ADVOCATE OF THE CHURCH
(Lat. Advocatus or Defensor Ecclesiae): An officer charged
with the secular affairs of an ecclesiastical establishment, more especially
its defense, legal or armed. The beginnings of the office appear in the
Roman empire. From the end of the fifth century there were defensores
in Italy, charged with the protection of the poor and orphans as well
as with the care of Church rights and property. In the Merovingian kingdom
legal representatives of the churches had the title. In the Carlovingian
period, in accordance with the effort to keep the clergy as far as possible
from worldly affairs, bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastics were required
to have such an official. The development of the law of immunity made such
advocati necessary--on the one hand, to uphold Church rights against
the State and in court, on the other hand to perform judicial and police
duties in ecclesiastical territory. The Carlovingian kings had the right
of appointment, but sometimes waived it in individual cases. These officers
were at first generally clerics, later laymen, and finally the office became
hereditary. Often this advocate of the Church developed into a tyrant,
keeping the establishment in absolute submission, despoiling and plundering
it. He usurped the whole power of administration, limited the authority
of the bishop to purely spiritual affairs, absorbed the tithes and all
other revenues, and doled out to the clergy a mean modicum only. Innocent
III. (1l98- l216), however, succeeded in checking the growing importance
of this institution, and soon the office itself disappeared.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: R. Happ, De advocatia ecclesiastica, Bonn,
1870; H. Brunner. Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 302, Leipsic, 1892.