Theodore (correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra)

Theodore is known only as a recipient of letters from the ascetic writer Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), in the early-5th-century Galatian milieu of Ancyra (modern Ankara). The letters gathered under this name carry inconsistent honorifics in their addresses ("the Presbyter," "the Monk," and in one case "the Tribune"), so the corpus may in fact preserve notes to more than one Theodore rather than a single individual. Most of the letters are brief pieces of monastic spiritual direction: Nilus exhorts him to humility and unceasing prayer, warns him that vainglory will cause God's protecting grace to withdraw, urges submission to one's spiritual superior without meddling in his decisions, and consoles him in affliction with the Psalms; the one letter addressed to a "Tribune" rebukes a military officer for bringing the songs of harlots and worldly buffooneries into himself as a temple of the Holy Spirit. Beyond his role as Nilus's correspondent and addressee of this ascetic counsel, he is otherwise unattested.