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Losing a Kingdom, Gaining the World: The Catholic Church in the Age of Revolution and Democracy
Despite its many crises, especially in Western Europe, there are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world today. The Church remains a powerful but controversial institution.
In Losing a Kingdom, Gaining the World, Ambrogio A. Caiani explores the epic history of the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the early modern period, the Pope was a secular prince in central Italy. Catholicism was not merely a religion but also a political force to be reckoned with.
After the French Revolution, the Church retreated into a fortress of unreason and denounced almost every aspect of modern life. The Pope proclaimed his infallibility; the cult of the Virgin Mary and her apparitions became articles of faith; the Vatican refused all accommodation with the modern state, until a disastrous series of concordats with fascist states in the 1930s.
These dark days threatened the very existence of the Church. But as Catholicism lost its temporal power, it made significant spiritual strides and expanded across continents. Between 1700 and 1903, it lost a kingdom but gained the world.
Ambitious and authoritative, this is an account of the Church's fraught encounter with modernity in all its from liberalism, socialism and democracy, to science, literature and the rise of secular culture.
In Losing a Kingdom, Gaining the World, Ambrogio A. Caiani explores the epic history of the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the early modern period, the Pope was a secular prince in central Italy. Catholicism was not merely a religion but also a political force to be reckoned with.
After the French Revolution, the Church retreated into a fortress of unreason and denounced almost every aspect of modern life. The Pope proclaimed his infallibility; the cult of the Virgin Mary and her apparitions became articles of faith; the Vatican refused all accommodation with the modern state, until a disastrous series of concordats with fascist states in the 1930s.
These dark days threatened the very existence of the Church. But as Catholicism lost its temporal power, it made significant spiritual strides and expanded across continents. Between 1700 and 1903, it lost a kingdom but gained the world.
Ambitious and authoritative, this is an account of the Church's fraught encounter with modernity in all its from liberalism, socialism and democracy, to science, literature and the rise of secular culture.
- GenresHistoryChristianity
672 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 12, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 20, 2025
An absolutely brilliant book about the role of the papacy and the Catholic Church from about 1700 to 1900. Mostly set in Europe, as befits a prince of the Roman states slowly losing his political power, as his followers bring Catholicism to newly contacted or conquered people, or try to. The Jesuits established a strong foothold in China but the Church's conflict with the Jesuit order and the failure of the Church's envoy to understand Chinese culture cut off the missionary work that the Jesuits were doing. The dissolution of the Jesuits was a setback to the Church's soft power while the pope attempted to maintain hard power, negotiating a complicated, symbolic role in Napoleon's crowning himself Emperor, which didn't stop Napoleon from kidnapping him ten years later, which, what?!?!?! How did I miss that in my shallow reading of modern European history. Holy fuck. Two papal kidnappings and an exile in this book. Meanwhile, the lay church adopted a more Baroque, traditional, and cultured Church, ignoring the Jansenists reforms advocated by certain clergy in the 1700s. The Church itself assumed a more absolute flavor, especially Pius IX, who lived longer than anyone expected him to, and convened the First Vatican Council and papal infallibility.
Wonderful book. My grounding in European history is weak, but I was able to follow along without any background knowledge of Italian independence or what various German provinces were up to. Highly recommend. I am very lucky to have grabbed this book at G. David. Love that bookshop.
Wonderful book. My grounding in European history is weak, but I was able to follow along without any background knowledge of Italian independence or what various German provinces were up to. Highly recommend. I am very lucky to have grabbed this book at G. David. Love that bookshop.
July 1, 2025
The second half of this book is a 5/5 for me. So much ecclesiastical history and detail packed into a relatively modest page count. I loved especially his coverage of the French Revolution, Italian Unification, and the First Vatican Council (the last of which I knew essentially nothing about).
Caiani's thesis is interesting. He argues that the Age of Revolution provided the final death knell for a temporal and politically powerful Catholic Church, but in doing so also opened up the Church (and especially the Papacy) to a level of theological control never before seen. He does not try to stay "neutral" (a tiresome trap many young historians fall into), but does not lose the reader with conjecture. In my opinion, he does this better than David Kertzer, a leading historian in this particular area.
This book's biggest weakness is that while a fantastic standalone work, the first half of the book is largely a paraphrase of his previous book, 'To Kidnap a Pope'. I don't think this was the right move, as it makes the narrative feel disjointed rather than holistic. Caiani would have been better to focus on the post-Napoleonic world rather than providing what is at best a hundred-page prologue, and at worst a lazy piece of filler.
Nonetheless, his work is fantastic, and his knack for thrilling narrative-driven storytelling does not dull with a larger scope.
Caiani's thesis is interesting. He argues that the Age of Revolution provided the final death knell for a temporal and politically powerful Catholic Church, but in doing so also opened up the Church (and especially the Papacy) to a level of theological control never before seen. He does not try to stay "neutral" (a tiresome trap many young historians fall into), but does not lose the reader with conjecture. In my opinion, he does this better than David Kertzer, a leading historian in this particular area.
This book's biggest weakness is that while a fantastic standalone work, the first half of the book is largely a paraphrase of his previous book, 'To Kidnap a Pope'. I don't think this was the right move, as it makes the narrative feel disjointed rather than holistic. Caiani would have been better to focus on the post-Napoleonic world rather than providing what is at best a hundred-page prologue, and at worst a lazy piece of filler.
Nonetheless, his work is fantastic, and his knack for thrilling narrative-driven storytelling does not dull with a larger scope.
April 27, 2026
An informative history but with some attitude.
Largely, doing exactly what it claims, the book provides a history of the Catholic Church from the eighteenth century. It covers regions from China to America, but its main focus is Europe, which is unsurprising as that is where the majority of the Church was located in that period.
The focus tends to be more political than religious, with the emphasis on how characters and events explain what occurs. This means that some of the less eventful spiritual aspects of the Church’s work (like some of St Francis Xavier’s missionary journeys) do not come to the fore. What we hear about instead, is Napoleon’s kidnapping of popes and pope Pius IX escaping Rome hidden in a countess’ carriage, disguised as her son’s tutor.
The focus on events and politics means that the coverage of ideas is much thinner. The revival of Scholasticism and the Church’s reaction to Kantianism and Hegelianism (etc) are not really explained. They occur in the background of what is the main political and social story of the book.
One of the key political problems faced by the Church in the nineteenth century was its lack of control over the appointment process of its own bishops. In Chapter 5 we hear for example that monarchs still appointed or had veto control over the appointment of 545 of Europe’s 646 bishops in the first half of the nineteenth century. By the twentieth century that changes significantly, but there was relatively little explanation of how it changes and what the Church’s strategies were for getting control back over its appointment processes.
Less appealing in the book is the author’s asides and attitude which impinged upon the text in places. For example, in Chapter 6 the encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum is described as “interminable.” But it is only 35 paragraphs, which is not particularly long compared to other encyclicals. Is its interminability a reflection on the author’s dislike of its content?
In the same chapter we are told that to this very day there is a ‘deeply dysfunctional’ relationship in the Church with those who urge change. Is that really fair, given the enormous changes which occurred in the Church following Vatican II?
In chapter 7 Pius IX is said to have had a ‘showpiece’ Jewish convert. What on earth is ‘showpiece’ meant to mean? And then the doctrine of the immaculate conception is (misleadingly) related to God’s “procreating asexually,” when it should be explained as conceiving without original sin.
Textually the book is well presented. There are even some coloured photos of portraits of some of the figures who are mentioned. However there is the occasional typo in the text, such as Pius IX being rendered as Pius XI in chapter 7.
Overall, the political content of the book is interesting and well worth engaging with, but some readers may find some of the author’s attitudinal asides a little irritating after a while.
Largely, doing exactly what it claims, the book provides a history of the Catholic Church from the eighteenth century. It covers regions from China to America, but its main focus is Europe, which is unsurprising as that is where the majority of the Church was located in that period.
The focus tends to be more political than religious, with the emphasis on how characters and events explain what occurs. This means that some of the less eventful spiritual aspects of the Church’s work (like some of St Francis Xavier’s missionary journeys) do not come to the fore. What we hear about instead, is Napoleon’s kidnapping of popes and pope Pius IX escaping Rome hidden in a countess’ carriage, disguised as her son’s tutor.
The focus on events and politics means that the coverage of ideas is much thinner. The revival of Scholasticism and the Church’s reaction to Kantianism and Hegelianism (etc) are not really explained. They occur in the background of what is the main political and social story of the book.
One of the key political problems faced by the Church in the nineteenth century was its lack of control over the appointment process of its own bishops. In Chapter 5 we hear for example that monarchs still appointed or had veto control over the appointment of 545 of Europe’s 646 bishops in the first half of the nineteenth century. By the twentieth century that changes significantly, but there was relatively little explanation of how it changes and what the Church’s strategies were for getting control back over its appointment processes.
Less appealing in the book is the author’s asides and attitude which impinged upon the text in places. For example, in Chapter 6 the encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum is described as “interminable.” But it is only 35 paragraphs, which is not particularly long compared to other encyclicals. Is its interminability a reflection on the author’s dislike of its content?
In the same chapter we are told that to this very day there is a ‘deeply dysfunctional’ relationship in the Church with those who urge change. Is that really fair, given the enormous changes which occurred in the Church following Vatican II?
In chapter 7 Pius IX is said to have had a ‘showpiece’ Jewish convert. What on earth is ‘showpiece’ meant to mean? And then the doctrine of the immaculate conception is (misleadingly) related to God’s “procreating asexually,” when it should be explained as conceiving without original sin.
Textually the book is well presented. There are even some coloured photos of portraits of some of the figures who are mentioned. However there is the occasional typo in the text, such as Pius IX being rendered as Pius XI in chapter 7.
Overall, the political content of the book is interesting and well worth engaging with, but some readers may find some of the author’s attitudinal asides a little irritating after a while.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews