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See also: term signifying in See also: English strictly the See also: body of " clerks," i.e. men in See also: holy orders (see CLERK)
.
The word has, however, undergone sundry modifications of meaning
.
Its M.E. senses of " clerkship " and " learning " have long since fallen obsolete
.
On the other See also: hand, in See also: modern times there has been an increasing tendency to depart from its strict application to technical " clerks," and to widen it out so as to embrace all varieties of ordained Christian ministers
.
While, however, it is now not unusual to speak of " the See also: Nonconformist See also: clergy," the word ." clergyman " is still, at least in the See also: United See also: Kingdom, used of the clergy of the Established See also: Church in contradistinction to "
See also: minister." As applied to the See also: Roman Catholic Church the word embraces the whole hierarchy, whether its clerici be in holy orders or merely in minor orders
.
The term has also been sometimes loosely used to include the members of the See also: regular orders; but this use is improper, since monks and friars, as such, have at no See also: time been clerici
.
The use of the word " clergy " as a plural, though the New English See also: Dictionary quotes the high authority of See also: Cardinal Newman for it, is less rare than wrong; in the See also: case cited " Some See also: hundred Clergy " should have been " Some hundred of the Clergy."
In distinction to the " clergy " we find the " laity " (Gr
.
See also: Laos, See also: people), the See also: great body of " faithful people " which, in nearly every various conception of the Christian Church, stands in relation to the clergy as a See also: flock of See also: sheep to its pastor
.
This distinction was of early growth, and See also: developed, with the increasing power of the hierarchy, during the See also: middle ages into a very lively opposition (see See also: ORDER, HoLY; CHURCH See also: HISTORY; PAPACY; INVESTITURES)
.
The extreme claim of the great See also: medieval popes, that the See also: priest, as " ruler over spiritual things," was as much See also: superior to temporal rulers as the soul is to the body (see INNOCENT III.), led logically to the vast privileges and immunities enjoyed by the clergy during the middle ages
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In those countries where the See also: Reformation triumphed, this See also: triumph represented the victory of the See also: civil over the clerical See also: powers in the long contest
.
The victory was, however, by no means See also: complete
.
The Presbyterian See also: model was, for instance, as sacerdotal in its essence as the Catholic; See also: Milton complained with See also: justice that " new presbyter is but old priest writ large," and declared that " the Title of Clergy St See also: Peter gave to all See also: God's people," its later restriction being a papal and prelatical usurpation (i.e
.
1 Peter v
.
3, for,cXi3pos and KXi pcvv)
.
Clerical immunities, of course, differed largely at different times and in different countries, the extent of them having been gradually curtailed from a See also: period a little earlier than the close of the middle ages
.
They consisted mainly in exemption from public burdens, both as regarded See also: person and See also: pocket, and in immunity from See also: lay jurisdiction
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This last enormous See also: privilege, which became one of the See also: main and most efficient See also: instruments of the subjection of See also: Europe to clerical tyranny, extended to matters both civil and criminal; though, as See also: Bingham shows, it did not (always and everywhere) prevail in cases of heinous See also: crime (Origines See also: Eccles. bk. v.)
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This diversity of jurisdiction, and subjection of the clergy only to the sentences of See also: judges bribed by their esprit de corps to See also: judge leniently, led to the adoption of a See also: scale of punishments for the offences of clerks avowedly much lighter than that which was inflicted for the same crimes on laymen; and this in turn led to the survival in See also: England, long after the Reformation, of the curious legal fiction of benefit of clergy (see below), used to mitigate the extreme harshness of the criminal See also: law
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