Abstract

The essay focuses on the logic of maintenance duties in marriage and the procedural possibilities it allows in marital disunity. It therefore takes a step back from ecclesiastical judgments of separation in the strict sense, trying to reason firstly about the possible options for spouses and the related judicial dynamics that, theoretically, ensue. It then drops the discourse into the practices of justice found in nineteenth-century papal Rome, both in matrimonial matters and in alimony tout court, interrogating their peculiarities. It finally makes a comparison with the system introduced in Rome by the Code Napoleon, for the few years of French rule, in order to fully assess the prominence of the procedural dimension in defining the supply and determining the demand for justice, in the face of a continuity in the affirmation of marital duty