"Christendom" was a dicey proposition long before Martin Luther was a gleam in his daddy's eye.
CATHOLIC France -- both before the FR with the Avignon papacy mess and after the FR with Napoleon's conquests and their aftermath -- did as much as anything else to make "Christendom" the faded memory that it is today.
Or perhaps you are referring to another truth in markomalley's post?
You will note, if you actually read my post, that nowhere did I claim that Christendom was Utopia.
There were always political intrigues all throughout that time. When I wrote The Catholic hierarchy, particularly (that modifier means that it was not limited to the Avingon Popes) the Avignon popes, were admittedly pretty corrupt, it was an attempt to acknowledge that fact without having to go through the entire history of Church-State relations prior to the Protestant Reformation.
CATHOLIC France -- both before the FR with the Avignon papacy mess and after the FR with Napoleon's conquests and their aftermath -- did as much as anything else to make "Christendom" the faded memory that it is today.
The difference is that in the time prior to the Protestant Reformation (and the wars that followed it), most rulers deferred to the Papacy. The exception was France. In fact, the Avignon Papacies resulted directly as a result of France's Phillip IV's refusal to acknowledge this fact (in fact, Unam Sanctum was issued in response to that issue). The issue that started it all was Phillip arresting one of the French bishops and Boniface demanding his release (of course, the demand was ignored by Phillip). Phillip IV dragged Boniface VIII to France ... which is what started that dark period in history.
Am I saying that either Boniface or the popes prior to him were exemplars of perfection? No.
As another example of this, it's interesting the timing between the schism of 1054 and the conquest of Anatolia by the Muslim Seljuks (1071).