§ I. On Habitation with Women

99. • Habitation under the same roof with women was generally prohibited to clerics by the sacred canons already from the earliest times of the Church. Thus in the First Council of Nicaea, canon 3: "The great Synod has altogether forbidden that it be licit for a Bishop or Presbyter, or Deacon, or any one at all of those who are in the Clergy, to have an introduced woman ¹, except certainly a mother, or sister, or aunt, or those persons alone who escape all suspicion." - It is also established from chapters 1 and 9, De Cohab. Likewise from the First Lateran Council, ch. 3. Hence in most places Bishops also prescribed in Synods that it should be lawful for clerics to cohabit only with those women who are joined by a strict bond of consanguinity or affinity, namely in the first and second degree. Nor did they permit maidservants to be admitted by them unless they were of known probity. Indeed in most synodal statutes it is found prohibited that clerics have with them maidservants who have not completed the age of forty years. But the reason of the precept is both that the danger which clerics could incur because of human frailty may be removed, and that calumnies may be forestalled, which otherwise could easily be fastened upon the innocent. To this pertain those words of Ecclus. 42:12: "Do not dwell in the midst of women; for from garments proceeds the moth, and from a woman the iniquity of a man."

¹ Subintroducta (Greek syneisaktos) was called not just any woman or maidservant, but a devout woman professing celibacy, who would be loved by a cleric as a sister with special love, and would live together with him. Wherefore this Canon seems less to pertain to the matter.

100. • But the mind of the Church is that clerics not only abstain from cohabitation with women, but also that they take care not to visit or speak with them frequently. Thus all the Fathers admonish. Among others St. Ambrose must be heard, thus instructing his clergy, bk. 4, Offic., 20: "Let the younger not go to the houses of widows and virgins, except for the sake of visiting; and this with older men, that is, either with the Bishop, or, if the cause is graver, with Presbyters. What necessity is there that we give secular persons a place for disparagement? What need is there that those frequent visitations also receive authority? What if some one of them perhaps slips? Why should you undergo envy from another's fall? How many even strong men has enticement deceived? How many have not given place to error, and have given place to suspicion? Why do you not spend on reading those times in which you are free from the Church? Why do you not revisit Christ, speak with Christ?"