Clerical Class

The clergy includes all members of the Christian Church, a powerful institution that owns considerable lands and has many rights of its own. Churchmen are exempt from most ordinary laws and claim loyalty to God, a higher authority than the king — a claim that is a source of great conflict between clergy and royalty. The clergy, supposed to be chaste, can hardly be expected to reproduce itself, so it draws members from both the nobility and the commoners. It is not unusual for younger sons of the nobility to join the clergy rather than be landless knights, seeking whatever opportunity the Church can give them. For bright and ambitious commoners, the Church provides the best opportunity for advancement. Churchmen may be secular clergy or monastics. Secular clergy includes bishops and the village priests who administer the sacraments to commoners, and who oversee the spiritual development of their parishioners. Monastics are men or women who have taken the religious path of isolation and joined special communities that practice devotion apart from the ways of ordinary mankind.