The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

The First Council of Nicaea

Canon III

Clergy are not to have a woman living in the house except a mother, sister, aunt, or someone wholly beyond suspicion.

  • Canonical normEstablished by a received canon of a council, or of a Father whose canons the Church has received. Canons are applied within the Church's pastoral and conciliar life; a canon is not a rule a reader applies to themselves or to anyone else.
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Primary evidence verified Content last reviewed 2026-08-29

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Canon III — conciliar text

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.

Henry R. Percival (ed.), The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. XIV (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900). Public domain.

Ancient Epitome, as printed in the same edition

No one shall have a woman in his house except his mother, and sister, and persons altogether beyond suspicion.

A Byzantine-era summary carried in the canonical collections. It is a witness to how the canon was read, not the canon itself.

Plain-language summary — this project's words, not the canon's

The great Synod forbids any bishop, presbyter, deacon or other cleric to have a subintroducta living with him — a woman brought into the household — permitting only a mother, sister, aunt, or persons altogether above suspicion.

The fourth-century problem

The practice the canon names was a specific one. Some ascetics lived with a woman who had taken a vow of virginity, in a household presented as chaste companionship. The arrangement had been criticised for over a century — Cyprian wrote against it — and it produced both scandal and, in some cases, actual misconduct.

The canon does not accuse those involved of immorality. It removes the arrangement.

Canonical principle

The principle is that clergy are answerable for the appearance of their households as well as for their conduct, because a congregation's trust is a real good and is damaged by what it reasonably infers.

Note what the canon permits. It is not a rule against women in a cleric's house; it is a rule against a particular arrangement, with named exceptions that assume a normal domestic life.

Key vocabulary

subintroducta
A woman brought into a cleric's household under an arrangement of spiritual companionship. The Greek term is discussed at length in Percival's notes.

What kind of canon this is

  • disciplinary
  • moral

Percival's edition groups the Nicene canons without formal classification. The kinds named above are this project's analysis, offered so that a reader can see which parts of a canon are principle and which are the arrangement of a particular century.

Later interpretation and reception

Later councils returned to the subject repeatedly, which suggests the practice persisted. Percival's notes trace the term through the earlier literature.

The canon is also one of the texts cited in discussions of clerical marriage, since it presupposes that clergy have households and relatives living with them, and says nothing against a wife.

  • The First Council of Nicaea

    The council that confessed the Son to be of one substance with the Father, addressed the date of Pascha, and issued twenty disciplinary canons. It did not decide which books belong to the Bible.

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  • The canons and Church order

    What canons are, how they are received, and why they are not an internet law code.

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  • The twenty canons of Nicaea: an overview

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Sources for this page

  1. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) Canon III of Nicaea annotated edition of conciliar texts The conciliar text as archived here. Source record
  2. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) Ancient Epitome of Canon III, with Percival's notes annotated edition of conciliar texts Nineteenth-century editorial apparatus and Byzantine canonists. Source record

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