Advocate

ADVOCATE, a person called in to plead the cause of another; especially one entitled, as having the right of audience, to plead the cause of another in a court of law. In Scotland the word is used particularly to designate a member of the bar of Scotland (see ADVOCATES, FACULTY OF). The lord advocate is the chief law officer of the Crown in Scotland. As chief public prosecutor he appoints six members of the bar to be his deputies in the conduct of criminal prosecutions, and they are termed advocate-deputies.

The lawyers who practised in the English courts of common law were never officially known as advocates, the word being re served for those who practised in the courts of the civil and canon law (see DOCTORS' COMMONS). There was formerly an important official termed his majesty's advocate-general, or more shortly, the king's advocate, who was the principal law officer of the crown in the College of Advocates or Doctors' Commons, and in the ad miralty and ecclesiastical courts. He discharged for these courts the duties which correspond to those of the solicitor of the treas ury (see SOLICITOR). His opinion was taken by the foreign office on international matters, and on high ecclesiastical matters he was also consulted ; all orders in council were submitted to him for approval. The office may now be said to be obsolete, for after the resignation of Sir Travers Twiss, the last holder, in 1872, it was not filled up. Advocate is also the title still in use in some of the British colonies for the chief law officer of the crown.

In the United States the term advocate has no special signifi cance but is used synonymously with such terms as attorney, counsel or lawyer.

In France, the avocats, as a body, were reorganized under the Empire by a decree of Dec. 15, 181o. There is, however, a distinc tion between avocats and avoues. The latter, whose number is limited, act as procurators or agents, representing the parties be f ore the tribunals, draft and prepare all formal acts and writings, and prepare lawsuits for the oral debates. The office of the avocat, on the other hand, consists in giving advice as to the law, and con ducting the causes of his clients by written and oral pleadings. The number of avocats is not limited.

In Germany the advocat no longer forms a distinct class of law yer. Since 1879, when a sweeping judicature act (Deutsche .1 us tizgesetzgebung) reconstituted the judicial system, the advocat in his character of adviser, as distinguished from the procurator, who formerly represented the client in the courts, has become merged in the rechtsanwalt, who has the dual character of counsellor and pleader.

Advocatus Ecclesiae.

In the middle ages the word advocatus was used on the continent as the title of the lay lord charged with the protection and representation in secular matters of an abbey. The office is traceable as early as the beginning of the 5th century in the Roman empire, the churches being allowed to choose dcfensores from the body of advocates to represent them in the courts. In the Frankish kingdom, under the Merovingians, these lay representatives of the churches appear as agentes, defensores and advocati; and under the Carolingians it was made obligatory on bishops, abbots and abbesses to appoint such officials in every county where they held property. The office was not hereditary, the advocatus being chosen, either by the abbot alone, or by the abbot and bishop concurrently with the count. The same causes that led to the development of the feudal system also affected the advocatus. In times of confusion churches and abbeys needed not so much a legal representative as an armed protector, while as feudal immunities were conceded to the ecclesiastical foundations, these required a representative to defend their rights and to fulfil their secular obligations to the state, e.g., to lead the ecclesiastical levies to war. A new class of advocatus thus arose, whose office, commonly rewarded by a grant of land, crystallized into a fief which, like other fiefs, had by the beginning of the II th century become hereditary.

In France the advocati (avoues) were of two classes—(1) great barons, who held the advocateship of an abbey or abbeys rather as an office than a fief, though they were indemnified for the protec tion they afforded by a domain and revenues granted by the abbey: thus the duke of Normandy was advocatus of nearly all the abbeys in the duchy ; petty seigneurs, who held their avoueries as hereditary fiefs and often as their sole means of subsistence. The avoue of an abbey, of this class, corresponded to the vidame (q.v.) of a bishop. Their function was generally to represent the abbot in his capacity as feudal lord ; to act as his representative in the courts of his superior lord; to exercise secular justice in the abbot's name in the abbatial court ; to lead the retainers of the abbey to battle under the banner of the patron saint.

The advocatus played a more important part in the feudal polity of the Empire and of the Low Countries than in France, where his functions, confined to the protection of the interests of religious houses, were superseded from the 13th century onwards by the growth of the central power and the increasing efficiency of the royal administration. They had, indeed, long ceased to be effective for their original purpose ; and from the time when their office be came a fief they had taken advantage of their position to pillage and suppress those whom it was their function to defend. The mediaeval records, not in France only, are full of complaints by abbots of their usurpations, exactions and acts of violence.

In England advocatus was never used to denote the repre sentative of an abbot ; but in some of the larger abbeys there were hereditary stewards whose functions and privileges were not dis similar to those of the continental advocati. The word advocatus, however, was in constant use in England to denote the patron of an ecclesiastical benefice, whose sole right of any importance was an hereditary one of presenting a parson to the bishop for insti tution. In this way the hereditary right of presentation to a bene fice came to be called in English an "advowson" (advocatio).

In Gefmany the title of advocatus (Vogt) was given not only to the advocati of churches and abbeys, but to the officials appointed, early in the middle ages, by the emperor to administer their im mediate domains, in contradistinction to the counts, who had be come hereditary princes of the empire. The territory so admin istered was known as Vogtland (terra advocatorum), a name still sometimes employed to designate the strip of country which embraces the principalities of Reuss and adjacent portions of Saxony, Prussia and Bavaria. These imperial advocati tended in their turn to become hereditary. Sometimes the emperor himself assumed the title of Vogt of some particular part of his immediate domain. In the Netherlands as well as in Germany advocati were often appointed in the cities, by the overlord or by the emperor, sometimes to take the place of the bailiff (Ger. Schultheiss, Dutch schout, Lat. scultetus), sometimes alongside this official.

See Du Cange, Glossarium (ed. 1882-87, Niort), s. "Advocati" ; A. Luchaire, Manuel des institutions francaises (1892) ; Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopiidie (ed. Leipzig, 1896), s. "Advocatus ecclesiae," where further references will be found.