Question I: Who can and ought to exercise this office

The practice of all Tribunals plainly demonstrates that this office is not to be permitted promiscuously to all, but to one or another, whom they are accustomed to name Advocate.

An ADVOCATE, moreover, is said to be he who, before him who presides over the jurisdiction, pleads his own or a friend's cause, or contradicts that of another. So the Doctors on Leg. Papin. ff. de postulat.

The office of Advocate is noble, and Cassaneus treats it more fully in the Catalogo gloriae mundi, part. 7. consider. 28; and it appears from Leg. Laudabile, Cod. de Advocat. diversorum iudicum, and Leg. 1, ff. de Iustitia, et Iure.

Cassaneus shows first the honorableness of this office, consider. 29, with D. Bonaventura ad 10. Lucae, where Christ himself exercised this office, taking up Magdalene's cause to defend against Martha; just as in cap. 7 he defends her from the Pharisee, and in Matth. 16 from the disciples, as D. Bernardus observes in assumptione Beatae Virginis, serm. 3, where also S. Bonaventura notes there that the judicial sentence was subdivided for Mary. And so Christ became Mary's Advocate, who had been the Judge appealed to; moreover he became Judge, and in Ioan. 8 he became the advocate of the adulteress. Similarly he was also the advocate of the disciples, Lucae 6, Matth. 12, and it is found in cap. discipulos, de consecr. dist. 5, and the Gloss on Leg. Neminem, Cod. de sacros. Ecclesia. Finally Christ himself ascended into heaven, that he might appear as our Advocate before God, Heb 9.

FINALLY, in the first Iuan. 2, "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ," and the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God most high, is our Advocate, as the Church sings. The Saintly Doctor pursues this at length in the Diaeta, titulo 3, c. 2. Among the distinguished saints, D. Ambrose exercised the office of Advocate at Rome for ten years. B. Germanus, D. Lipardus, B. Luo, and others; see Cassaneus consider. 29.

THEREFORE many are excluded from this office for unfitness, such as excommunicates, infamies, heretics, infidels, and those condemned of grave crimes. Some also for incapacity, such as the insane, children, the mute, the deaf, the blind. So D. Thom. here, Caietanus there, Sylvester, V. Advocatus, Nauarrus summa, cap. 25, num. 28, Panormitanus in rubr. de postulat., Bartolus in Leg. 1, ff. eodem, Leg. Nemo, 2, Cod. de Episcop. aud., Tannerus disput. 4, quaest. 4, dub 6, num. 123.

OTHERS are barred because they are consecrated to higher things, as clerics and Monks, cap. fin. de postulat. extra; ne clerici, vel monachi. Yet necessity removes the unfitness.