1. See Bury's, J. B. edition of Gibbon, Edward, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1896 and later; last ed., New York, 1914).Google Scholar I have here used the 1909 ed.; Gibbon's notes and text are the same in all these editions. Various editors have added their own notes to those of Gibbon, such as Bury, Dean Milman (the standard nineteenth century edition) and the French scholar Guizot. For Bury's (very few) remarks on Gibbon's treatment of the Byzantine church see Bury, , op. cit., I, esp. Introduction, pp. vii–xxii.Google Scholar Also Dawson, C., article, “Edward Gibbon and the Fall of Rome,” in The Dynamics of World History (New York, 1956), 319–45Google Scholar; and Giarrizzo, G., Edward Gibbon e la cultura europea del Settecento (Naples, 1954), 408–26.Google Scholar Dawson says practically nothing about Byzantine history after the ninth century and Giarrizzo never gets past Heraclius (7th century) in his discussion. None of these three historians focuses at all on the question of the schism, Buryy's great work ( The Later Roman Empire, 2 vols. [London, 1923]Google Scholar and The Eastern Boman Empire [London, 1912]Google Scholar) concentrating on the period up to the end of the 9th century. Besides the above, the principal works I have used to help me prepare this paper are: Fuglum, Per, Edward Gibbon, His View of Life and Conception of History (Oslo, 1953)Google Scholar; Oliver, E. J., Gibbon and Rome (London, 1958)Google Scholar; McCloy, S. L., Gibbon's Antagonism to Christianity (Chapel Hill, 1933)Google Scholar (with almost nothing on Byzantine church history); Joyce, M., Edward Gibbon (London, 1953)Google Scholar; Momigliano, A., “La formazione della moderna storiografia sull' impero romano,” sect. 2, Rivista storica italiana, ser. V, I (1936), 35–60 and 19–48Google Scholar; Chamberlain, W. H., “On Re-reading Gibbon,” Atlantic Monthly, 174 (1944), 65–70Google Scholar; Morison, J., Edward Gibbon (New York, 1901)Google Scholar; , H. Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (New York, 1951)Google Scholar; Bury, J. B., article on “Gibbon” in Encyclopedia BrittanicaGoogle Scholar; Gruman, G. J., “‘Balance’ and ‘Excess’ as Gibbon's Explanation of the Decline and Fall,” History and Theory, I (1960), 75–85;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLow, D. M., Edward Gibbon (London, 1937)Google Scholar; Vasiliev, A., History of the Byzantine Empire, I (Madison, 1952), Chap. 1Google Scholar; Liutov, M., Zhizn i Trudy Gibbons (Life and Work of Gibbon) (St. Petersburg, 1899)Google Scholar; Zakythinos, D., Byzantium (in Greek) (Athens, 1951)Google Scholar; Halles, D. D., An Inquiry into the Secondary Causes Gibbon Assigned for the Rapid Growth of Christianity (Edinburgh, 1786);Google ScholarGibbon, , Letters, Ed. by Norton, J. (London, 1956)Google Scholar; Gibbon, Edward, The Autobiography, Ed. by Smeaton, O. (London, 1911)Google Scholar; Black, J. B., The Art of History (London, 1926)Google Scholar; Quennell, P., Four Portraits (London, 1946)Google Scholar; Robertson, J. M., Gibbon (London, 1925)Google Scholar; Young, G. M., Gibbon (New York, 1933)Google Scholar; Cassirer, E., Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1951)Google Scholar (best work on the period's philosophy). A new biography of Gibbon by J. W. Swain will appear soon.

2. Tillemont, Le Nain de, Mémoires pour servir d l'histoire ecclésiastique des siz premiers siècles, 16 vols., 3rd ed. (Venice, 1732)Google Scholar and his Histoire des empereurs…durant les six premiers siècles, 6 vols., 2nd ed. (Brussels, 1707).Google ScholarDawson, , op. cit., 331,Google Scholar after noting Gibbon followed Tillemont in the earlier section, says he is “left to his own resources” in the later Byzantine portion. But Dawson has not really examined this later part. Smeaton, ed. of Gibbon's Autobiography, remarks (p. 175) that Gibbon falls into errors and solecisms, especially in ecclesiastical affairs, after losing the help of Tillemont.

3. See esp. Dawson, , op. cit., 325.Google Scholar Also Jones, A. M., Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (London, 1948), 260Google Scholar: “Gibbon has not so much anti-Christian bias as a temperamental incapacity to understand religion.” Also Stephen, L., History of English Thought in the 18th Century, 3rd ed., I, p. 449.Google Scholar Also we below, note 55.

4. See Gibbon, , V, Ch. 49, pp. 244–81.Google Scholar Modern research has been done on Iconoclasm by P. Alexander, M. Anastos, V. Grumel, G. Ostrogorsky, Schwarzlose, etc.

5. Runciman, S., The Eastern Schism (Oxford, 1955);Google ScholarCongar, Y., After Nine Hundred Years (New York, 1959).Google Scholar

6. VI, Ch. 60, pp. 366–67.

7. Mosheim, John L., An Ecclesiastical History, 2 vols. (New York, 1856),Google Scholar transl. A. Maclaine from Latin original, Institutions historiae ecclesiasticae, publ. in 1726.Google ScholarPetavius, D., Rationarium Temporum editio novissima (Venice, 1758)Google Scholar (other works of Petavius unavailable to me); Fleury, Abbé, Histoire ecclésiastique, 36 vols. (Faris, 1713–38)Google Scholar (vols. 23·36 written by continuators); Baronius, Cardinal C., Annales Ecclesiastici (Rome, 1588ff.)Google Scholar (continued from vol. 13 on by others, written in 1864 and later). Baronius' vol. 12 ends in 1198.

8. VI, Ch. 60. pp. 367–69.

9. See Dvornik, F., The Photian Schism, History and Legend (Cambridge, 1948), 348Google Scholar; cf. Congar, , After Nine Hundred Years, p. 70.Google Scholar

10. Gibbon, , VI, M. 60, pp. 366–69.Google ScholarDvornik, , Photian Schism, esp. 202ff.Google Scholar, shows that the so-called second papal excommunication of Photius never occurred, and the false tradition of it was due in large part to the influence of Baronius. Hence it is surprising that Gibbon, who used Baronius, did not make much of it. Did Gibbon's historical intuition lead him already to suspect the authenticity of this long accepted tradition of the Roman Church, Gibbon, , VI, M. 60, p. 369Google Scholar, n. 8, mentions that he also used an account by Dupin, (probably the Nouvelle Bibliothèque des auteurs ecclésiastiques) (Paris, 1686–1719).Google Scholar

11. VI, M. 60, p. 370.

12. See Grégaire, H., “The Byzantine Church,” p. 123Google Scholar, in Baynes, N. and Moss, H., Byzantium: An Introduction to East Roman Civilization (Oxford, 1948).Google Scholar

13. VI, M. 60, p. 370.

14. VI, M. 60, p. 370. Papal bull published in Latin in Will, C., Acta et Scripta Quae de Controversiis Ecclestiae Graecae et Latina (Leipzig, 1861), 153–54.Google Scholar Greek version, op. cit., esp. 162 and 165.Google Scholar On Petavius see op. at., I, p. 437.Google ScholarMosheim, , I, p. 445Google Scholar, mentions Cerularius' excommunication of the envoys. For Conger, see op. cit., esp. 71–73.Google Scholar Cf. Baronius, , Vol. XVII, p. 100Google Scholar, who does my Cerularius removed the pope's name from the diptychs. Also Runciman, , Eastern Schism. 50.Google Scholar

15. Jugie, M., Le schisme byzantin (Paris, 1941), 166ff. and 230. Cf.Google ScholarMichel, A., Humbert und Kerullarios, 2 vols. (Paderbom, 1924–30).Google Scholar

16. VI, Ch. 60, p. 371.

17. For Gibbon's vivid account of the Fourth Crusade, drawn from both Latin and Greek historians, see VI, M. 60, pp. 377–412. For quotation given above eft VI, Ch. 61, p. 443.

18. VI, M. 61, pp. 439–42 and VI, Ch. 62, pp. 460–79. On Michael's reign see now Geanakoplos, D., Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West, 1258–82 (Cambridge, Macs., 1959).Google Scholar

19. VI, Ch. 62, pp. 471–72. Geanakoplos, Cf., op. cit., 258,Google Scholar who shows that Paehymeres says that Michael even stripped St. Sophia's altar cloth to send to St. Peters. Gibbon used also hitherto unknown or little-used Latin sources, e.g., the Franciscan Wadding', L.Annales Minorum (Quaracchi, 1931–34)Google Scholar (see Gibbon, , VI, Ch. 62, p. 472Google Scholar, n. 43). More important, see VI, Ch. 62, p. 473, n. 45.

20. Finlay, George, A History of Greece from the Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, III (Oxford, 1877), p. 372.Google Scholar

21. VI, Ch. 63, p. 506.

22. VI, Ch. 63, pp. 506–508. One may well ask, what is the “inner, spiritual meaning of Heaychasml” I would say an understanding, at least partly on an emotional, non-intellectual level, of the monks' desire for on with God (i.e., mysticism). Gibbon was certainly not a mystic and could not, it seems, appreciate specifically religious values. See below note 55.

23. VII, Ch. 66, pp. 101–14.

24. Dawson, , op. cit, pp. 331–32.Google Scholar

25. Gill, J., The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959)Google Scholarpassim and Geanakoplos, D., “The Council of Florence and the Problem of Union between Greek and Roman Churches,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, XXIV (1955), 324–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. VII, Ch. 66, p. 104, n. 53.

27. VII, Ch. 66, p. 104, n. 52.

28. On Creyghton's, R. work, Vera historia unions non verae (Hague, 1660)Google Scholar see Gibbon, , VII, Ch. 66, p. 105Google Scholar, n. 54. The Greek text referred to means, in translation: “so that he [the Emperor] might be thought by the Italians as a great emperor coming to Italy with pomp … “Creyghton's Latin rendering reads: “Ut pompa circumduetus noster imperator Italiae populis aliquis deauratus Jupiter crederetur aut Croesus ex opulenta Lydia.” Note in VII, Ch. 66, p. 104, n. 51, Gibbon also criticizes Creyghton's rendering of Syropoulos' name as “Sguropulos,” a correct observation as we know today. Gibbon also seems to accept as correct Syropoulos' implication of pressure exerted by the papal withholding of the monthly subsidy promised to the Greeks at Florence, a statement denounced by modern Catholic historians but which has, at least in part, now been corroborated by the researches of Father Gill of the Vatican: “The ‘Acta’ and the Memoirs of Syropoulos as Historyy,” Orientalu Christiana Periodica, XIV (1948), esp. 339.Google Scholar

29. VII, Ch. 66, p. 102, n. 43, for criticism of Syropoulos' enumeration. On Gibbon's use of Ducas to control Syropoulos see VII, Ch. 66, 111, n. 69. For Gibbon's use of Sphrantzes, Chaleondyles, and Ducas see notes to Ch. 66, passim. Gibbon also used the Greek “Acts” of the Council of Florence (see , Geanakoplos, “Council of Florence,” p. 4Google Scholar), as he tells us in his Autobiography, p. 170.

30. VII, Ch. 66, p. 109.

31. VII, Ch. 66, p. 109.

32. VII, Ch. 66, p. 110.

33. VII, Oh. 66, p. 110.

34. VII, Ch. 66, p. 110.

35. Gill, , The Council of Florence, 153, 227ff.Google Scholar

^36. See on this question Geanakoplos, “The Council of Florence,” text and notes 96a–99, citing Hofmann, G., “Papato, Conciliarismo, Patriarcato,” Teologi e deliberazioni del concilio di Firenze (Rome, 1940), 69–73.Google Scholar Also see Stephanides, B., Ecclesiastical History (in Greek) (Athens, 1948), 361–64.Google Scholar

^37. VII, Ch. 66, p. 111. Cf. Geanakoplos, “Council of Florence,” teat and note 99. Also Frommann, T., Kritische Beiträge zur Geschichte der Florentines Kircheneinigung (Halle, 1872), 19: “…a brilliantly indefinite and ambiguous definition.”Google Scholar

38. VII, Ch. 67, pp. 135–37, for reception of Greek delegation in Constantinople. Gibbon's summary quotation is from an earlier chapter, VI, Chap. 60, p. 366. Note Gibbon's revealing statement opening Chap. 66: “In the last four centuries of the Greek Emperors, their friendly or hostile aspect towards the Pope and the Latins may be observed as the thermometer of their prosperity or distress…”

39. Dueange, Ch., esp. his Histoire de l'empire de Constantinople sous les empereurs français (Paris, 1657)Google Scholar and his great medieval Greek and Latin dictionaries. Also see Lebeau, Ch.. Histoire du Bas-Empire (Paris, 1757ff., new ed. Paris, 1824)Google Scholar (a very arid work).

40. Gibbon was also indebted to the tremendous researches of the diplomatist Jean Mabillon and the palaeographer Bernard de Montfaucon. The researches of these and several other 17th century French scholars provided a mine of information, the raw materials (including ecclesiastical) from which historians like Gibbon could draw upon.

41. R. Porson says (see Morison, J., Edward Gibbon [New York, 1901] 146Google Scholar) that “sometimes Gibbon draws out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.” See now , H. L. Bond, The Literary Art of E. Gibbon (Oxford, 1960).Google Scholar Mosheim was probably the most objective of the church historians preceding Gibbon.

42. See Dawson, , op. cit., 331Google Scholar and Amantos, K., Great Greek Encyclopedia (in Greek) VIII (Athens, 1926), 358,Google Scholar neither of whom evidently had carefully read the latter part of Gibbon. See Gibbon, , VII, chap. 66, p. 95Google Scholar, n. 28, commenting on the historian Chalcondyles' use of a Greek verb and its Latin equivalent. Cf. also Bury, (ed. Gibbon) I (New York, 1914), p. IXGoogle Scholar: “His knowledge of Greek was imperfect.” And yet Bury (in “Gibbon,”) (Encyclopedia Brittanica) says “Gibbon was never content with second hand accounts when primary sources were available.” Gibbon himself wrote “I have always endeavored to draw from the fountainhead.” (Preface to vol. 4, 3rd ed., Decline and Fall [London, 1777]Google Scholar).

43. Cousin, L., Histoire de Constantinople depuis Justin jusqu'd la fin de l'empire, 8 vols. (Paris, 1672–74).Google Scholar See Gibbon, , VII, Ch. 68, p. 168, n. 22, who comments on Cousin's translation; in VII, Ch. 68, p. 181, n. 54, Gibbon again criticizes Cousin. Cf. also VII, Ch. 68, p. 183, n. 60.Google ScholarJoyce, M., Edward Gibbon (London, 1953), 127,Google Scholar quotes Gibbon as saying: “From the entire and diligent perusal of the Greek text I have a right to pronounce that the Latin and French versions of [Hugo] Grotius and Cousin may not be implicitly trusted.”

44. See VI, Ch. 54, p. 120, n. 27, where in discussing the Paulicians Gibbon cites the Greek of the historian Cedrenus and comments: “How elegant is the Greek tongue even in the mouth of Cedrenus.” Cf. also Gibbon, , VI, Ch. 60, p. 400, n. 86. On Gibbon's early study of Greek see his Autobiography p. 70. Gibbon also used a work of Dupin and another of Petavius (Dogmata theologica) both unavailable to me (cf. VI, a. 60, 367, n. 3 and 369, n. 8).Google Scholar

45. See Abbé Fleury, , Histoire ecclésiastique, XXII (Paris, 1726) esp. pp. 231 and 246.Google Scholar Nor does Baronius' continuator seem to have used Syropoulos.

46. They are perhaps the most consistently biased of any group of medieval sources.

47. Cf. Dvornik, , Photian Schism, passim.Google Scholar

48. Runciman, , Eastern Schism, Introduction, p. vi and pp. 159–70.Google Scholar Also Geanakoploa, D., “On the Schism of the Greek and Roman Churches,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review, I (1954), pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

49. As noted above Cerularius was careful not to excommunicate the pope, only his envoys, but he did remove the pope's name from the diptychs.

50. See text and note 38 above. Gibbon, , V, Ch. 49, p. 256Google Scholar, makes the shrewd observation that the Greeks loved their church more than their country. Actually, they had identified the two.

51. See V, Ch. 49, p. 256: “The Greek prelate [patriarch] was a domestic slave under the eye of his master at whose nod he alternately passed from convent to throne and throne to convent.” Also VI, Ch. 60, pp. 369–70 on the clergy “submissive” to the emperor. Yet Gibbon, , VII, Ch. 66, p. 104Google Scholar and n. 50 (based on Syropoulos) notes that the Patriarch Joseph said in private that he had come to Florence, among other things, to find out from the pope how to oppose the Emperor. See Geanakoplos, “Council of Florence,” note 44, and my book Byzantine East and Latin West: Two Worlds of Christendom, Chap. 2 (Oxford, 1966).Google Scholar Cf. Gibbon, , VII, Ch. 66, p. 89Google Scholar, where he mentions, regarding John V in Rome in 1369, that the Byzantine Emperor, unlike the Western, could not be entitled by the pope to the privilege of chanting the gospel in the rank of deacon.

52. See e.g., Bury ed., I, esp. p. xxxix. Cf. note 58 below. Also note 2 above, remark of Smeaton which I disagree with. Gibbon clearly explains both sides of the theology of the filioque, also Hesychasm, and in the earlier volumes the theology of the Incarnation, and has excellent though ironic accounts of Simeon Stylites and other ascetic monks—all this, according to some scholars, in a first class manner, e.g., Fuglum, , Edward Gibbon, esp. p. 125Google Scholar: “Gibbon unravels with supreme mastery and relish the complicated systems of Arians and Agnostics, of Essenes and Nestorians…”

53. See esp. VI, Ch. 54, p. 123, where he rather briefly compares the Greek and Latin clergy. In noting in several places that the Greek patriarch (cf. the pope in the West) never presumed to set himself over imperial authority Gibbon might have emphasized the great exception, the apparent aspirations of Cerularius to become a kind of Byzantine Hildebrand. On the different ecclesiologies of the two churches see esp. Congar, , After Nine Hundred Years, pp. 58–59Google Scholar, who stresses the primacy of the pope as the focal point. See also the Tsankov, Orthodox S., The Eastern Orthodox Church, tr. Lowrie, D. (London, 1929), pp. 84–100Google Scholar; Dvornik's, F. Byzance et la primauté romaine (Paris, 1964Google Scholar); and my “Church and State in the Byzantine Empire,” Chap. 2 in my book, Byzantine East and Latin West:Two Worlds of Christendom (Oxford, 1966).Google Scholar On what seems to have been the superior morality of the Greek clergy, at least to the 11th century, see also Grégoire's article on the Byzantine church (cited above), p. 123.

54. L. von Ranke, a good Lutheran, and the Catholic L. von Pastor both wrote fine, objective ecclesiastical histories of the papacy: History of the Popes (London, 1912) tr. Dennis, G.Google Scholar, and History of the Popes (London, 1891ff.).Google Scholar Interesting in this respect is the view of Butterfield, H., The Whig Interpretation of History (New York, 1951), 105Google Scholar: “The historian may be cynical with Gibbon or sentimental with Carlyle; he may have religious ardor or he may be a humorist…It is not sin in a historian to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin…is bias [that] cannot be recognized.”

55. See Fuglum, Per, Edward Gibbon, 116Google Scholar: “in most respects Gibbon tends toward a moderate form of agnosticism.” Also cf. Jones, A. M., Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, 260Google Scholar: “[Gibbon's weakness is] not so much anti-Christian bias as a temperamental incapacity to understand religion.” We should not forget that as a 16 year old boy (see his Autobiography, pp. 52–54) Gibbon was converted briefly to Catholicisme, and after his reconversion to Protestantism and during his later career he became, it would seem, more anti-Catholic than anti-Christian. See VI, Ch. 54, pp. 125–28, where he discusses the Roman and Protestant churches. Also Fuglum, 20–21, on Gibbon's later religious views.

56. Gibbon's famous phrase should be cited here, that Byzantium's history, in the light of ancient Greek and Roman culture, is “a tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery.” (V, Ch. 48, p. 169). On this see esp. comments of Dawson, op. cit., 332Google Scholar; also Fuglum, , 150ff.Google Scholar

57. For his shortcomings as a Byzantine historian we esp. Bury's, ed., Introduction, esp. xvi–XXIIGoogle Scholar, who stresses, among other things, the advances of textual criticism as applied to Byzantine texts since Gibbon's time. Cf. Dawson, , 335Google Scholar, who says correctly that Gibbon regarded Byzantium simply as a degraded successor of classical Greece and Rome. Yet despite his love of classicism Gibbon hated the Athenian democracy when it was controlled by “mob” rule. But cf. Giarrizzo, , op. cit., 408, 414.Google Scholar Also on Gibbon's faults as a Byzantine historian see Vasiliev, , History of the Byzantine Empire, 8–11Google Scholar and Ostrogorsky, G., History of the Byzantine State (Oxford, 1956), 6.Google Scholar

58. Fuglum, , Edward Gibbon, 125Google Scholar: “As a church historian Gibbon has few equals…his surveys of the theological controversies reach a high degree of perfection…but no attempt is made to explain the development of church doctrine or elaboration of theological disputes.” Bury's, Cf. ed. of Decline and Fall, I, p. xxxixGoogle Scholar: “Neither the historian nor the man of letters will any longer subscribe without a thousand reserves to the theological chapters of the Decline and Fall and no discreet inquirer would go there for his ecclesiastical history.” But, as we have seen, Bury as a specialist in earlier Byzantine history has clearly not analyzed Gibbon's treatment of the schism after Photius, nor the history as a whole of Byzantine-Latin ecclesiastical relations in the later centuries. His judgment therefore doubtless refers to the earlier period.

59. See the remarks of Dawson, , op. cit., 326.Google Scholar Yet he praises his theological knowledge of the Incarnation. See also J. Morison's praise (Edward Gibbon, 146) of his theological knowledge. To elaborate a bit more on why Gibbon could be considered a good Bvzantine church historian while at the same time an inadequate general Byzantine historian: for the later (Byzantine) period he had available most of the important ecclesiastcial source materials, while many sources for other aspects (economic, cultural, etc.) of Byzantine history were then still unknown. Moreover, in the development of Christianity itself there was a shift of emphasis. In the earlier section of his work, when discussing the triumph of Christianity over paganism, Gibbon had to deal with the deep faith of the early martyrs. With this spiritual value, however, Gibbon was unable to sympathize. In the later period (that under discussion in this paper) questions of church polity, ecclesiastical diplomacy, and to some extent, theology—considerations themselves to he placed into a larger backdrop of political, ethnic, and cultural differences—are probably more important for the historian than purely spiritual faetom. And these more mundane considerations were factors which Gibbon's Enlightenment temperament, skeptical and almost cynical that it was, could very well understand.

60. Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London-New York, 1906),Google Scholar 8 (written just before his conversion to Catholicism). In another work Essays and Sketches, I (new ed., New York, 1948), 270Google Scholar, Newman writes of Gibbon's objectivity in church history: “Gibbon who looked at things with less of prejudice than heretics [i.e., Protestants] as having no point to maintain.” For a discussion of the schism in a broader, political-cultural context, we my book Byzantine East and Latin West: Two Worlds of Christendom (Oxford, 1966.)Google Scholar