Patron Saints of Lawyers (with a new nomination)

John Flood nominates a new patron of lawyers, Saint David of Clementi.  (Clementi headed up the so-called "Clementi Report" that led to sweeping reforms of the English legal profession.)

Traditionally, the patrons of lawyers included Thomas More, Raymond of Peñafort, Catherine of Alexandria, Genesius, Mark the Evangelist, and my personal favorite, Ivo (sometimes Yves or Ives), of whom it was said  Sanctus Ivo erat Brito / Advocatus et non latro / Res miranda populo (Saint Ivo was Breton / A lawyer and not a thief / A marvelous thing to the people).

Comments

[Monroe Freedman]

You left out two of my favorites:

St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes.

St. Leonard, patron saint of prisoners of war.

Check out also Saints Elmo, Dympna, and Hilary (one "l').

[John Steele]

Monroe,

Thanks. I was surprised to learn that St. Nicholas, of Christmas fame, is the patron saint of lawsuits unjustly lost.

[Brad Wendel]

Let's not forget St. Atticus of Maycomb. (Monroe Freedman, Steve Lubet, Tim Dare, and others have written important counter-hagiographies of this lawyer-saint.)

[Monroe Freedman]

And as a sometime Contracts teacher, I should add St. Crispin ("once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more").

[Paul J. Burgoyne]

Forgive me this frivolous interlude, but you all have me daydreaming, much as I did at St. Athanasius Catholic School in the 1950's. I suppose that is where I developed this skewed prism I view things through.

How, I wondered, did the saints get their assignments? I mean, they don't seem to have any logic. St. Benedict is the patron saint of monks, Dominic, Augustine and Francis notwithstanding. And sometimes there is overlap. I guess that is inevitable with so many saints. St. Cecelia is the patroness of singers (and poets, too), but the whole choir has St. Dominic Savio.

And putting aside the obvious references to their paucity in heaven, why are lawyers assigned to so many who were never lawyers on earth? Is it a coincidence that St. Genesius got lawyers AND actors?

Thanks. I had not thought of this routine since 1977!

pjb

[John Flood]

Hey guys, these are all old. We need some new saints. The pope is heading to the UK to beatify Cardinal Newman in the fall. I'm going to ask him to include Saint David--for the 21st century!

[John Steele]

Paul, i enjoyed that post! Thomas More and Ivo were lawyers. Mark the Evangelist, not so much. But it's worth noting that one of the epithet's of the Holy Spirit was the Greek word for criminal defense counsel - paraclete. So perhaps that's the jump from Mark to his patronage.

[John Steele]

John, I can support that. Sadly, we have also had some lawyers killed for what that do -- some martyrs.

[Pjburgoyne]

On re-reading my post, I have to wonder who the patron saint of grammar and syntax is!

[Titus]

Thanks for the poem, I had never heard that one before.

How, I wondered, did the saints get their assignments?

Well, sometimes it's first-come, first-served: St. Benedict was among the first really big monks, so he gets the patronage of all other monks. Some of it is technicalities: St. Dominic, St. Francis, and many other religious founders weren't technically monks, they were (and their followers today generally are) friars, a related but quite distinct thing. Of course, some saints got assigned patronages unrelated to anything they did on earth: sometimes someone making an undertaking prayed for a particular saint's intercessions and was surprisingly successful in his undertaking; the story becomes famous, other people facing the same task picked up the devotion, and eventually it became either a matter of universal acclaim or was actually officially pronounced because of the popular following. In some cases, like St. Nicholas and unjust lawsuits, or St. Barbara and artillery, the connections are sort of tenuous. St. Nicholas is generally associated with the unfortunately impecunious, which is what you would be if you unjustly lost a lawsuit.

Hey guys, these are all old. We need some new saints.

In the world of saints, St. Thomas More is actually pretty recent. He lived just 500 years ago and was only canonized about 60 years ago. The law as he practiced it is actually still quite accessible to modern attorneys, as long as you remember some of the old-fashioned words.

[John Steele]

Titus,

Your mention of More brings to mind this biography, which I recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Thomas-More-Peter-Ackroyd/dp/0385496931