Definition
A Latin term from Roman and medieval law meaning to defend, to call to one's aid, to vouch, or to warrant. In legal usage, advocare describes the act of formally supporting or defending a party — whether by appearing as an advocate on their behalf, by vouching for the validity of a claim or title, or by warranting that a grant or conveyance is sound. The term is the root of the English words "advocate" and "advocacy" and underlies a cluster of related Latin legal terms, including advocatus (one who pleads or defends) and advowson (the right of presentation to an ecclesiastical benefice).
Common Confusion
ADVOCARE is frequently encountered only as a root term and is sometimes confused with ADVOCATUS, its derivative noun. The distinction matters in research: advocare refers to the verbal act (to defend, to call to aid), while advocatus identifies the person performing that act (the defender, the pleader). Historical sources occasionally use the terms interchangeably in translation, which can obscure whether a source is describing a procedural act or a professional role. Researchers should also distinguish advocare in its vouching or warranty sense — common in property and feudal contexts — from its ecclesiastical sense, where "to call to the church" relates to the right of advowson.
Why It Matters in Research
Advocare is primarily a term of art in historical and comparative legal research rather than in modern practice. It appears most often in three documentary contexts:
First, in Roman law sources and their medieval civil law descendants, advocare describes the act of calling a third party to assist in litigation — roughly analogous to what modern procedure calls impleader or vouching-in. Researchers working with Corpus Juris Civilis texts or glossators will encounter it in this sense.
Second, in feudal land law, advocare appears in warranty clauses of early charters and deeds. A grantor who "advocated" a conveyance was warranting title and undertaking to defend the grantee against adverse claims. English common law sources from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries use the term in this sense, and it connects directly to the action of voucher to warranty.
Third, in ecclesiastical law, the phrase "advocare ad ecclesiam" — to call to the church, or to present to a benefice — is the root of advowson. Researchers tracing the history of patronage rights in English church law will find advocare as the operative verb in early Latin sources before the noun advowson became dominant in common law pleading.
The practical research trap: because advocare encompasses at least three distinct legal operations (litigation assistance, title warranty, and ecclesiastical presentation), context is essential. A passage citing advocare in a feudal charter means something entirely different from the same term in a Roman procedural text. Do not translate by reflex.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries converge on the core translation: to defend, to call to one's aid, to vouch, to warrant. Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) adds the ecclesiastical gloss — "to call of the church" — which neither edition develops at length but which is historically significant. Burrill's Law Dictionary, though the retrieved entry is incomplete, treats advocare as a Latin source term and would be expected to provide fuller etymological and textual context consistent with Burrill's generally more expansive treatment of Roman and civil law terms.
None of the historical dictionaries fully develops the procedural warranty sense or situates advocare within the voucher-to-warranty doctrine, which is a gap. Researchers relying on dictionary definitions alone will miss the term's practical function in early English property records. The ecclesiastical meaning also receives insufficient treatment in these sources relative to its importance in advowson litigation.