Ricerche sulla tutela mulierum

Throughout the present research, with a mainly chronological approach, I located the key points of the discipline of the tutela mulierum. The main goal has been the one of clarifying the nature and the function of the institution. For this purpose it has been useful to highlight the connection between the tutela mulierum and the woman’s patrimonial capacity; in particular I tried to demonstrate that the tutelary institution had found its origin, in ancient age, in conjunction with the woman’s purchase of the ability to inherit ab intestato. The woman’s guardianship was connected to her constant consideration as a subject incapable of acting due to her physical and spiritual weaknesses, which represented the ostensible reason of the underneath position of the mulier a tutela. Also the tutelary institution has conserved in time the same nature and original function: the hereditary interests of the near relatives of the woman had always been protected instead of the upheld person herself. Once highlighted the main points of the guardianship’s discipline, they have been more comprehensible, as a consequence, the reasons why its story is a gradual downfall. The unchangeability of the tutelary regime has bumped into the social-economic progress indeed, which has also caused the change of the family’s needs, so that it was not necessary anymore to keep intact the family patrimony. In effect, starting by the middle Republic, the jurisprudence, the magistrature and the legislation, directly or through an indirect way, got started some initiatives directed to promote the woman’s negotiation autonomy, weakening the tutelary institution, that, on the other hand to what expected, kept subsisting until the late classical age, because deeply bounded to the image of the woman, when there had been an overturn of prospective, recognizing to the mulier the role of guardian of her children.