Paul (correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra)

Paul is known only as a recipient of the ascetic letters of Nilus of Ancyra, the early-fifth-century spiritual writer of Galatia in Asia Minor. Across the fifteen letters addressed to him, Nilus styles him variously "the Monk," "the Scholastikos" (an advocate or man of law), and "the Archimandrite" (head of a monastery) — honorifics that may reflect different stages of one man's life or, possibly, more than one correspondent of the same name conflated under a single entry. The letters are uniformly directive spiritual counsel: Nilus exhorts Paul to combat the "leapings of the flesh," demonic and shameful thoughts, and despair over past sin through continence, unceasing prayer, psalmody, and the inner stillness (hesychia) of the ascetic life, marshalling Scripture and the example of Antony the Great as his proofs. Beyond this role as Nilus's directee in the practice of asceticism, Paul is otherwise unattested, and the letters give no indication of where he lived.