Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737 – January 16, 1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. The History is known principally for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open denigration of organized religion, though the extent of this is disputed by some critics.

Edward Gibbon was born in 1737 in the town of Putney, near London. As a youth, his health was under constant threat. He described himself as "a puny child, neglected by my Mother, starved by my nurse." At age nine, Gibbon took up residence in the Westminster School boarding house. Following a stay at Bath to improve his health, Gibbon in 1752 was sent by his father to Magdalen College, Oxford. He was ill-suited, however, to the college atmosphere and later rued his 14 months there as the "most idle and unprofitable" of his life. Within weeks, the youngster was sent to live under the care and tutelage of David Pavillard, Reformed pastor. Just a year and a half later he reconverted to Protestantism. He remained in Lausanne for five intellectually productive years, a period that greatly enriched Gibbon's already immense aptitude for scholarship and erudition: he read Latin literature; traveled throughout Switzerland studying its cantons' constitutions; and aggressively mined the works of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, John Locke, Pierre Bayle, and Blaise Pascal.

Upon his return to England, Gibbon published his first book, Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature, which produced an initial taste of celebrity and distinguished him as a man of letters. He embarked on the Grand Tour (of continental Europe), which included a visit to Rome. The Memoirs vividly record Gibbon's rapture when he finally neared "the great object of [my] pilgrimage". And it was here that Gibbon first conceived the idea of composing a history of the city, later extended to the entire empire, a moment known to history as the "Capitoline vision".

His father died in 1770, and after tending to the estate, Gibbon settled in London, independent of financial concerns. By February 1773 he was writing in earnest, but not without the occasional self-imposed distraction. And, he was returned to the House of Commons. He became the archetypal back-bencher, benignly "mute" and "indifferent," his support of the Whig ministry routinely automatic. Gibbon's indolence in that position, perhaps fully intentional, subtracted little from the progress of his writing.

After several rewrites, and Gibbon "often tempted to throw away the labors of seven years," the first volume of what would become his life's major achievement, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in 1776. Volumes II and III appeared in 1781, eventually rising "to a level with the previous volume in general esteem." Volume IV was finished in 1784; the final two were completed in 1787. By early 1787, he was "straining for the goal;" and with great relief the project was finished in June. Volumes IV, V, and VI finally reached the press in 1788. Earning praise for the later volumes were such contemporary luminary as Adam Smith, who remarked that Gibbon's triumph had positioned him "at the very head of [Europe's] literary tribe." The years following Gibbon's completion of The History were filled largely with sorrow and increasing physical discomfort. His health began to fail critically, and at the turn of 1794 year, he was on his last legs. The "English giant of the Enlightenment" finally succumbed January 16, 1794 at age 56.

AssessmentGibbon's work has been criticized for its aggressively scathing view of Christianity as laid down in chapters XV and XVI. Those chapters were strongly criticised and resulted in the banning of the book in several countries. Gibbon's alleged crime was disrespecting, and none too lightly, the character of sacred Christian doctrine in "treat[ing] the Christian church as a phenomenon of general history, not a special case admitting supernatural explanations and disallowing criticism of its adherents" as the Roman church was likely expecting. More specifically, blasphemous chapters excoriated the church for two deeply wounding transgressions: displacing the glory and grandeur of ancient Rome ("supplanting in an unnecessarily destructive way the great culture that preceded it"); and exposing the church's dirty laundry ("for the outrage of [practicing] religious intolerance and warfare"). Gibbon, though assumed to be entirely anti-religion, was actually supportive to some extent, insofar as it did not obscure his true endeavour – a history that was not influenced and swayed by official church doctrine. Some argue that though it is true that the most famous two chapters are heavily ironical and cutting about religion, that it is interesting that it is in no way utterly condemned, and that the apparent truth and rightness is upheld however thinly. Gibbon expected some type of church-inspired backlash, but the utter harshness of the ensuing torrents far exceeded anything he could possibly have anticipated. Gibbon's antagonism to Christian doctrine spilled over into the Jewish faith, inevitably leading to charges of anti-Semitism.

Gibbon is considered to be a son of the Enlightenment and this is reflected in his famous verdict on the history of the Middle Ages: "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion." However, politically, he aligned himself with the conservative rejection of the democratic movements of the time as well as with dismissal of the "rights of man."

Gibbon's work has been praised for its style, his piquant epigrams and its effective irony. He was called "English Voltaire".

Unusually for the 18th century, Gibbon was never content with secondhand accounts when the primary sources were accessible. "I have always endeavoured," he says, "to draw from the fountain-head; that my curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and…I have carefully marked the secondary evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend." In this insistence upon the importance of primary sources, Gibbon is considered by many to be one of the first modern historians: "In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject, the 'History' is unsurpassable. It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive. ...Whatever its shortcomings the book is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period."