6 XI 2025: David Addison (University of Liverpool), Extraneae Feminae: Women, the Clerical Household, and the Legacy of Nicaea

It is well known that in late antiquity many clerics, including bishops, were married. Though enjoined to live a life of sexual continence after ordination or promotion, they continued to be married men and, in some cases, fathers. The model of clerical celibacy characteristic of the high Middle Ages, in which only unmarried men would be ordained, would not emerge for several centuries. The late antique approach to clerical sexuality had its own complications. In the canons, the clerical household appears as a site of intense and anxious scrutiny precisely because it remained a household, with all the social dynamics that entailed. In this paper, I examine the place of women within the clerical household through an exploration of the Latin canons that addressed the women that certain influential Latin translations of the canons of Nicaea characterised as extraneae. By tracing the extraneae through the canons of the Latin church, what emerges is a complex and regionally variegated picture of the influence of the Nicene canons in the west—one which sheds important light on the history of clerical sexuality and the shifting role of women in ecclesiastical life.