Abstract

The reform of matrimonial law took on great importance in the work of modernizing Italian legislation which, started by the fascist-led government starting from 1923, gradually affected all sectors of the legal system; and this was mainly due to the effect of the Lateran Concordat of 1929, which recognized civil effects to Catholic religious marriage. Although the fascist government was committed to a progressive alignment of the civil order with the canonical code in the so-called res mixtae, the proposals relating to the new regulation on marriage gave rise to an intense debate which – in particular around the question of the recognition of generative impotence as a cause of nullity – took place on several occasions in the 1930s on the pages of the main ecclesiastical law magazines. The essay aims to reconstruct its essential features through the most significant contributions of the operators and scholars of the two branches of law involved.