EN
Legal regulation of Catholic marriage in the modern period may be found in older Canon Law compilations and their rules were revised and dogmatically supported by the legislation of the Council of Trent. The study examines the post-Tridentine legal basis of the fundamental institutions of personal marriage law of the Catholic Church that enabled the solving various matrimonial disputes (causae matrimonii) and their other legal and social consequences. Following the doctrine on the principal of the indissoluble sui generis matrimonial contract, the authors presented the substantial law and procedural law aspects of Canon Law institutions, which were applied while declaring a marriage null and void or dissolving it. They paid attention also to the then often applied matrimonial institution – separation from table and bed that did not cause termination of marriage, but enabled the married couple to permanently or temporarily interrupt matrimonial cohabitation. In addition to theoretical research they proceeded also to search in the Slovak private archives of the Catholic Church (specifically in the Archive of the Archdiocese of Trnava) for the purpose of proper illustration of the presented Canon Law regulations of the late modern period with the probes into the familiaristics of Church courts in the Kingdom of Hungary at the beginning of the 19th century.