CLERGY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Clergy

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/klˈərdʒi/ Listen

noun

Clergy n.

The body of men set apart, by due ordination, to the service of God, in the Christian church, in distinction from the laity; in England, usually restricted to the ministers of the Established Church.

Learning; also, a learned profession. (Obs.) "Sophictry... rhetoric, and other cleargy." "Put their second sons to learn some clergy."

The privilege or benefit of clergy. "If convicted of a clergyable felony, he is entitled equally to his clergy after as before conviction."

Benefit of clergy (Eng., Law), the exemption of the persons of clergymen from criminal process before a secular judge a privilege which was extended to all who could read, such persons being, in the eye of the law, clerici, or clerks. This privilege was abridged and modified by various statutes, and finally abolished in the reign of George IV. (1827).

Regular clergy, Secular clergy See Regular, n., and Secular, a.

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Etymology of 'Clergy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Clergy" Quotes from Famous Books

... ever so mildly," yawned Cecil, "it's gone out, you know; only the cads and the clergy can damn one nowadays; it's such bad style to be so impulsive. Look! You have broken the back ...

— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... generations. We pay little attention to the stories of 'miracles,' except so far as we receive them ready-made at the hands of the churches which still hold to them. Not the less do we meet with strange and surprising facts, which a century or two ago would have been handled by the clergy and the courts, but today are calmly recorded and judged by the best light our knowledge of the laws of life can throw upon them. It must be owned that there are stories which we can hardly dispute, so clear ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... sometimes seemed the obstructiveness of General Triscoe, Burnamy was not very much with Miss Triscoe. He was not devout, but he went every Sunday to the pretty English church on the hill, where he contributed beyond his means to the support of the English clergy on the Continent, for the sake of looking at her back hair during the service, and losing himself in the graceful lines which defined, the girl's figure from the slant of her flowery hat to the point where the pewtop crossed her elastic waist. One ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted, is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act plays, "writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and dishonest gestures of Trincalos[29], buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms ...

— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... debts, and cease disaffecting the people, which is treason and a hanging matter of itself, for which he, and fifty others in this quarter, ought, in justice, to be dealt with without benefit of the clergy.—What say ...

— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

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