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| To Paregorius, the presbyter.
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Letter
LV.2203
| 2203 Placed at the
beginning of the Episcopate. |
To Paregorius, the presbyter.
I have given patient
attention to your letter, and I am astonished that when you are
perfectly well able to furnish me with a short and easy defence by
taking action at once, you should choose to persist in what is my
ground of complaint, and endeavour to cure the incurable by writing a
long story about it. I am not the first, Paregorius, nor the only
man, to lay down the law that women are not to live with men.
Read the canon put forth by our holy Fathers at the Council of
Nicæa, which distinctly forbids subintroducts. Unmarried
life is honourably distinguished by its being cut off from all female
society. If, then, any one, who is known by the outward
profession, in reality follows the example of those who live with
wives, it is obvious that he only affects the distinction of virginity
in name, and does not hold aloof from unbecoming indulgence. You
ought to have been all the more ready to submit yourself without
difficulty to my demands, in that you allege that you are free from all
bodily appetite. I do not suppose that a man of three score years
and ten lives with a woman from any such feelings, and I have not
decided, as I have decided, on the ground of any crime having been
committed. But we have learnt from the Apostle, not to put a
stumbling block or an occasion to fall in a brother’s
way;”2204
and I know that
what is done very properly by some, naturally becomes to others an
occasion for sin. I have therefore given my order, in obedience
to the injunction of the holy Fathers, that you are to separate from
the woman. Why then, do you find fault with the
Chorepiscopus? What is the good of mentioning ancient
ill-will? Why do you blame me for lending an easy ear to
slander? Why do you not rather lay the blame on yourself, for not
consenting to break off your connexion with the woman? Expel her
from your house, and establish her in a monastery. Let her live
with virgins, and do you be served by men, that the name of God be not
blasphemed in you. Till you have so done, the innumerable
arguments, which you use in your letters, will not do you the slightest
service. You will die useless, and you will have to give an
account to God for your uselessness. If you persist in clinging
to your clerical position without correcting your ways, you will be
accursed before all the people, and all, who receive you, will be
excommunicate throughout the Church.2205
| 2205 On the subject
of the subintroductæ or συνείσακτοι,
one of the greatest difficulties and scandals of the early church,
vide the article of Can. Venables in D.C.A. ii.
1937. The earliest prohibitive canon against the custom is
that of the Council of Elvira, a.d.
305. (Labbe i. 973.) The Canon of Nicæa, to which
Basil refers, only allowed the introduction of a mother, sister, or
aunt. The still more extraordinary and perilous custom of
ladies of professed celibacy entertaining male συνεισακτοι,
referred to by Gregory of Nazianzus in his advice to virgins,
ἄρσενα
πάντ᾽
ἀλέεινε
συνείσακτον
δὲ μάλιστα,
may be traced even so far back as “the Shepherd of
Hermas” (iii. Simil. ix. 11). On the charges against
Paul of Samosata under this head, vide Eusebius, vii.
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