Palladius (correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium)

Palladius is known only as a correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium, who addresses him variously as a deacon and as a reader (lector) and writes to him chiefly on scriptural exegesis, expounding passages from Isaiah and Romans, the parable of the tares (Matthew 13), the personification of Wisdom in Sirach, and several verses of Proverbs 30 and the Psalms. The relationship is sharply unequal and at times openly hostile: Isidore rebukes Palladius for an "unreasonable desire" to purchase the episcopate (simony) and elsewhere refuses to answer his questions at all, charging that he investigates Scripture not to understand it but to court a reputation for learning and the glory of men, and citing the warning against casting pearls before swine. Isidore also directs him to the commentary of John Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Romans. As context, he belongs to the Pelusium and eastern-Nile-Delta milieu of the early-to-mid fifth century; beyond what these letters reveal he is otherwise unattested.