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Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) and Early Christianity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

W. H. C. Frend
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Extract

Thus Gibbon opened the thirty-seventh chapter of the History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, a lengthy chapter devoted to the twin topics of ‘the institution of monastic life’ and ‘the conversion of the northern barbarians’. The connection between the history of the Roman Empire and the Christian Church was indeed indissoluble. The Church was destined to follow the pattern of the empire by gradually degenerating as it grew in strength from original purity in the life of Christ and the Apostles to become a corrupt and baleful influence on the fortunes of secular society. Looking back over twenty years of research and writing (1767–87) he wrote near the beginning of his final chapter, ‘In the preceding volumes of this History, I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion and I can only resume in a few words, their real or imaginary connection with the ruin of ancient Rome.’ He goes on to list ‘potent and forcible causes of destruction’ by barbarians and Christians respectively. As he finally laid down his pen on 27 June 1787 at Lausanne, he concluded with a sentence whose strict accuracy has sometimes been doubted: ‘It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.’ The date of this decision was 15 October 1764. Here we survey briefly the role of ‘religion’, i.e. Christianity in the ruin of the Roman Empire.

Type
Historians Revisited
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 1994 , pp. 661 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 I have used throughout ‘A New Edition’ in twelve volumes of the Decline and fall (hereinafter cited as DF) published in London in 1802Google Scholar. It is authentic Gibbon, uncluttered with the ‘implacable square brackets’ of Bury's, J. B. corrections to the footnotes in his seven-volume edition first published in 1897 (tenth edn 1944)Google Scholar.

2 DF xii, ch. lxxi, p. 405.

3 Ibid. 432.

4 See, Roper, H. Trevor, Gibbon: the Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, London 1966, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

5 For this aspect of Gibbon's development, see Giarrizzo, Guiseppe, ‘Toward the Decline and fall: Gibbon's other historical interests’ Daedalus cv (1976), 49–50Google Scholar. The issue is entitled ‘Edward Gibbon and the Decline and fall of the Roman Empire’.

6 DF vi, ch. xxxv, pp. 130–1. Gibbon is alluding to Leo's embassy to Attila.

7 Ibid, xii, ch. lxxi, p. 428. Martin, ‘gradually dispelled the clouds of barbarism’. Gibbon regarded him as ‘the noblest of Rome's sons’: ch. lxx, p. 377Google Scholar.

8 Gibbon, Edward, Autobiography, London 1896, 199Google Scholar. See also McCloy, S. T., Gibbon's antagonism to Christianity, London 1933, 27Google Scholar.

9 For a useful summary of his strictures, see ibid. ch. i.

10 DF i, ch. ix, p. 344; ii, ch. xvi, p. 403. Cf. Roper, Trevor, Gibbon, pp. vii–viiiGoogle Scholar.

11 DF i, p. ix.

12 On this theme, see Manual, Frank E., ‘Edward Gibbon: historien–philosophe’, Daedalus cv (1976), 231–45Google Scholar.

13 DF xii, ch. lxx, p. 383.

14 Ibid., i, ch. i, p. 1.

15 Ibid., i, ch. ii, pp. 85–6.

16 De urbe Roma, cited by Gibbon, , DF i, ch. ii, pp. 90–1Google Scholar.

17 Gsell, S. and Graillot, H., ‘Ruines romaines au nord del'Aurès’ Mélanges de l'École française de Rome xiii (1893), 461–541; xiv (1894), 17–86Google Scholar.

18 DF i, ch. i, p. 46. Also, p. 49. In the age of the Antonines, ‘both the interests of the priests and the credulity of the people were sufficiently respected’.

19 Ibid., iii, ch. xx, p. 305. In this passage Gibbon notes the degeneration alike of senate and church leaders from the standards set by their founders. Bishops became inspired by ‘love of power’: ibid., ii, ch. xv, 341.

20 Ibid., i, ch. x, p. 453.

21 Ibid. 405.

22 One such was the epitaph of Pope Marcellus, composed by Pope Damasus and published by Janus Gruter in 1603, which revealed that Marcellus had caused strife among the Christians in Rome after the Great Persecution because of his severity towards those who had lapsed. He was exiled by ‘the tyrant’ Maxentius: ibid., ii, ch. xvi, p. 482n. 169.

23 Ibid., viii, ch. xlvii, p. 317 n. 79, cf. n. 62. See Chadwick, Owen, ‘Gibbon and the church historians’ Daedalus cv (1976), 111–23, esp. pp. 121–2Google Scholar.

24 Gibbon praises Mosheim as ‘masterly’: ibid. 114, and for further praise, DF ii, ch. xv, p. 284 n. 29, 285 n. 32.

25 Mosheim, L. J., An ecclesiastical history ancient and modern, trans. Maclaine, A., Dublin 1767, i, p. xxiii (introduction)Google Scholar.

26 Ibid. p. xvii (author's preface).

27 Ibid. 48.

28 DF ii, ch. xvi, p. 381.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid. ch. xv, p. 265.

31 Ibid. 265–6.

32 Ibid. 267.

33 Severus, Sulpicius, Chronicon ii. 31Google Scholar.

34 DF ii, ch. xv, p. 285.

35 Ibid. 312.

36 Ibid. 332.

37 Ibid. 333.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid. 335.

40 Ibid. 337.

41 Ibid. 335.

42 Ibid. 354–55.

43 Ibid. 357.

44 Ibid. ch. xvi, p. 382.

45 Ibid. 387.

46 Ibid. 389.

47 Ibid. 410–11. The present writer, for one, took the same view in his Martyrdom and persecution in the Early Church, Oxford 1965, p. 164Google Scholar.

48 DF ii, ch. xvi, p. 495. He had little use for martyrs, especially voluntary martyrs.

49 Ibid.

50 The character-sketch of Constantine himself at the beginning of ch. xviii is well worth reading. While Augustus develops from tyrant to father of his country, Constantine moves from popular hero to ‘cruel and dissolute monarch’ (p. 102).

51 Ibid., iii, ch. xx, pp. 248–9. Gibbon at times placed the maintenance of law and order as something to be preferred even to popular liberty.

52 ‘General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West’: DF vi. 410.

53 Ibid., ix, ch. xlix, p. 112; iii, ch. xxi, p. 338, refusal to bother about the eighteen Arian creeds. Clergy ‘sullied’ sublime representations of the attributes and laws of the deity by an idle mixture of metaphysical subtleties, puerile rites and fictitious miracles: iii. 302.

54 Ibid., v, ch. xxvi, p. 26.

55 Ibid. 31, cf. 19. Gregory possessed, ‘a rare union of profane eloquence and orthodox piety’. Athanasius, too, he praised as ‘intrepid’: ibid. ch. xxi. 335.

56 Brown, P., ‘Gibbon's views on culture and society in the fifth and sixth centuries’, in his Society and the holy in Late Antiquity, London 1982, 22–48 at p. 35Google Scholar.

57 DF iii, ch. xx, p. 290.

58 Ibid. vi, ch. xxvii, p. 239.

59 Ibid. 247.

60 Ibid. 253.

61 Ibid. 252.

62 Ibid. 268

63 Compare ibid. 262 ‘Superstition still pursued and tormented her wretched votaries’ (the monks) and ‘the monastic saints who excite only the contempt and pity of the philosopher’ (ibid. 266).

64 Ibid. 269.

65 Ibid. 270.

66 See ibid., v, ch. xxviii, pp. 127–33. Names invented for skeletons, and other superstitious practices; cf. ii, ch. xvi, p. 427 ‘army of martyrs and their relics drawn from the Roman Catacombs’.

67 One of the ‘two glorious and decisive victories of Christianity’, the first being over ‘the learned and luxurious citizens of the Roman empire’: ibid., vi, ch. xxxvii, p. 268.

68 Ibid. 344–5.

69 Ibid. 376.

70 Ibid. ii, ch. xvi, pp. 378–80.

71 Julian's career and achievement, coupled with the mild criticism that he ‘displayed some ostentation along with love of virtue and fame’ (ch. xxiv, p. 202) is very fully treated in ch. xix.

72 See Jordan, E. P., ‘Edward Gibbon: the historian of the Roman Empire’ Daedalus cv (1976), 6Google Scholar.

73 Memoirs, 159–60. See Graubard, Stephen R., ‘Contraria sunt complementa’, Daedalus cv (1976), 176–7Google Scholar. For the criticisms levelled by Oxford and Cambridge divines at this time, see McCloy, Gibbon's antagonism, chs ii–ivGoogle Scholar.

74 As argued by Pocock, J. G. A., ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as civic humanist and philosophical historian’ Daedalus cv (1976), 153–70Google Scholar.

75 As stated by Barnes, T. D., Athanasius and Constantine, Harvard 1993, 1Google Scholar. Barnes concedes, however, that Gibbon had a high opinion of Athanasius on account of his inflexible will ‘applied to a single object, combined with unerring political instinct’: DF iii, ch. xxi, p. 356.

76 This ‘Second address to the inhabitants of Canterbury exhorting them to turn from the false worship of three persons to the worship of the one true God’, was published at St Ives in 1788.

77 See Furet, F., ‘Civilisation and barbarism’ Daedalus cv (1976), 216Google Scholar.

78 Preface to vol. vii of octavo edn of DF, p. vii.

79 Memoirs, 127.

80 DF vii, p. viii.

81 Brown, P., ‘In Gibbon's shade’, in Society and the holy in Late Antiquity, 49–62, at p. 52Google Scholar.

82 DF ix, ch. xlix, p. 112.

83 Thus, Brownley, M. W., ‘Gibbon: the formation of mind and character’, Daedalus cv (1976), 14–15Google Scholar, is an interesting contrast between the man who could write so trenchantly on the Early Church, yet sat mute in parliament throughout the American War of Independence.