For 10 years, including seven spent in doctoral study at Oxford University, Father Savas Zembillas pored over the letters of two monks who lived outside of Gaza in the early 500s. The letters had gone undiscovered for 1,200 years before a manuscript was found in the library of a Greek monastery. The subjects of the letters range from the mundane–discussion of a sick cow–to complex theological matters.

Some 100 copies were published in 1816 in Venice, but it was thought that only four survived: "One in Paris, one in the Vatican, one in Venice and one on Mount Athos [in Greece]," Zembillas said in New York this spring. Zembillas had never seen the actual letters; at Oxford he worked with microfiche.

In November Zembillas was named chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. He reported to work at the archdiocese offices in Manhattan.

"The first day I asked if there was a library, and they gave me a key to the library upstairs." He found coffee-table books. Gift books. But as he browsed the shelves, Zembillas paused. "There is this brown leather book that says, in Greek, 'Nicodemous of the Mountain: The most soul-edifying book. Venice 1816.' I thought, this can't be. There's only four of these. And it's in the middle of this bunch of stuff. I took it down and I looked at it and it's a first edition. . . . No one would have recognized it."

The fifth known copy of the letters of Nicodemus now resides on the bookshelf in Zembillas's office. "I classify certain encounters," he said, "under the miraculous."

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