Napoleon, who had recently signed the Concordat with the pope, initially made use of Chateaubriand's book as propaganda to win support among French Catholics.

[1][2] The book emerged from Chateaubriand's attempt to understand the causes of the French Revolution, which had led to the deaths of many of his friends and family members.

Written in a Classical style, but early Romantic in sensibility, it glorified new sources of inspiration, such as Gothic architecture and the great epics of the Middle Ages.

As David Cairns writes: "Beyond its specific purpose, Génie du christianisme set a current of sympathy flowing between the author and a whole generation of young French men and women, kindling their imaginations over a wide range of feelings and ideas: the power of the great epic writers, Nature in its immense diversity and grandeur, the poetry of ruins, the spell of the distant past, the beauty of immemorial popular rituals and the haunting melancholy of the music accompanying them, the pangs of awakening consciousness and the perils and ardours of the solitary adolescent soul.

Besides this, the book served as a model for the renewal of French Catholicism, inspiring numerous authors, including Dom Guéranger and Félicité Robert de La Mennais.