AGAPÈTE. – From the Greek ἀγαπηταί, “beloved.” 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, in order to receive his assistance in managing economic affairs and, above all, to help one another in practicing the ascetic ideal, in a kind of spiritual marriage. In time (the second half of the 3rd century), they also received the derogatory nickname συνεισάκτοι, or ἀπέτακτοι, in Latin subintroductae, which some would restrict to those who cohabited with a cleric. From the 5th century onward, however, the term designated only those women, related or not, whom clerics kept in their homes to attend to their domestic affairs. Those who followed this practice appealed to St. Paul: I 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, relied on I Tim. 5:11–13: Adolescentiores viduas devita; cum enim luxuriatae fuerint in Christo, nubere volunt... otiosae... verbosae et curiosae loquentes quae non oportet. But both were mistaken. The question was thoroughly discussed by Chrysostom in two pastoral letters (PG 47, 495–532), published at Constantinople shortly after his election: Adversus eos qui apud se habent virgines subintroductas and Quod regulares feminae viris cohabitare non debeant.
Direct testimonies concerning this practice (collected especially by Achelis) are rare and of uncertain significance. For the most part, we know of it only through the condemnations issued against it by Fathers and councils. These nevertheless show that the practice, although never universal, was nevertheless widespread, perhaps encouraged by the Gnostic sects, among which it was commonly observed. See the letter 4 of St. Cyprian, the decree of the Synod of Antioch of 268 against Paul of Samosata and his clerics (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VII, 30, 12), the epistle of Pseudo-Clement Ad virgines; St. Jerome, Epist. 22 ad Eustochium (PL 22, 402), and the Councils of Elvira (can. 27), of Ancyra in 314 (can. 19), and of Nicaea (can. 3). Once the law of clerical celibacy had become established, various councils prescribed that clerics should not keep persons of the other sex with them, permitting them at most to keep only close female relatives. Thus, after the councils already mentioned, the Council of Geronda in 517 (can. 7), the Fifth Council of Orléans in 549 (can. 3), that of Tours in 567 (can. 11), the First Council of Mâcon in 583 (can. 1), the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 (can. 42), and that of Bordeaux in 663–75 (can. 3), which is the only council of the Merovingian period to speak expressly of subintroductae, etc. See also the legislative provisions of Gregory the Great (Epist., XIII, 39) to the bishop of Spoleto, Novel 123, chapter 29, of Justinian, and V. CELIBATO.
In the Celtic countries, during the 5th century and the first half of the 6th, the custom prevailed that monks and nuns should live in separate buildings, but within the same monastic enclosure (later called double monasteries). In Armorican Brittany, these conhospitae also assisted the priests in the celebration of Mass and especially in administering Communion with the chalice, something that horrified the Gallic bishops of the time, who saw in it the revival of the sect of the pepondiani (v.).