Xavier Marechaux, in his latest book on the Catholic Church in the context of the French Revolution, wrote a “political biography” of Pius VII (12). Not intended to be an exhaustive investigation of Chiaramonti, the bishop of Imola who would become Pope Pius VII, his work situates the life of Chiaramonti in the political and cultural context of a continent in political crisis. It is hard to underestimate the political and religious turmoil of the papal see in 1799. Marechaux clearly and concisely explains the vulnerability of Rome at the turn of the nineteenth century and Pius VII’s role in securing the Catholic Church’s future in Europe. Perhaps most importantly, his biography shows how Chiaramonti was able to breach the gap between the objectives of the Catholic Church and the Revolution. Marechaux’s argument was that when Pope Pius VII was pitted against Napoleon’s will and twenty-five years of Revolution, it was never in question which institution would survive. The Papacy emerged from the Revolution, in Marechaux’s view, strengthened (265).

Marechaux argues that Pius VII’s middle path between defending the church and acknowledging revolutionary changes made a return to Catholicism possible. Throughout the biography, however, the overall thesis is unevenly sustained. It takes a careful balance to maintain a thesis while weaving in the perspectives of each of the political players in the early nineteenth century. However, Marechaux’s ability to situate Pius VII’s papacy in the context of the political wranglings of his European neighbors, Austria, Spain, Naples, etc., and not just his continual conflict with Napoleon Bonaparte, is also what sets Marechaux’s biography apart from the many that came before.

The book is organized into intentionally short chapters with helpful subsections and subheadings to guide his readers through the most important turning points in Pius VII’s life, what Marechaux calls “le points forts de la vie de Pie VII” (13). However, the first chapter was perhaps the only one that was not organized around the person of Napoleon Bonaparte. There is only one short chapter on his life before Napoleon’s invasion of Italy. The beginning chapters on the early life of the future pope contain little new information that has not already been explored by previous historians.

Unfortunately, the paucity of sources on Chiaramonti’s early life was not an obstacle that Marechaux’s biography was able to completely overcome. Anticipating historians’ challenge to his source material and methodology, Marechaux explains that this book was written in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, his access to the archives was limited mostly to what he could access online (12–13). Marechaux makes good use of the memoirs and correspondence of the important actors of the period, including Napoleon, Cardinal Consalvi, the ministers of Pius VII, Cardinal Maury, and Cardinal Herzan. The last of whom helps place Pius VII’s actions in its Austrian context. Moreover, his source material includes published sources in French, Italian, and Latin. With the extant source material, it comes as no surprise that these early sections are some of the weakest, but the later chapters are much stronger. While archival research would inevitably have improved the biography, the strength of his thesis was focused on Pius VII’s later accomplishments, which remain unaffected by the paucity of primary source material on Chiaramonti’s early life.

Marechaux claims the only French language biography of Chiaramonti was written in 1836 by Artaud Montor (11) (Alexis-François Artaud de Montor, Histoire du Pape Pie VII, Paris: Adrien Leclère, 1836, 2 vol.). However, shortly after Marechaux began his work on this project in 2021, two new biographies of Pope Pius XVII were published in French in 2022. Only one of which, Jean-Marc Ticchi’s Pie VII: Le Pape Vainqueur de Napoléon? (Paris: Perrin, 2022) was included in his final bibliography. With the bicentennial of Napoleon’s death in 2021, interest in Pius VII among historians has increased. Marechaux should be commended for his ability to contextualize Pius VII’s history in the longue durée. This is not just a story of the tumultuous years of Pope Pius VII’s papacy, but instead, Marechaux revealed that the possibility of the Catholic revival in nineteenth-century Europe was only made possible by Pius VII.

Marechaux’s book serves effectively as an explanation of the social, military, and political contexts in which Pope Pius VII came to power and made it possible for Catholicism to return and survive in France. However, the Catholicism that returned to France was not the same as the one that left. Marechaux claims Catholicism returned stronger. I might argue that it returned differently, and not necessarily strengthened. Historians like Caroline Ford describe a “feminization” of religion. Women attended mass in greater numbers than men, and emotions were important for an increase in devotion.

In Pie VII, Marechaux shows readers how Pius VII tried to steer a middle path between the anti-revolutionary conservative reactionaries who would have only exacerbated the tensions, and the liberal revolutionaries who might have liked to destroy the millennium-old institution. His research is a welcome addition to the history of the period, which explains how the Catholic Church re-emerged after the Revolution, largely thanks to Pius XVII’s compromise in the Concordat of 1801.