CLERGY, a collective term signifying strictly the body of "clerks," i.e., men in holy orders (see CLERK) ; but extended in modern times so as to embrace all varieties of ordained Christian ministers, though in England the word "clergyman" is still mainly restricted to the clergy of the Established Church. In the Roman Catholic Church the word, which is the O.Fr. clergie, from Low Lat. clericatus, embraces the whole hierarchy of clerici, whether in holy or merely minor orders ; it has also been loosely used to include the members of religious orders. The M.E. senses of "clerkship" and "learning" have long been obsolete.
In distinction to the "clergy" we find the "laity" (Gr. Xaos, people), the great body of "faithful people" which, in nearly every conception of the Christian Church, stands in relation to the clergy as a flock of sheep to its pastor. This distinction was of early growth, and developed during the middle ages into lively op position (see ORDER, HOLY; CHURCH HISTORY; PAPACY; INVES TITURES). The extreme claim of the great mediaeval popes, that the priest, as "ruler over spiritual things," was as much 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, which consisted mainly in exemption from public burdens, both as regarded person and pocket, and in immunity from lay jurisdiction. This last privilege extended to matters both civil and criminal; though, as Bingham shows, it did not (always and every where) prevail in cases of heinous crime (Origines Eccles. bk. v.).
This subjection of the clergy only to courts disposed by esprit de corps to judge leniently led to the penalties for criminous clerks being much lighter than those to which laymen were ame nable ; and this in turn led to the survival in England, long after the Reformation, of the legal fiction of benefit of clergy, used to mitigate the harshness of the criminal law.