Quote Originally Posted by miotas View Post
I presume the christian institution had something to do with the belief that God is everywhere so he would always be witness to any marriage. Practically however it was still a private affair, and prior to Christianity marriage was a simple contract between two people and had nothing to do with religion.
It had to be witnessed, and preferably sanctified by a priest, it was never a "private" affair - quite the opposite. A marriage was something recognised by the whole community. Prior to Christianity in Europe you had Roman-Pagan marriage, Jewish marriage, Greek-Pagan marriage, etc... the Gods (or God) were always invoked both as witness and sanctification. The difference with the coming of Christianity was that divorce went into terminal decline (until the collapse of Christian moral supremacy in the West).

Note, by "moral supremacy" I mean the dominace of the Christian moral outlook.

It's only in recent years that this has become the case, in the past two people making a contract for life made perfect sense because by the time they had some kids together and raised them to adulthood they would be about ready to drop dead anyway. Nowadays we live a hell of a lot longer, and no one get married anymore to "continue their line" so spending all of that long life with one person is somewhat unnatural.
Has it occurred to you that maybe the problem is with our modern society and not with traditional marriage?