remuneration for professional assistance in lawsuits was
prohibited. This law, like all others of the kind, was
evaded. The skilful debater was propitiated with a present;
and though he could not sue for the value of his services, it
was ruled that any honorarium so given could not be demanded
back, even though he died before the anticipated service was
performed. The traces of this evasion of a law may be
found in the existing practice of rewarding counsel by fees
in anticipation of services. The term advocatus came
eventually to be the word employed when the bar had become a
profession, and the qualifications, admission, numbers and
fees of counsel had become a matter of state regulation, to
designate the pleaders as a class of professional men, each
individual advocate, however, being still spoken of as patron
in reference to the litigant with whose interest he was
entrusted. The advocatus fisci, or fiscal advocate, was
an officer whose function, like that of a solicitor of taxes
at the present day, was connected with the collection of the
revenue. The lawyers who practised in the English courts of
common law were never officially known as advocates, the word
being reserved 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 admiralty and ecclesiastical courts. He
discharged for these courts the duties which correspond to
those of the solicitor of the treasury (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. There was also a second law
officer of the crown in the admiralty court called the admiralty
advocate. This office has long been vacant. Advocate is
also the title still in use in some of the British colonies to
denote the chief law officer of the crown there. For instance,
in Sierra Leone (until 1896), Lagos and Cyprus he is called
the king's advocate; in Malta, crown advocate; in Mauritius,
procureur and advocate-general, and in the provinces of India
advocate-general. In France, the avocats, as a body, were
reorganized under the empire by a decree of the 15th of December
1830. There is, however, a distinction between avocats
and avoues. The latter, whose number is limited, act as
procurators or agents, representing the parties before the
tribunals, draft and prepare for them all formal acts and
writings, and prepare their lawsuits for the oral debates.
The office of the avocat, on the other hand, consists
in giving advice as to the law, and conducting the causes
of his clients by written and oral pleadings. The number
of avocats is not limited; every licentiate of law being
entitled to apply to the corporation of avocats attached to
each court, and after presentation to the court, taking the
oath of office and passing three years in attendance on some
older advocate, to have himself recognised as an advocate.
In Germany the advocat no longer forms a distinct class of
lawyer. Since 1879, when a sweeping judicature act (Deutsche
Justizgesetzgebung) 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.
The advocates ecclesiae.
In the middle ages the word advocatus (Fr. avoue, Ger.
Vogt) 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 defensores 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 11th century become hereditary.
The French avoue.
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 protection they afforded by a domain and
revenues granted by the abbey: thus the duke of Normandy was
adpoeatus of nearly all the abbeys in the duchy; (2) 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.
In England.
In England the word advocatus was never used to denote
an hereditary representative of an abbot; but in some of
the larger abbeys there were hereditary stewards whose
functions and privileges were not dissimilar 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
institution. In this way the hereditary right of presentation
to a benefice came to be called in English an ``advowson''
(advocatio). 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 became a fief
they had taken advantage of their position to pillage and
suppress those whom it was their function to defend. The
medieval records, not in France only, are full of complaints
by abbots of their usurpations, exactions and acts of violence.
The German Vogt.
In Germany the title of advocatus ( Vogt) was given not only
to the advocati of churches and abbeys, but to the officials
appointed, from early in the middle ages, by the emperor to
administer their immediate domains, in contradistinction to
the counts, who had become hereditary princes of the Empire.
The territory so administered 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. 1883, Niort), s. ``Advocati'';
A. Luchaire, Manuel des institutions francaises (Paris,
1892); Herzog Hauck, Realencyklopadie (ed. Leipzig, 1896), s.
``Advocatus ecclesiae,'' where further references will be found.
ADVOCATES, FACULTY OF, the collective term by which what
in England are called barristers are known in Scotland. They
professionally attend the supreme courts in Edinburgh; but
they are privileged to plead in any cause before the inferior
courts, where counsel are not excluded by statute. They may
act in cases of appeal before the House of Lords; and in some
of the British colonies, where the civil law is in force, it
is customary for those who practise as barristers to pass as
advocates in Scotland. This body has existed by immemorial
custom. Its privileges are constitutional, and are founded
on no statute or charter of incorporation. The body formed
itself gradually, from time to time, on the model of the
French corporations of avocats, appointing like them by
a general vote, a dean or doyen, who is their principal
officer. It also differs from the English and Irish societies
in that there is no governing body similar to the benchers,
nor is there any resemblance to the quasi-collegiate discipline
and the usages and customs prevailing in an inn of court.
No curriculum of study, residence or professional training
was, until 1856, required on entering this profession; but the
faculty have always had the power, believed to be liable to
control by the Court of Session, of rejecting any candidate for
admission. The candidate undergoes two private examinations
--the one in general scholarship, in lieu of which, however,
he may produce evidence of his having graduated as master
of arts in a Scottish university, or obtained an equivalent
degree in an English or foreign university; and the other,
at the interval of a year, in Roman, private international
and Scots law, He must, before the latter examination,
produce evidence of attendance at classes of Scots law and
conveyancing in a Scottish university, and at classes of
civil law, public or international law, constitutional law
and medical jurisprudence in a Scottish or other approved
university. He has then to undergo the old academic form
of the public impugnment of a thesis on some title of the
pandects; but this ceremony, called the public examination,
has degenerated into a mere form. A large proportion of the
candidate's entrance fees (amounting to L. 339) is devoted
to the magnificent library belonging to the faculty, which
literary investigators in Edinburgh find so eminently useful.
ADVOCATUS DIABOLI, devil's advocate, the name popularly
given to the promoter of the Faith (promotor fidei), and
officer of the Sacred Congregation of Rites at Rome, whose
duty is to prepare all possible arguments against the admission
of any one to the posthumous honours of beatification and
canonization. This functionary is first formally mentioned
under Leo X.(1513- 1521) in the proceedings in connexion
with the canonization of St Lorenzo Giustiniani. In 1631
Urban VIII. made his presence, either in person or by
deputy, necessary for the validity of any act connected
