[1] Chrysostom had a profound Influence on Nilus and his wife, and sometime between 390 and or 404, the couple decided to part and each pursue the monastic life.

Nilus was a well known person throughout the Eastern Church; through his writings and correspondence he played an important part in the history of his time.

[3] His numerous works, including a multitude of letters, consist of denunciations of heresy, paganism, abuses of discipline and crimes, of rules and principles of asceticism, especially maxims about the religious life.

He kept up a correspondence with Gainas, a leader of the Goths, endeavouring to convert him from Arianism; he denounced vigorously the persecution of St. John Chrysostom both to the Emperor Arcadius and to his courtiers.

His Ascetic Discourse is found in Volume I of the English Philokalia, "a collection of texts written between the 4th and 15th centuries by spiritual masters"[6] His works can be classified into four types: "The Posthumous Predictions of St. Nilus the Myrrh-streaming," were purportedly published in 1912 at Mount Athos, and attributed to a monk of Mount Athos now known as St. Nilus the Myrrh-streamer, who died in 1651.