Comments by "Big Blue" (@bigblue6917) on "The St. Scholastica's Day Riot" video.

I think a mention of something called Benefits of Clergy should be brought up. The church had its courts to deal with anything involving members of the church rather then going through the civil courts. This meant that anything involving a monk or a priest or any other member of the clergy had to go through the church courts rather then the local courts. The problem with this is that the church could be and often was slow to react, if at all, to any complaint. And even then would often rule in favour of the the member of the clergy. So they were literally getting away with murder, and nothing was done about it. This abuse, as you can imaging, was often a course of unrest between the church and the people and probably an important factor in this event. The reverse of this was that anyone could claim Benefits of Clergy as long as they could prove they could read, as clergy could. So even just a small amount of reading could be used in evidence. In one case it led to a man who had claimed Benefits of Clergy being branded to show that he had claimed once but would not be allowed to do so again. One think that may surprise many is that the average Medieval person had quite a good knowledge of the law. The reason for this is that it would often relate to the work they did as well as local laws. If they did end up in court they would have to defend themselves, so a good working knowledge of the law was essential.
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@aussiedonaldduck2854 On the up side you are still here. Others, in the mean time, have disappeared.
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