Marriage in the Catholic Church, also called
matrimony, is the "covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring", and which "has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptised."
Catholic matrimonial law, based on
Roman law regarding its focus on marriage as a free mutual agreement or
contract, became the basis for the
marriage law of all European countries, at least up to the
Reformation.