"I knew a lot of things could save your life -- a helmet, a good lawyer, cholesterol medication -- but this one was new to me: the ability to read Latin. If you know your E Pluribus from your Unum you'll live alot longer. At least if you're an accused criminal in 16th-century England, as was Ben Jonson.

I remembered Jonson vaguely -- he was the second most successful Elizabethan playwright after Shakespeare, the Pepsi to the Bard's Coke. What I didn't know was that he wasa rascal -- an angry , stubborn man with a homicidal temper. In 1598, the same year he had his first big hit play -- Every Man His Humour -- Jonson killed a fellow actor in a duel.

The strange part, though, is how he escaped capitol punishment. The accused playwright invoked a legal loophole called "benefit of clergy." The concept of benefit of clergy started in 12th-century England when the church convinced the king to offer immunity to priests and other ecclesiastical officials. By the 16th-century, however, the definition of "clergy" had stretched to include anyone who could read the Fifty-first Psalm in Latin.

On the one hand, this is a crazy law -- elitist, unjust, arbitrary. On the other hand, it's kind of nice that reading and scholarship were once so highly valued that they had the very tangible benefit of stopping a hatchet from removing your head from your shoulders. It's beautifully clear-cut: You read Latin, you live. You don't read Latin, you'll soon be experiencing a nice case of rigor mortis (though you won't know the definition of rigor mortis, you illiterate fool.)"

-The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs

I.S. Topic: The Origin of Latin Slang in Plautus' The Bacchides