ABSTRACT
Among the Venetian factums in civil justice there are not many divorce/separation cases to be found. Yet one stands out, a 130-page stampa (printed factum) dating back to 1785, about what was then labeled as “divorzio” (actually divorce from bed and board) between Marianna Valmarana e Sebastiano Mocenigo after 18 years of marriage and six children.
The husband and wife belonged to the upper patriciate. Their story reveals several breaking points in the aristocratic family and government system at the end of the Republic. Legally speaking, it shows a tangible case in the most (in)tense legal context of the 1780s, during which several decrees were discussed and issued on the matter, proving the coexistence of various positions regarding the antagonism between State concerns and the well-being of claimant wives.
The preciousness of the source also lies in its variety of documents, for the factum in civil justice includes some extracts from the ecclesiastical process, showing how deeply the two were intertwined. The cross-examinations of witnesses, conceived and orchestrated by the clergy, enable us to reconstruct the relationship networks mobilized by both wife and husband, from the top to the bottom of the social scale (servants, physicians, allies, and relatives), but also the commonly accepted idea of how husband and wife should behave, and the civil legal stakes behind it.
The rest of the source shows civil proceedings regulating the divorce’s financial consequences, on which the Venetian norm left a certain margin of maneuver. Produced by the husband, the source reflects the defendant’s strategy. Yet from the responses transpire the claimant wife’s moves. The couple’s letters to each other, as well as the official claims they alternatively filed to the civil court against each other, reveal not only a fierce financial dispute, but also gendered strategies.
