One friend wrote: What are the BENEFITS of Christianity? Another responded: Lots, if you're clergy, or sub-clergy, or Mrs Cake ... A third: That's only the benefit of clergy .... something the clergy don't like talking about. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In English law, the benefit of clergy was originally a provision by which clergymen could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead under canon law. Eventually, the course of history transformed it into a mechanism by which first-time offenders could receive a more lenient sentence for some lesser crimes. ........ At first, in order to plead the benefit of clergy, one had to appear before the court tonsured and otherwise wearing ecclesiastical dress. Over time, this proof of clergy-hood was replaced by a literacy test: a defendant demonstrated their clerical status by reading from the Bible. This opened the door to secular, but nonetheless literate defendants also claiming the benefit of clergy, and in 1351 under Edward III this loophole was formalized in statute, and the benefit of clergy was officially extended to all who could read. Unofficially, the loophole was even larger, because by tradition the Biblical passage used for the literacy test was inevitably and appropriately Psalm 51 (Psalm 50 according to the Vulgate and Septuagint numbering), Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam. (O God, have mercy upon me, according to thine heartfelt mercifulness). Thus, an illiterate person who had memorized the appropriate Psalm could also claim the benefit of clergy, and Psalm 51 became known as the neck verse, because knowing it could save one's neck by transferring one's case from a secular court, where hanging was a likely sentence, to an ecclesiastical court where both the methods of trial and the sentences given were more lenient. In the ecclesiastical courts, the most usual form of trial was by compurgation. If the defendant swore an oath to their own innocence and found twelve compurgators to likewise swear to their belief that the accused was innocent, they were acquitted. A person convicted by an ecclesiastical court could be defrocked and returned to the secular authorities for punishment, but over time, the English ecclesiastical courts became increasingly lenient, and by the 15th century, most convictions in these courts led to a sentence of penance. .......
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