clerisy

An elite group of intellectuals; learned people, the literati.

2003: By the nineteenth-century clerisy […] Christianity itself, yoked to material civilization, came to be questioned as gross and vulgar. — Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (Penguin 2004, p. 432)

2016: Only the highly educated write so badly. Indeed, the point of such ludicrous prose is to signal membership in a closed clerisy that possesses a private language. — George F. Will, Washington Post, 18 Nov, 2016

The clergy, or their opinions, as opposed to the laity.

Few men have ever had a stronger conviction of their clerisy, of their belonging to the clerkly caste of the responsibles.