Theodotus

Theodotus is known only as a recipient of letters of spiritual direction from Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), placing him in the early-5th-century ascetic milieu of Ancyra in Galatia. The letters address him inconsistently — as comes (count), as deacon, and as presbyter — a feature of the Nilus collection that leaves his actual office uncertain; the honorific comes in the address would suggest a high civil or military official, though the surviving notes treat him chiefly as a person under Nilus's pastoral care. Their content is uniformly moral and consolatory: Nilus warns against the great transgression of pride, urges him to give thanks amid afflictions and temptations, rebukes him for yielding to enmity and hatred toward a neighbor, and exhorts him to bear fruit within the Church rather than in paganism, Judaism, or heresy. Beyond this correspondence he is otherwise unattested.