CitySolicitor


By the outgoing Master, John White


Geoffrey Heggs and the Master with the relics


City Solicitors Seeking Penitence in Brittany: 18 to 21 May


In our Company we have a Patron Saint: St Yves. We adopted him in 1946 at the time that we settled on our motto “Lex Libertatis Origio” (Freedom’s Foundation is the Law). There had been good support for St Thomas More, but the majority was for St Yves.


St Yves lived from 1253 to 1303. He was born at Kermartin, near Tréguier, Brittany. He studied Civil Law in Paris and then Canon Law in Orléans. After receiving minor holy orders, he was appointed “official”, or ecclesiastical judge, of the archdeanery of Rennes, before being invited by the Bishop of Tréguier to become his “official”. He was a compassionate man of great


and impartiality, who


gave his


services free on behalf of the poor and


oppressed.


He particularly resisted what he saw to be the unjust taxation of the king, as he


10 • City Solicitor • Issue 78 The Master pontificating


considered it an encroachment on the rights of the Church and the poor. He earned the popular title of “Advocate of the Poor” and was later fully ordained as a priest. He was buried in Tréguier, and was canonized in 1347 by Clement VI, his feast being kept on 19th May. He


is seen as the Patron Saint of both the Poor and Lawyers.


rectitude


Each year a “pardon” is held in Tréguier for St Yves on the third Sunday of May, and you will notice that we also hold our Annual Guild Service at St Peter Ad Vincula in the Tower of London near to the Saint’s Feast Day. A Pardon is a typically Breton form of pilgrimage. It is a penitential ceremony occurring on the feast of the saint of a church, at which an indulgence is granted. An indulgence is the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been confessed and forgiven. The faithful then go on a pilgrimage either to the tomb of or a place dedicated to the saint.


The City Solicitors first went on pilgrimage to Tréguier in 1990 when John Young was Master; and it was enjoyed by the Court and their partners, because it is only more recently that we hold social events including “other halves” and personal friends. Our trip this year was our sixth visit, and I was most grateful to John Young for making the arrangements for our long weekend.


Saturday dinner


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