RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESmonasteries or schools, who inhabited cells in villages and towns alone
or with nuns, who entered private houses, or who mixed with nuns
in public.^131
By the seventh century, with the growing pressure for organization,
the Sons of the Covenant were probably assimilated with the regular
monks, but there seems to have been some resistance to transforming
the Daughters of the Covenant into regular nuns in the sixth century.
The eighth and seventeenth canons of the synod of the catholicos Mar
Aba I in 544 condemned women who, under the pretext of virtuous
practices or as a sign of perfection, cut their hair or wore male clothing.^132
By the late seventh century, the position of the Daughters of the Cov-
enant had been regularized by making them members of the clergy.
The ninth canon of the Synod of George I in 676 described them as
distinguished by their vows of chastity, their clothing, and their hair
style. Those who were ordained deaconesses were responsible for
anointing with holy oil those women who were baptized as adults. In
addition, they recited the psalms, hymns, and church offices, and chanted
hymns behind the funeral procession on days of burial, on days for
the commemoration of the dead, and on days of vigil. But they were
not to enter the cemetery and sing the hymns there during the funeral,
and they were advised to gather in one or two places in each town to
live.^133
THE FORMATION OF THE NESTORIAN COMMUNITY: LAW
The emergence of a Nestorian identity was also encouraged by the
elaboration and application of canon law. Not only was church dis-
cipline and administration organized through ecclesiastical rules and
regulations; but by the extension of canon law to cover marriage,
property and inheritance, the ordinary faithful were drawn into an
operating community of law that distinguished them from the people
around them. As early as 544, probably because of converts who
brought their social habits with them, the Synod of Mar Aba I found
it necessary to establish forbidden degrees of kinship for marriage. In
pointed reference to the Magians, bigamy and marriage between close
relatives by both blood and marriage were forbidden. To distinguish
Christians from Jews, it was forbidden for a man to marry his brother's
131 Chabot, Synodicon, pp. 211-12, 476-77.
132 Ibid., pp. 546, 548, 556, 558.
133 Ibid., pp. 221-22, 486.