Valerius

Valerius is known only as a lay correspondent of the ascetic writer Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), to whom Nilus addressed at least five letters in the early-5th-century Galatian milieu of Ancyra. The address lines style him both as a chamberlain (cubicularius, an officer of the imperial bedchamber) and as a city's leading magistrate (protueon), indicating a man of standing whom Nilus treats as an educated layman seeking spiritual instruction. The letters answer his scriptural questions and prompts -- on how Mary the Theotokos is foretold as a prophetess, on the spiritual rather than merely historical sense of Scripture, on the 'horn of salvation' as dispassion -- and respond to his urging that Nilus interpret allegorically, while one letter counsels him to forgive an enemy. Beyond these exchanges with Nilus he is otherwise unattested, and his birth and death dates are unknown.