglise de Sainte-Constance a Rome," OOPapers 12 (1958) 
159-218. L. Brehier, L'Art chretien (Paris 1918) 62-63, connected Nilus' letter with Sta 
Con stanza but dated Nilus according to the false biographical data in the Narrationes. 

36 T. Hauschild and H. Schlunk, "Vorbericht tiber die Arbeiten in Centcelles," MadrMitt 
2 (1961) 119-82. 

87 OOPapers 12 (1958) 214; E. Demougeot, Atti del VI Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia 
Cristiana (Ravenna 1962) 511. 



ALAN CAMERON 191 

is strikingly echoed in what Paulinus writes of the church he built at 
Nola soon after 400.38 A late fourth or early fifth-century date seems 
just right-an important conclusion, but naturally falling short of 
proof that it was actually written by Nilus. 

That both 4.61 and 62 should be absent from the main corpus of 
Nilus' letters is less worrying than might appear. The main outlines 
of the MS tradition are now clear.39 One MS, Ottob.gr. 250 (XI s.), bears 
witness to a collection in three books. Book I is unfortunately missing 
but evidently contained 329 letters, since Book II begins with a letter 
(headed -rijJ av-rijJ) numbered 330. This numeration continues up to 

letter 605, and then there is a break until the first letter of Book III, 
which is numbered 706.40 These numbers obviously derive from the 
exemplar of Ottob.; since the letters are here presented as in Allatius 
(and so Migne), it follows that the false subdivision of the longer letters 
goes back at any rate to this exemplar. There are 698 letters in the 
two extant books, giving a total for all three of 1027. In addition. a 
variety of MSS carry two considerably rearranged anthologies contain­
ing 214 and 355 letters respectively. It is clear from a comparison of 
their contents and arrangement that both are extracts from a fuller 
common source, itself another anthology based (it would seem) on 
the three-book edition. 

There are good reasons for supposing that this three-book edition is 
(at least in essentials) the original edition of Nilus' correspondence. 
Epp. 2.54, 55, 57, 60, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69 and 70 appear both as letters in 
the Ottob. and as sections of Nilus' Asketikos (de Monastica Exercitatione) 
-in both places in the same order. Then there are 2.284, 290, 296. 298, 
307,308,310,312,313 and 317, a series of extracts, in that order, from 
the same homily of Chrysostom, De Davide et Saule 3 (PC 54, 695-708). 
Heussi (approved by Gribomont but not by Quasten)U argued that 
in the case of the first group the material in the letters was later reused 
for the Asketikos, despite the fact that it was necessarily the reverse 

38 Carmen 27.511, cf 28,I71f, with R. G. Goldschmidt, Paulinus' Churches at Nola: Texts, 
Translations and Commentary (Amsterdam 1940). 

3. I am, of course, entirely dependent here on the excellent pioneer work of Gribomont. 
40 The original book division of [he Ottch. was quite arbitrarily broken up and rearranged 

by Allatius (followed by Migne), so that Ottob. Book II became Allatius' 1.1-333 and 2.1-42; 
Ottch. Book III = Allat. 2.43-333 and 3.1-32; the rest of Allat. 3 and his 4 are built up from a 
variety of sources, meticulously tracked down by Gribomont 261-62. It will be noted that he 
gave each of his first three books 333 letters. 

U Quasten III. 499, Gribomont 247. 



192 AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTERS OF ST NILUS OF ANCYRA 

procedure that produced the second group. (What one decides 
obviously depends on one's view of the correspondence as a corre­
spondence. I, for one, find it hard to believe that Nilus excerpted ten 
passages consecutively from the homily of Chrysostom he happened 
to be reading at the time and then sent them off in the same order to 
ten people he happened to be writing to at the time, regardless of 
what the correspondents in question had originally asked him. In 
short, I doubt whether 2.284f are genuine letters at all.) 

However that may be, the coincidences in sequence between the 
correspondence as arranged in the Ottob. and the other works (and 
there are other, less striking examples)42 must be a direct reflection of 
Nilus' sources one way or the other. Of the letters in question, only 
2.65 and 70 appear in the 355-letter collection, in reverse order. The 
355 and 214-letter collections both contain letters absent from Books 
II and III of the Ottob., which we may presume to have once formed 
part, though only a part, of its now lost Book I. So it is perfectly 
possible, even probable, than 4.61 and 62 and others of the small 
number of 'extravagan.tes' (including a hitherto unknown but authen­
tic looking letter to 'Achillius the deacon' first published by Gribo­
mont)43 originally appeared in Book I, whence 4.61 and 62 were 
excerpted during the iconoclast controversy. To quote an almost 
contemporary parallel, several important letters of Theodoret of 
Cyrrhus are known to us only from the Acta of church councils. In this 
case too only a part of the original corpus of his letters has come down 
to us, since many more than we now have were read by Nicephorus 
Callistus in the fourteenth century.44 

It is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any clear cut verdict on 
the correspondence as a whole. According to J. Quasten,45 "it is 
homogeneous and basically genuine; it does actually go back to Nilus 

u Heussi 50f, Grihomont 247-48. 
u Grihomont 252-6l. 
44 See Y. Azema, Thiodoret de Cyr: correspondence I (Sources chretiennes 40, Paris, 1955) If. 

It is customary (e.g. Quasten, Gribomont) to compare the vicissitudes of Nilus' correspon­
dence to those of the letters of Isidore ofPelusium, on which see (pending a critical edition) 
c. H. Turner, "The Letters of Saint Isidore ofPelusium,"]ThS 6 (1905) 70-86 (with K. Lake, 
ib. 270-82), and M. Smith, "The Manuscript Tradition of Isidore of Pelusium," HThR 47 
(1954) 205-10, with a summary of the position in Quasten 182. I suspect that the similarities 
will tum out to be less close than has often been imagined when all the details have been 
worked out. There does not, for example, appear to be any element of forgery involved in 
the case of Isidore. 

45 Quasten III 498. 



ALAN CAMERON 193 

and began as his authentic correspondence. The first collector must 
have lived in his neighbourhood and was perhaps a member of his 
monastic community at Ancyra. In the course of time repeated re­
visions added a number of letters and intruded spurious elements." 
But this idea of the gradual accretion of spurious elements, while 
reasonable enough in itself, is a hypothesis for which there is no real 
evidence in the corpus,46 and is in any case simply irrelevant to the 
major questions of authenticity here formulated. There may well be 
a few letters here and there that have crept in by mistake, but 1.286 
is not someone else's letter to Gainas mistakenly attributed to Nilus; 
it is a deliberate forgery. The point about the homogeneity of the 
correspondence is certainly well made. None of the material contained 
in the letters that fall under suspicion of anachronism shows any sign 
of being later than Nilus' lifetime, or alien to his style and interests. 
Gribomont has collected one or two verbal idiosyncrasies that run 
right through the correspondence.47 The anachronisms all appear in 
the headings of the letters, not in their contents. 

There is certainly an element of forgery involved. But how far does 
it go and what was its point? Our editor made up titles for many of 
Nilus' correspondents, yet he did not give him a particularly dis­
tinguished circle. Apart from Gainas and Candidianus, none of the 
generals, prefects and viri illustres he writes to are known from else­
where.48 And Gainas seems to have been chosen for his Arianism 
rather than his political importance. Nor does Nilus correspond with 
any of the great churchmen of the early fifth-century East; merely a 
host of unknown monks, deacons and archimandrites. Here we may 
contrast the correspondence ofTheodoret, so important for the ecclesi­
astical and even political historian of the age. Nor is Nilus made to 

" See Gribomont Z63. 
&7 Gribomont Z63-64; this is of course, a particularly delicate task in the case of an author 

who quotes so extenSively from others. 
'8 Bacchus the Prefect (Z.258); Eusebius the Dux (Z.Z61); Severus the ex-Prefect (3.199); 

Symmachus the General (Z.165); Tauranius the ex-Prefect (Z.178): Eleutherius, comes 
Orientis (Z.288). The following are styled just illustris, in my judgement a suspiciously large 
number for the period (there is not one among the correspondents of the contemporary 
Isidore of Pelusium); Auxentius (2.39-40); Demarchus (2.244); Elias (2.273); Johannes 
(2.3Z0); Konon (1.144); Lycurgus (Z.147); Philo (1.138); Pionius (3.31); Stratio (1.299); Vivian us 
(3.91-92). Naturally all these men (and the many lesser figures) will have to be registered in 
PLRE II: it is not likely that all are figments of our editor's imagination, but some are almost 
bound to be. 



194 AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTERS OF ST NILUS OF ANCYRA 

establish his orthodoxy in any conspicuous way. Though a con­
temporary of the protagonists in the Nestorian controversy, his own 
christology is pre-Nestorian.49 It was not till the iconoclast era that 
letters of Nilus were to play a part in theological controversy. In 
short, our forger seems to have had no serious purpose. 

What then was he up to? Perhaps our forger will turn out to be 
nothing more sinister than a rather unintelligent late admirer of 
Nilus whose purpose was merely to produce an edition of the great 
man's correspondence (it is possible that no collected edition had yet 
appeared). He may well have worked from Nilus' own papers, no 
doubt still available in his monastery in Ancyra. Most of the material 
he used was genuine Nilus; some at least of the extracts from other 
writers (all earlier than Nilus) were perhaps made by Nilus himself 
for his own purposes, and mistaken by the editor for letters. It would 
appear that many letters carried only a bare name for heading. Where 
there were indications in the letters, he made an intelligent guess at 
the addressee's rank, state or profession. Where there were none, he 
simply invented tides, on what principle it would be idle to guess, 
quite oblivious of anachronism. There may even have been one or 
two genuine letters to Gainas that suggested putting his name at the 
top of 1.286 (it is stated in the letter that its addressee was a general, 
though he is not there named). The repetition and the subdivision of 
the longer letters were no doubt the work of the editor, though some 
of the repetition may have been due to Nilus. Whether it was the 
editor or Nilus who was responsible for the re-use of material from 
Nilus' other writings must likewise remain uncertain. There is ob­
Viously room for further research here, in particular on the relation­
ship between false or dubious tides and non-Nilan content. (Such 
research might lead to a less charitable interpretation of the editor's 
role.) 

A terminus ante quem of the sixth century has already been suggested 
for this editorial activity. The sixth century would, in fact, be a most 
appropriate moment for such an enterprise. In his own lifetime Nilus 
seems to have been an obscure figure, nor was he much read in the 
century that followed his death. None of the great letter writers of the 
age corresponded with him, and we have already seen how un­
distinguished (when stripped of its unmerited tides) was Nilus' own 

f.. Heussi llsf. 



ALAN CAMERON 195 

circle-presumably for the most part local. Nor is he mentioned or 
quoted by a single writer of the fifth century, not even Palladius or 
Theodoret. The former may have published his Lausiac History too 
early (419/20), and the latter's Historia Religiosa was perhaps too local 
in scope, but the general silence is surely significant. 

It is not till the early sixth century that we find the first mention of 
Nilus. His biblical commentaries are extensively cited in the biblical 
catenae of Procopius of Gaza (ca 46CH:a 526).50 Then came the curious 
matter of his acquisition of much of the oeuvre of the Origenist Evag­
rius Ponticus. When Evagrius' writings were declared heretical at 
the Council of 553, they were kept in circulation by his admirers under 
the names of other, safe writers, in particular Nilus.51 Why Nilus was 
chosen for this role we can only guess: perhaps precisely because he 
was a relatively obscure and uncontroversial figure, whose books 
were not so well known that the production of a few more would 
excite suspicion. Yet more apocryphal writings attached themselves 
to his name in due course, of which the most conspicuously fraudulent 
is the entirely fictitious pseudo-biographical Narrationes, apparently 
embroidered out of the story about St Plato told in the letter to 
Heliodorus (4.62).52 The deliberate misattribution of Evagrius' books 
to Nilus presumably began soon after 553. Nilus was becoming fashion­
able. It was perhaps late in the sixth century that an Ancyrene monk 
decided that there was now a public for the still unpublished corre­
spondence of his distinguished predecessor. 

For the student of early fifth-century eastern spirituality, then, my 
conclusion is relatively reassuring. There is probably less that is 
straightforwardly spurious than Quasten was prepared to allow. But 
the prosopographer who has hitherto innocently supposed Nilus' 
correspondence a treasure-house of early fifth-century officials will 
certainly have to tread with care. Is 'Nero the ex-consul' a straight-

50 N. G. Wilson, "A Chapter in the History of Scholia," CQ 17 (1967) 252-54. 
61 For the list, Quasten 175, 502f. Robert Browning has recently discovered the complete 

text of a genuine work presumed lost, a commentary on the Song of Songs, apparently 
written in Nilus' old age: see REByZ 24 (1966) 107-14. Its authenticity is proved by coinci­
dences with citations from Nilus in Procopius' catena on the Song of Songs, PG 87, 1545f. As 
Browning rightly remarked (p.1l4). once the text is published UjJ faudra aussi passer au 
crible la volumineuse correspondance de saint Nil. car beaucoup de ses lettres s'averent 
C!tre en dIet des extraits ou des resumes de ses autres oeuvres." Another necessary task 
before a final verdict on the correspondence becomes possible. 

61 Heussi 151 f. 



196 AUTHENTICITY OF THE LETTERS OF ST NILUS OF ANCYRA 

forward fiction, a genuine sixth-century contemporary of the forger, 
or a genuine contemporary of Nilus decked out with a false title? The 
answer may vary from case to case. 53 

KING's COLLEGE, LONDON 

February, 1976 

51 I am grateful to John Martindale and Robin Cormack for helpful comments on a draft 
of this paper.