Patron saint of lawyers

The law is a noble calling and a dangerous one. It can defend the widow and the orphan, or it can grind them down for a fee. The saints who are patrons of lawyers knew both sides. One was the most powerful lawyer in England and gave up everything rather than swear to a lie; another was a medieval judge who took the cases of the poor for nothing, so unusual that the Bretons made a joke of it. We can ask them both to pray for everyone who works in the courts.

St. Thomas More, the patron saint of lawyers

St. Thomas More (1478–1535) is the patron saint most lawyers know. The son of a London judge, he trained at Lincoln's Inn, practiced law in the City, sat as an under-sheriff hearing cases, and rose to be Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII from 1529 to 1532. He was also the author of Utopia, the friend of Erasmus and a father who made sure his daughters could read Latin and Greek.

When Henry broke with Rome to end his marriage, More resigned and kept silent. He would not swear the oath that recognized the king as head of the Church in England. He was tried for treason in Westminster Hall in July 1535 and argued his own case with a lawyer's precision. Condemned on perjured evidence, he was beheaded on Tower Hill on July 6, 1535. A Paris newsletter written within a month of his death records that he asked the crowd to pray for the king, "protesting that he died his good servant, and God's first."

Pope Pius XI canonized him in 1935, with St. John Fisher. In 2000 Pope John Paul II named him the patron of statesmen and politicians. His patronage of lawyers is older and comes from the profession itself: Catholic bar associations across the English-speaking world call themselves St. Thomas More Societies, and many sponsor the annual Red Mass. The Church keeps his feast with St. John Fisher on June 22.

St. Ivo of Kermartin, "advocate of the poor"

Long before More, lawyers had a patron in Brittany. St. Ivo (in French, Yves) is not yet in this encyclopedia, but no page on the patrons of lawyers is complete without him. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives his story briefly. He was born at Kermartin, near Tréguier, on October 17, 1253, the son of the lord of the manor. At fourteen he went to the University of Paris, where he studied civil law, and in 1277 to Orléans for canon law. Back in Brittany he became the "official," or ecclesiastical judge, of the archdeaconry of Rennes, and in 1284 the official of the Bishop of Tréguier.

He judged with rectitude, resisted unjust royal taxes, and took up the cases of people who could not pay. By his charity, the encyclopedia says, he "gained the title of advocate and patron of the poor." He was later ordained a priest and served as a parish priest at Tredrez and Louannec, where he died on May 19, 1303. Pope Clement VI canonized him in 1347. The medieval rhyme that grew up around him is still quoted, with a smile, by lawyers everywhere:

Sanctus Ivo erat Brito, / Advocatus et non latro, / Res miranda populo.

"St. Ivo was a Breton, a lawyer and not a thief: a thing for the people to marvel at." His feast is May 19. Every year, on the third Sunday of May, Tréguier keeps the Grand Pardon de Saint-Yves: a Mass in the cathedral, then a procession carrying the relic of his head to the church at Minihy-Tréguier, with lawyers walking among the pilgrims.

Other patron saints of lawyers

St. Mark the Evangelist

St. Mark is named on Catholic patron lists for notaries and lawyers. The reason usually given is that he wrote down St. Peter's preaching faithfully, a scribe's careful work. It is a popular patronage, and in Venice, whose patron he is, it carries extra weight.

St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Raymond of Peñafort

Canon lawyers have two patrons. St. Robert Bellarmine, the Jesuit cardinal and Doctor of the Church, is listed by Catholic Culture as patron of canon lawyers and canonists. St. Raymond of Peñafort (about 1175–1275), the Spanish Dominican, was the great canonist of the Middle Ages: Pope Gregory IX had him gather the scattered papal decrees into the Decretals, which became the Church's law book for centuries. Clement VIII canonized him in 1601, and his feast is January 7.

St. John of Capistrano and St. Alphonsus Liguori

St. John of Capistrano studied law at Perugia and served as a judge and governor before he became a Franciscan, and he is a patron of jurists and judges. St. Alphonsus Liguori took his doctorate in civil and canon law at sixteen and won case after case in Naples, until in 1723 he lost an important lawsuit over a document he had misread. He walked out of the court saying, "World, I know you now," and gave his life to God. Lawyers who have lost a case may find a friend in him.

A prayer for lawyers

St. Thomas More wrote his best-known prayer in the margins of his prayer book in the Tower, probably in 1534. It begins (from Bridgett's 1892 edition):

Give me Thy grace, good Lord, to set the world at naught; to set my mind fast upon Thee; and not to hang upon the blast of men's mouths.

The rest of it, and his other prayers from the Tower, are on St. Thomas More's page. He also wrote that it is better to "think my most enemies my best friends," a hard line for anyone who spends the day across the table from opposing counsel.

Let us ask St. Thomas More and St. Ivo to pray for every lawyer and judge, that they may serve justice and the poor and keep their consciences clean. See also our patron saint of soldiers and patron saint of teachers pages, and all the patron saints.