CANON III.

THE great Synod has stringently forbidden any bishop, presbyter, 

deacon, or any one of the clergy whatever, to have a subintroducta 

dwelling with him, except only a mother, or sister, or aunt, or such 

persons only as are beyond all suspicion.

NOTES.

ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON III.

No one shall have a woman in his house except his mother, and sister, 

and persons altogether beyond suspicion.

JUSTELLUS.

Who these mulieres subintroductae were does not sufficiently appear . 

. . but they were neither wives nor concubines, but women of some 

third kind, which the clergy kept with them, not for the sake of 

offspring or lust, but from the desire, or certainly under the pretence, 

of piety.

JOHNSON.

For want of a proper English word to render it by, I translate "to retain 

any woman in their houses under pretenee of her being a disciple to 

them."

VAN ESPEN

translates: And his sisters and aunts cannot remain unless they be free 

from all suspicion.

Fuchs in his Bibliothek der kirchenver sammlungen confesses that this 

canon shews that the practice of clerical celibacy had already spread 

widely. In connexion with this whole subject of the subintroductae the 

text of St. Paul should be carefully considered. 1 Cor. ix. 5.

HEFELE.

It is very terrain that the canon of Nice forbids such spiritual unions, 

but the context shows moreover that the Fathers had not these 

particular cases in view alone; and the expression 

 sunisaktos   should be 

understood of every woman who is 

introduced( sunisaktos  ) into 

the house of a clergyman for the purpose of living there. If by the word 

 sunisaktos   was only 

intended the wife in this spiritual marriage, the Council would not 

have said, any  sunisaktos  , 

except his mother, etc.; for neither his mother nor his sister could have 

formed this spiritual union with the cleric. The injunction, then, does 

net merely forbid the 

 sunisaktos   in the specific 

sense, but orders  that "no woman must live in the house of a cleric, 

unless she be his mother," etc.

This canon is found in the Corpus Juris Canonici, Gratian's Decretum, 

Pars I., Distinc. XXXII., C. xvj.