When a Scribe Falls Asleep

The Meticulous Work of Nilus of Damascus

One night in 1251 CE, a monk-scribe at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, Nilus of Damascus, was copying a manuscript in his cell.¹ Working late into the night, he fell asleep. When he woke up and resumed his work, he accidentally left a blank page in the middle of the text.

Although Nilus was copying the manuscript for his own use, he noted at the end that he expected others to read it during his lifetime and after his death. With this in mind, he filled the upper part of the blank page with an apology that reads:

An oversight of the scribe, for it was night and he grew drowsy. Forgive me and pray for me, reader or fellow scribe. May the Lord forgive you…

MS Sinai, Ar. 440, f. 293r: Nilus apologizes for falling asleep. Image reproduced with permission from St. Catherine’s Monastery

Nilus went remarkably far in both humility and the admission of error. Yet this detailed apology represents an exceptional case. While confessions of mistakes do appear in Christian Arabic manuscripts, they are not very common. His note reflects the highest degree of scribal accountability: identifying a specific error and apologizing for it directly.

A few years later, in 1255 CE, while copying another manuscript, Nilus repeated the same mistake, again leaving part of a page blank. Once more, he took responsibility and openly admitted the oversight, writing a short apology:

 اعلم وفقك الله تعالى ان هذا سهو من الناسخ وما فيه نقص فصلي على الناسخ الخاطي يذكرك الرب في ملك السما امين

Know, may God Almighty guide you, that this is an oversight by the scribe, and there is no omission here. Pray for the sinner scribe, may the Lord remember you in His heavenly kingdom. Amen!

This time, Nilus did not specify whether the manuscript was for his personal use or for a patron. Nevertheless, he again chose transparency over concealment. Very few scribes were as direct as Nilus. Most confessions of error remained formulaic or anticipatory. Since manuscripts usually underwent careful collation and correction, it is striking how rarely scribes openly admitted their mistakes.

At this point, a reader might imagine Nilus as a careless or lazy scribe, working slowly and producing texts full of errors. The picture, however, is quite different and requires broader context to understand such a complex figure. Nilus, whose origin—as his name suggests—was Damascus, lived at St. Catherine’s Monastery for at least twenty years. He was active during a period of intense scribal activity at the monastery. At that time, the archbishop of Sinai was Macarius (Maqār) (before 1223-1252), also a native of Damascus. Alexander Treiger has reconstructed Macarius’s life and suggests that Nilus may have worked closely with him, possibly even serving as his secretary.²

Nilus was deeply involved in manuscript production and collation. If he did not copy entire manuscripts, he often contributed to their renovation and rebinding by copying missing text at the beginning or end of codices.³ His marginal notes in manuscripts he did not copy also testify to his active role as a collator and corrector.⁴ In one case, he copied a short treatise for Archbishop Macarius at the beginning of a manuscript.⁵

Of the many manuscripts he copied that are still preserved at St. Catherine’s, only two were produced explicitly for his personal use—and even these were clearly intended for future readers. Most of the remaining manuscripts lack information about patrons and were likely produced for communal use within the monastery, especially since many are liturgical.

Thus, two sides of Nilus emerge: the drowsy scribe prone to slips, and the meticulous, reliable copyist closely connected to the monastery’s leadership. How can these two aspects be reconciled?

A closer look at Nilus’s working methods helps explain this apparent contradiction. His earliest known manuscript, MS Sinai, Ar. 164 (copied in 1238 CE), already demonstrates his remarkable precision. This manuscript contains a lectionary of the Epistles and the Book of Acts. Nilus not only copied the entire text but also revised it carefully. Its margins are filled with corrections and annotations that ensure accurate liturgical readings on the appropriate occasions.

The collation process itself is revealing. The marginal additions appear in Nilus’s own hand and ink, though in varying sizes depending on available space. Even more striking are extremely tiny notes written vertically along the outer edges of pages. These appear to function as reminders to himself—short instructions about tasks still to be completed. Their position along the very edge suggests they were meant to be temporary and to be cut later.

It might help us if we took some examples from Nilus’ manuscripts and get to know his strategies as a scribe. Nilus usually took notes of the tasks that he should do. The earliest Sinaitic manuscript we know of by Nilus is MS Sinai, Ar. 164 (1238 CE). His meticulous work is evident in this manuscript.

Let’s see some examples:

• f. 100v represents the beginning of the introduction to the Pauline Epistles, a tiny note reads:

اكتب هاهنا اسامي البلاد التي كرز فيها بولس قبل اول رساله روميه من نسخة الكنيسة ان شا الرب

I shall write here the names of places where Paul preached before the beginning of the Epistle to the Romans, from the copy in the church, God willing.⁶

Here, Nilus wrote a reminder for himself to add some information somewhere else.

MS Sinai, Ar. 164, f.100v: Instructions in a tiny note at the right edge of the page. Image reproduced with permission from St. Catherine’s Monastery

• f.86v in tiny hand

 ما أدري اين علامة هذا السطر

I do not know where the siglum of this [added] line is

• f.88v in tiny hand:

من هنا ما وجدت عدد الفصول

From this point [of the text], I could not find the chapter numbers

• On f. 195v, another tiny note, unrelated to the manuscript text itself, appears on a blank page:

أريد ان أصلي انا وحدي من يوم الثلثا من الجمعة الثانية بعد العنصرة انشا الرب

I wish to pray alone from Tuesday of the second week after Pentecost, God willing

Nilus used similar techniques in other manuscripts. In MS Sinai, Ar. 252, he replaced missing leaves at the beginning and end of the manuscript, marking them with a short note:

 في اول الكتب واخرها

[To be added] at the beginning and end of the (books)

Sometimes his notes simply point to missing sections. In MS Sinai, Ar. 301 (f. 10r), a tiny marginal note instructs where a liturgical reading from the Gospel of Luke should be inserted, followed by a more detailed instruction with the correct folio number. Nilus also corrected more serious copying mistakes. In MS Sinai, Ar. 164, he inserted a small extra leaf between ff. 278v and 279r to supply omitted text. He carefully guided the reader through this correction with instructions written on both pages and numbered the inserted leaf as part of the manuscript sequence.⁷ In another manuscript, MS Sinai, Ar. 301, he accidentally began repeating a previously copied passage. Once he realized this, he crossed out the duplicated lines and resumed correctly.

MS Sinai, Ar. 164, ff.278v-279r: Extra small leaf with missed text inserted by Nilus. Image reproduced with permission from St. Catherine’s Monastery

How should we judge a scribe like Nilus—careful yet prone to distraction? Age may have played a role. His career spanned at least two decades, and the slips recorded in the 1250s may reflect physical fatigue. Yet even in his earlier work, errors appear. Interestingly, Nilus’ mistakes became clear as he cared to correct them. What distinguishes his work is not the absence of mistakes, but his determination to detect, correct, and openly acknowledge them.

Nilus’s story offers a vivid glimpse into the realities of medieval scribal labor. Despite his high standing and professional skill, he struggled with fatigue and concentration. He compensated through meticulous revision and remarkable honesty. His concern for accuracy, clarity, and the needs of future readers shaped every stage of his work. Whether such confessions affected the value of a manuscript or the reputation of its scribe remains difficult to determine. In Nilus’s case, at least, they do not seem to have diminished his standing. On the contrary, they reveal a deeply conscientious craftsman whose humility and precision remain visible across the centuries on manuscript pages.

Whether such admissions affected the value of a manuscript or the reputation of its scribe remains difficult to determine. In Nilus’s case, at least, they seem not to have harmed his standing, as he remained a well-known and respected scribe.

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1. I started research on Nilus of Damascus for a presentation in the conference Priests and their Manuscripts in the Holy Land and Sinai by a kind invitation from Dr. Giulia Rossetto. ↩︎
2. All information about this archbishop comes from Alexander Treiger, ‘Who Was Macarius of Sinai, the Author of the Responsum on Cheesefare Week?’ in Between the Cross and the Crescent: Studies in Honor of Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Ž. Paša (Rome, 2018), 137-145. ↩︎
3. See MS Sinai, Ar. 252. ↩︎
4. See MSS Sinai, Ar. 523, f.54v and MS Beirut, University of St. Joseph 505, f.361. ↩︎
5. MS Sinai, Ar. 238, f.2v. All the manuscripts that Nilus was involved with are listed in Trieger, “Who Was Macarius of Sinai,” 142 (n.13). ↩︎
6. The first verb could also be imperative: Write here! ↩︎
7. See f. 193 in MS Sinai, Ar. 570. ↩︎

Key words: scribes, copying mistakes, Nilus of Damascus, St. Catherine’s Monastery

Arabic translation of this text here الترجمة العربية لهذا النص هنا

Suggested Citation: Vevian Zaki (25 February 2026). ” When a Scribe falls asleep: The meticulous Work of Nilus of Damascus” Margins Speak Blog (https://vevianzaki.com/when-a-scribe-falls-asleep/)