Women Forbidden to Meet with Men in the Churches

So he passed a second law, which ordered that men must not appear together with women in the houses of prayer, and forbade women to attend the sacred schools of virtue or to receive instruction from the bishops, directing that women be appointed as teachers of their own sex. When these rules were met with general ridicule, he devised other means of ruining the churches. He ordered that the usual gatherings of the people be held in the open country outside the city gates, claiming that the open air outside the city was far more suitable for a crowd than the houses of prayer inside the walls.