Marriage on trial: Adultery in nineteenth-century Rome

Abstract

In recent years, the rising historical interest in legal culture has opened new avenues of research for historians of Liberal Italy. The legal codes of the new state - and in particular the civil code of 1865 - have come to be seen as fundamental texts governing and defining the relationships between individuals, the family and the state.1 The family, an institution that is at the same time both private and public, and which has been seen as of constitutional importance, has emerged accordingly as a central object of study.2 Above all a more gendered approach to history has encouraged an evaluation of the contradictions and tensions found at the heart of the Liberal concept of the family, first and foremost among which is the contradiction between the principle of equality among members and the principle of hierarchy.3.