The Christian says that life is a good thing, but has been marred by sin; and suffers from the growing pains of youth. - Neville Figgis

Religion without a Church is not really possible, for not only is man a social animal, but religion is essentially social. And more and more is the comparative study of religion making it clear that men are fundamentally religious.

We cannot overestimate the change in men's minds required to produce the ideal of heterogeneity in religion within one State.
... In the Middle Ages politics was a branch of Theology, with whatever admixture derived from Aristotle and the Civil Law. Its basis was theocratic. Machiavelli represents the antithesis of this view, discarding ethical and rural as well as theological Criteria of State action.

From one point of view we might assert the the Middle Ages ended with the visit of Nogaret to Anagni, and from another it might be said to end only when the troops of Victor Emmanuel entered Rome and the Lord of the world became the prisoner of the Vatican, and of course it ended at different times in different places. Hence arises the extreme difficulty of disentangling the conflicting tendencies and complex political combination of our period.