Statuto Albertino

The Statuto Albertino enters the scene not as an abstract constitutional principle but as a bound volume in the hands of Benito Mussolini. The deputies’ manual contains the statute of the Kingdom; when Mussolini holds it up in the chamber, the book becomes the focus of a confrontation over whether the law will be used against him.

The Manual and Article 47

The volume is identified as the deputies’ manual containing the statute of the Kingdom. Mussolini opens it to Article 47, which he describes as giving the Chamber of Deputies the right to bring charges against the king’s ministers and take them before the Supreme Court of Justice. He then asks whether anyone in the chamber, or outside it, wishes to invoke that provision.

A Legal Text Made into a Challenge

The book’s physical presence changes the force of the appeal. The narration says that everyone’s attention fixes on the bound volume as though it were a live grenade. Mussolini raises the book before the parliamentarians in an act compared to a priest’s exposition of the consecrated Host. The comparison makes the gesture at once legal and ceremonial: the statute is displayed as an authority the chamber might act upon, while the spectacle of its display becomes part of the political contest.

Silence in the Chamber

The appeal is followed by silence, then by the statement, “Just one.” The passage does not identify that person or explain the response. The contrast leaves the book’s challenge suspended before the assembly: Article 47 is presented as an available instrument, but the scene records almost no movement to use it. The Statuto Albertino thus signifies both the formal reach of parliamentary law and the gap between invoking that authority and acting on it.