The Institution of marriage, understood as a physical, moral and legal union of the man (husband) and the woman (wife) with the objective of establishing a family and perpetuating the species is, above all other institutions, the one where the cultural, social and political differences on which society in Mediterranean countries is based are most readily identifiable.

Marriage and family, two inseparable institutions, in that the second draws its origin from the first, have, nonetheless, also undergone profound change in the last 40 years both in the northern basin of the Mediterranean with the introduction of homosexual marriage in some countries, as well as in those predominantly Muslim countries in the Southern basin and also in the Balkan region where traditional rites and customs have been reviewed. 

 

In many states radical reforms have even been made to family law that have changed the principles that regulate the relationship between couples as well as that between parents and children.

 

The 1970 Italian divorce law had a disruptive effect on Catholic Italy allowing the marriage bond to be broken, there where the Church even to this day does not contemplate it as a possibility. A basic distinction that must be made within the institution of marriage is the difference between civil and religious weddings.

 

The religious one has different meanings : in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches “holy matrimony” is considered one of the seven sacraments differing from Judaism where instead it is seen as the union of two families that continue the cultural heritage of the Jewish race, whilst in Islam marriage is a religious and civil duty for a Muslim, that helps him in the pursuit of spiritual perfection.