Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word
Agapetae. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
Agapetae, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
Agapetae in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
Agapetae you have here. The definition of the word
Agapetae will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition of
Agapetae, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
English
Noun
Agapetae pl (plural only)
- Women of the early Christian church who cohabited in a state of "spiritual love" with clergy or laymen who had vowed chastity.
1820, Polwhele, The enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists considered by .Bishop Lavington, page 298:He was instructed and assisted by Agape, an honourable woman, in carrying on the secret mysteries ; and she was the mother of the Agapetae, or love-feasters ; whose rites became by degrees so very scandalous, that St. Jerome tells Oceanus "you are exposed to the teeth of detractors, unless you dismiss the assemblies of the Agapetae."
2007, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Who Is This King of Glory?:, →ISBN, page 175:It describes the Agapetae as virgins who consecrated themselves to God with a vow of chastity and associated with laymen who like themselves had taken a vow of chastity.
2008, Jacob A. v Belzen, Jacob Adrianus Belzen, & Antoon Geels, Autobiography and the Psychological Study of Religious Lives, →ISBN:The novel itself suggests that Huxley knew about this attempt to go beyond gender, that the earliest Christian priests had Agapetae, or female ritual lovers, and that both the early Christian Gnostics and the later Catholic moralists permitted a form of coitus reservatus, the latter "claiming that it was known to Adam in the Garden and therefore a part of Paradise."