Canon 20
People suspect rural archpresbyters and deacons and subdeacons of living with their wives, perhaps not all, but still quite a few. For that reason, it should be observed that whenever an archpresbyter either spends a night in the village or travels to his property, one of his canonical lectors [i.e. belonging to him by the canon rules] or at least someone from the clergy should go with him and should make his bed in the room in which he lies to testify [to his proper behaviour]. Seven men from the subdeacons or lectors or laymen should be submitted to [this presbyter], who should in turn attend to celebrate the weekly prayers (septemanas) with him; if one of them disregards [his duty], he should be chastised. And if the presbyter is found neglecting it – that is, he is not willing to fulfil [his obligations] – he should be deprived of communion for thirty days, until he does penance and returns to grace.
Other rural presbyters and deacons and subdeacons should strive to keep their female servants in the same place where they keep their wives; they themselves should lay, pray, and sleep alone and separately in their rooms. On the other hand, if they have no wives, they should have separated rooms from their female servants, where they should also pray and sleep alone. If a presbyter is found with his wife (presbiteria) or a deacon with his consort (diaconissa) or a subdeacon with his spouse (subdiaconissa), he should be excommunicated for a whole year and, suspended from all clerical offices, he should know that he will be considered a layman. He will be permitted, however, to join the choir of lectors in psalmody.
As to those archpresbyters who were unwilling to be vigilant of their junior [clerics' actions], and did not have them properly separated [from their wives], they should be thrown by their bishop into a cell in the city, and there they should live on bread and water for a whole month and do penance for the clergy entrusted to them, because no cleric is permitted to spend the night with his wife, according to the decrees of the canons. Just as the heresy of Nicolaites originated out of Nicolas' leniency, as we read: this heresy of presbyters was first born out of a particular presbyter, also no one could imagine the things which the one who consecrates the body of the Lord has dared to perpetrate, if those [crimes] would not have recently come to light because of our sins.
If those deacons were condemned by the sentences of all bishops and regarded as heretics, and if such deacons are subject to the same curse, for which they are condemned by the statutes of the fathers, what [else should be done about] these unfortunate presbyters, who are guilty of so great a wickedness that they brought others with themselves to calamity and who caused them to live in this way, that those who should be an example of discipline were proven to be an example of wickedness.
It is right to amputate the source of a disease that cannot be healed, so that the flock would not be infected by it. In the same way, the priest and shepherd should not be venerated by the people but repudiated until he will correct himself if he teaches the art of sin instead of discipline.
(trans. J. Szafranowski)
