Amphilochius

Amphilochius is known only as a correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), who addresses five short letters to him as "Amphilochius the Younger" and "Amphilochius the Monk." The letters present him as a young man who had taken the monastic habit (the schema), to whom Nilus gives sharp spiritual direction: urging him to practice self-control and virtue while still in the prime of youth rather than deferring it to old age, answering his question about the Pauline "old man" to be put off (Ephesians 4:22), and consoling him when he is troubled by blasphemous thoughts by reminding him that his monastic profession was itself an invisible anointing with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Beyond this role as the recipient of Nilus's ascetic correction, set in the early-5th-century Ancyra (Galatia) milieu, he is otherwise unattested.