This chapter examines the title of ‘presbyter’ attached to women in antiquity and the early Middle Ages. It is argued that this is always subject to difficult interpretation and, if capable of interpretation at all, highly dependent upon contemporary, contextual evidence. As noted in Chapter 8, this term presbytera can refer to an elderly woman and, often, it refers to the wives of male presbyters. Yet there are a number of instances in which neither is the case. Using inscriptional evidence, canonical decrees, episcopal letters and one papal letter, this chapter demonstrates that, in this third category of cases, presbyterae seem to have had authority in local communities, or performed quasi-diaconal service at the altar, assisted itinerant priests and, possibly, engaged in other, routine unspecified presbyteral activities. It is these actions that the ecclesiastical letters and decrees are intended to stop.