Advocatus

An advocatus, sometimes simply advocate, Vogt (German), or avoué (French), was a type of medieval office holder, particularly important in the Holy Roman Empire, who was delegated some of the powers and functions of a major feudal lord, or for an institution such as an abbey.

They typically had responsibility for the "comital" functions which defined the office of early medieval "counts", such as taxation, recruitment of militias, and maintaining law and order.

In return they received an income from the lands, and the positions of these office-holders often came to be seen as inheritable titles themselves, with their own feudal privileges connected to them.

Ecclesiastical advocates were specially bound to represent their lords by managing a court system, to protect law and order.

Such advocates were to be found even in Roman times; a Synod of Carthage decreed, in 401, that the emperor should be requested to provide, in conjunction with the bishops, defensores for the churches.

[2] There is evidence, moreover, for such defensores ecclesiæ in Italy, at the close of the fifth century, but Pope Gregory I confined the office to members of the clergy.

Under the Carolingians, the duties of the church advocate were enlarged and defined according to the principles of government which prevailed in the reign of Charlemagne; henceforward the advocatus ecclesiæ in the medieval sense.

Charlemagne, who obliged bishops, abbots and abbesses to maintain advocati, commanded to exercise great care in the choice of persons to fill the office; they must be judicious men, familiar with the law, and owning property in the—then still administrative—countship (Grafschaft).

In the post-Carolingian period, it developed into a hereditary office, and was held by powerful nobles, who constantly endeavoured to enlarge their rights in connection with the church or the monastery.

They dealt with the possessions entrusted to them as with their own property, plundered the church estate, appropriated tithes and other revenues, and oppressed in many ways those whom they were appointed to protect.

The bishops and abbots, who found their rights curtailed, appealed to the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope for protection.

In the twelfth century, warnings were issued from Rome, restraining the high-handed actions of the advocates under pain of severe ecclesiastical penalties, which still did not put an end to all the abuses that prevailed.

Therefore, in areas such as the territories of abbeys and bishoprics, which by virtue of their ecclesiastical status were free (or immune) from the secular government of the local count (Graf, in origin an administrative official in charge of a territory and reporting to the emperor), the Vogt fulfilled the function of a protective lordship, generally commanding the military contingents of such areas (Schirmvogtei).

In private and family monasteries (see proprietary church), the proprietor himself often also held the office of Vogt, frequently retaining it after reform of the proprietorship (see also lay abbot).

The three-way struggle for control of the Vogtei of the more important abbacies, played out among the central monarchy, the Church and the territorial nobility,[6] was well established as a prerogative of the nobility; the Hirsau formulary (1075) confirmed count Adalbert of Calw as hereditary advocate of the Abbey, an agreement so widely copied elsewhere in Germany that from the tenth century, the office developed into a hereditary possession of the higher nobility, who frequently exploited it as a way of extending their power and territories, and in some cases took for themselves the estates and assets of the church bodies for whose protection they were supposedly responsible.

[7] The medieval Holy Roman Empire included what is now Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia as well as parts of neighbouring regions.

During earlier periods the jurisdiction could also be called a comitatus, literally a countship, because these offices were similar to those of early medieval counts, and "counties" were not yet necessarily seen as geographically defined.

Instead, the word advocatus, or more commonly avowee, was in constant use in England to denote the patron of an ecclesiastical benefice, whose sole right of any importance was a hereditary one of presenting a parson to the bishop for institution.

In modern Danish law, the fogedret (vogt court) administers the forcible enforcement and execution of judgments or other valid legal claims.