How to describe the sources

Page 2 of 2

In the first page the heading is read-able, which is dedicated to the King Vittorio Emanuele (defined King of Italy and Emperor of Ethiopia, after annexing the African State the day after the Ethiopia’s War, or second Italian-Ethiopian war of 1935-36). Below, the main text begins, pre-ceded by the preamble, and organ-ized into “capi”, chapters (the Capo I. concerns just the Measures on the marriages) and into articles (the Art. 1 proclaims the nonexistence of the marriage between an Aryan citizen and a citizen of other races).

The text is structured according to 29 articles, which are divided into three “capi” (I. Provvedi-menti relativi ai matrimoni; II. Degli appartenenti alla razza ebraica; III. Disposizioni transito-rie e finali). In the last page, one can recognize, after the publishing date («Rome, today 17 No-vember 1938-XVII», note: the date is expressed also in the fascist date10), the names of the sig-natories of the RDL, i.e.:

«Vittorio Emanuele, [Benito] Mussolini [Prime Minister and Home Secre-tary], [Galeazzo] Ciano [Foreign Secre-tary], [Arrigo] Solmi [Secretary of the Justice], P[aolo Thaon] di Revel [Sec-retary of the Treasury], [Ferruccio] Lantini [Minister of Corporations]».
Then the document is closed by the registration at the Court of Accounts (Corte dei Conti), the approval and the great State Seal, put by the “Guar-dasigilli” (the “keeper of the seals”, a function which is exerted by the Secre-tary of Justice, just Arrigo Solmi again). These are the steps in fact, which conclude the approval procedure of a law (in this case, the decree) and substantiate its legitimacy. The Law-Decree was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia (abbrev. GURI) n. 264, 19th November 1938, and then con-verted into the Law n. 274 of 5th January 1939 (in GURI n. 48, 27th February 1939).

10 With the circular 25th December 1926, a new date system was introduced in official acts, the “fascist age”, which was expressed in Roman numbers, which counted the years starting from the date of the “March on Rome” of the 28 October 1922. Consequently, on the 29 October 1922 the I year started (1922-I) of the fascist age, on the 29 Octo-ber 1923 the II year, and so on. The fascist age ended with the fall of the fascist regime of 25 July 1943 (about the date systems, from antiquity onward, see the manual by Adriano Cappelli, Cronologia e calendario perpetuo, Hoe-pli, also in Google Books. For an automatic calculation of the fascist age see some free on line tools).

Index of contents