Timothy (correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra)

Timothy is known only as a correspondent of the ascetic writer Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), to whom seven letters of spiritual direction are addressed in Nilus's collection. The letters identify him as a subdeacon (letter 24) and elsewhere as a monk (letter 985), and they form a sustained exchange on the value of nighttime vigils: Timothy had written to Nilus objecting that keeping vigil is superfluous since God laid sleep upon Adam, and Nilus replies across several letters with scriptural arguments (citing Christ's all-night prayer, Paul and Silas, and the Psalms) urging him to persevere in sleepless prayer and the ascetic life. Nilus addresses him as 'brother' yet corrects him bluntly, in one letter telling him he is 'filled with much foulness in respect to the inner man' and inflamed with the love of pleasure, marking Timothy as a junior ascetic under the older man's reproof and guidance. Beyond his appearance as the recipient of these letters in the early-5th-century Ancyra milieu, he is otherwise unattested.