Правило 44 Василия Великого

A deaconess who has committed adultery with a pagan may be accepted into the communion of prayers, but she will be admitted to the communion of the holy mysteries in the seventh summer, even if, that is, she lives in purity. The pagan, after accepting the faith, then proceeds to sacrilege, and thus returns to his vomit. Therefore, we no longer allow the body of the deaconess, as consecrated, to be in carnal use. (Ap. 25; IV Om. 15; Trul. 4, 6, 14, 21, 40; Carth. 27; Basil the Great. 32, 51, 70). Who the deaconesses are, and that they took a strict vow of virginity, which they were obliged to keep until death under threat of anathema, we saw in the interpretation of Rule 15 of the IV Ecumenical Council. In the time of Basil the Great, there were no such strict rules for deaconesses, so it often happened that deaconesses did not always keep the vow of virginity, but, as we see, fell into fornication even with pagans. Amphilochius reminded Basil the Great of one such case. Namely: one deaconess fell into fornication with one pagan, as a result of which Amphilochius cast her out of her rank and completely excommunicated her from Holy Communion. Meanwhile, the said pagan accepted the Christian faith and wished to marry this former deaconess, thinking that he, having become a Christian, could legally marry the one who was no longer a deaconess and who, therefore, in his opinion, had the right to enter into a legal marriage. Regarding this case, Basil the Great in his present canon, answering Amphilochius, says that the deaconess was rightly cast out as a result of fornication, but she should not be completely excommunicated from the church, for she was sufficiently punished because she lost the grace of God, which, as a deaconess, she was awarded. He prescribes that she should be under penance for seven years, and if during all this time she lives in purity and sincerely repents of her sin, then in this case she can be awarded Holy Communion, of course, without the right to ever get married. Regarding a pagan who converted to Christianity and wished to marry a deaconess, Saint Basil says that by doing so he would desecrate the shrine and, like a dog, would return to his vomit, i.e. to his former paganism and to an act that only in paganism, and not in Christianity, could be tolerated, for, says Vasily, we must not allow the body of the deaconess, as once dedicated, to again serve sexual intercourse. This last precept is based on that general fundamental rule which states: Τό ίερόν μιαρόν ού γίνεται, quod sanctum est, non fitpollutum - what is holy cannot be profaned, 88 and it is decisive in the matter which some try to defend, that widowed sacred persons may to marry, since they are deprived of the priesthood, which we specifically discussed in the interpretation of the 6th Trullan rule. You might be interested in: