CHARVAZ, André. — Bishop, born on 25 December 1793 at Hautecour in Savoy, died at Mont-Saint-Michel near Moûtiers on 18 October 1870. Charles Albert chose him as tutor to his sons Victor Emmanuel and Ferdinand; in 1833 he was elected Bishop of Pinerolo.
A member of the king’s privy council and later of the new State Council, at the beginning of the Piedmontese reform movement (1847) he proved himself equal to the office he held. He opposed legislative provisions on the press, which, among other things, undermined the authority of bishops even in strictly religious matters; after a vigorous protest to the sovereign, he resigned and went to Rome, where the Pope elevated him to the titular archiepiscopal see of Sebaste.
In this delicate situation, Charvaz was repeatedly called upon to serve as an unofficial and secret direct intermediary between Pius IX and Victor Emmanuel II, as the Subalpine government, with increasing unilateralism, enacted laws in an increasingly anticlerical and radical direction. Thus, in the autumn of 1849, immediately after the insidious Siccardi mission; in the winter and spring of 1850 over the abolition of the ecclesiastical book; in the autumn of 1852 over the civil marriage law; and finally, between the autumn of 1854 and spring of 1855, over the law suppressing the religious orders. In these painful negotiations, which were only rarely and partially crowned with any fleeting formal success, Charvaz expended a wealth of prudence and zeal for the good of the Church and the State, never failing to speak frankly and openly to the king and even more to his envoys, including Cavour himself, truths which earned him from Pius IX the appointment as consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, and, despite himself, by joint papal and royal will, the archbishopric of Genoa (1853).
There he took particular care in the formation of the clergy, protected religious congregations, and relieved every kind of misery with inexhaustible charity, always tolerant in the face of the intemperance, intolerance, and prejudices of both innovators and intransigent reactionaries.
Author of formative and pastoral works, such as *Recherches historiques sur la véritable origine des Vaudois* (Turin 1838); *Guide du catéchumène Vaudois* (5 vols., Paris-Turin 1842–50); *Discours prononcé aux funérailles solennelles de la reine de Sardaigne Marie Adélaide* (Turin 1855); *Considérations sur le protestantisme*; *Plan d'études des Princes de Savoie-Carignan* (posthumous, Paris 1876), he deservedly became a member of the Academy of Sciences of Turin, the Academy of Savoy, and the Roman Academy of the Quirites, as well as of the Royal Subalpine Deputations for National History and of the Ligurian Societies for National and Economic History in Chiavari.