AGAPÈTE. — From the Greek ἀγαπηταί, “beloved ones.” A popular term that originally designated those virgins or widows consecrated to God who lived together with a man likewise bound by a vow of chastity, for the purpose of assisting one another in the management of temporal affairs and, above all, to support each other in the practice of the ascetic ideal through a kind of spiritual marriage. In time (second half of the 3rd century), the term also acquired the derogatory nickname of συνεξαχτοί or ἐπείασχτοί, rendered in Latin as *subintroductae*, which some would restrict to those who cohabited with a cleric. From the 5th century onward, however, the term designated only those women, whether relatives or not, whom clerics kept in their homes to manage their domestic affairs.
The advocates of this practice appealed to St Paul: 1 Cor 9:5: *Numquid non habemus potestatem mulierem sororem circumducendi sicut et ceteri apostoli et fratres Domini et Cephas?* Those who condemned it, on the other hand, cited 1 Tim 5:11-13: *Adolescentes viduas devitata; cum enim luxuriasse fuerint in Christo, nubere voluunt... obtosae... verbosae et curiosae loquentes quae non oportet.* Both sides were mistaken. The question was examined thoroughly by Chrysostom in two pastoral letters (PG 47, 495-532), published in Constantinople shortly after his election: *Adversus eos qui apud se habent virgines subintroducatas* and *Quod regulares feminae viris cohabitare non debeant*.
Direct evidence for this custom (collected especially by Achelis) is scarce and of uncertain scope. Most of our knowledge comes from the condemnations issued by Fathers and councils against II. From these it is clear, however, that although the practice was never universal, it was nonetheless widely diffused, perhaps encouraged by Gnostic sects in which it was commonly practised. *V.* the Letter 4 of St Cyprian, the decree of the Synod of Antioch (268) against Paul of Samosata and his clergy (Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.*, VII, 30, 12), the Epistle of Pseudo-Clement *Ad virgines*; St Jerome, *Epist.* 22 to Eustochium (PL 22, 402), and the Councils of Elvira (can. 27), of Arles (314, can. 19), of Nicaea (can. 3). Once the law of clerical celibacy became established, various councils prescribed that clerics should not keep unrelated persons of the opposite sex in their homes, permitting only close relatives to do so. Thus, after the councils already cited, the Council of Gerona (517, can. 7), the Fifth Council of Orléans (549, can. 3), the Council of Tours (567, can. 11), the First Council of Mâcon (583, can. 1), the Fourth Council of Toledo (633, can. 42), and the Council of Bordeaux (663-75, can. 3)—the only Merovingian council to mention *subintroductae* by name—all enacted such provisions. *V.* also the legislative enactments of Gregory the Great (*Epist.*, XIII, 39) to the bishop of Spoleto, Justinian’s Novel 123, cap. 29, and *v.* CELEBATE.
In the Celtic lands during the 5th century and the first half of the 6th, it was customary for monks and nuns to dwell in separate buildings within the same monastic enclosure (later called double monasteries). In Armorican Brittany, these *conhospitae* assisted priests in the celebration of Mass and especially in giving Communion from the chalice, a practice that horrified the Gallic bishops of the time, who saw in it a revival of the sect of the Pepuziani (*v.*).