The Genius of Christianity (French:
Génie du christianisme) is a work by the French author
François-René de Chateaubriand, written during his exile in England in the 1790s as a defense of the
Catholic faith, then under attack during the
French Revolution. It was first published in France in 1802, after Chateaubriand had taken advantage of the
amnesty Napoleon issued to
émigrés, which had allowed him to return to his home country in 1800. Napoleon, who had just signed the
Concordat with the pope, initially made use of Chateaubriand's book as propaganda to win support among French Catholics. Within five years, he had quarrelled with the author and sent him into
internal exile.