The Decline and Fall

The first quarto volume of his history, published on February 17, 1776, immediately scored a success that was resounding, if somewhat scandalous because of the last two chapters in which he dealt with great irony with the rise of Christianity. Reactions to Gibbon’s treatment of Christianity have displayed various phases. Both in his lifetime and after, he was attacked and personally ridiculed by those who feared that his skepticism would shake the existing establishment. In the 19th century he was hailed as a champion by militant agnostics. Gibbon himself was not militant. He did not cry with Voltaire, “Écrasez l’Infâme!” (“Crush the Infamy!”) because in his England and Switzerland he saw no danger in the ecclesiastical systems. His concern was history. One may say, however, with confidence, that he had no belief in a divine revelation and little sympathy with those who had such a belief. While he treated the supernatural with irony, his main purpose was to establish the principle that religions must be treated as phenomena of human experience. In this his successors have followed him and added to the collateral causes of Christianity’s growth those that he had overlooked or could not know of, such as the various mystery religions of the empire and particularly the Mithraic cult. Although Gibbon’s best known treatment of Christianity is found mainly in the 15th and 16th chapters, no less significant are later chapters in which he traced the developments of theology and ecclesiasticism in relation to the breakup of the empire.

Gibbon went on to prepare the next volumes. Meanwhile, he was assailed by many pamphleteers and subjected to much ridicule. His ugliness and elaborate clothes made him an easy target. For the most part he ignored his critics. The historians David Hume and William Robertson recognized him as their equal if not their superior. Only to those who had accused him of falsifying his evidence did he make a devastating reply in A Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1779).

In the same year he obtained a valuable sinecure as a commissioner of trade and plantations. Shortly after that he composed Mémoire justificatif (1779; a French and English version, 1780), a masterly state paper in reply to continental criticism of the British government’s policy in America. In 1781 he published the second and third volumes of his history, bringing the narrative down to the end of the empire in the West. Gibbon paused at this point to consider continuing his history. In 1782, however, Lord North’s government fell, and soon Gibbon’s commission was abolished. This was a serious loss of income. To economize he left England and joined Deyverdun in a house at Lausanne. There he quietly completed his history in three more volumes, writing the last lines of it on June 27, 1787. He soon returned to England with the manuscript, and these volumes were published on his 51st birthday, May 8, 1788. The completion of this great work was acclaimed on all sides.

The Decline and Fall thus comprises two divisions, equal in bulk but inevitably different in treatment. The first half covers a period of about 300 years to the end of the empire in the West, about 480 ce. In the second half nearly 1,000 years are compressed. Yet the work is a coherent whole by virtue of its conception of the Roman Empire as a single entity throughout its long and diversified course. Gibbon imposed a further unity on his narrative by viewing it as an undeviating decline from those ideals of political and, even more, intellectual freedom that he had found in classical literature. The material decay that had inspired him in Rome was the effect and symbol of moral decadence. However well this attitude suited the history of the West, its continuance constitutes the most serious defect of the second half of Gibbon’s history and involved him in obvious contradictions. He asserted, for example, that the long story of empire in the East is one of continuous decay, yet for 1,000 years Constantinople stood as a bulwark of eastern Europe. The fact is that Gibbon was not only out of sympathy with Byzantine civilization; he was less at home with Greek sources than with Latin and had no access to vast stores of material in other languages that subsequent scholars have assembled. Consequently there are serious omissions in his narrative, as well as unsatisfactory summaries.

Nevertheless, this second half contains much of Gibbon’s best. With all its shortcomings, it marshals with masterly lucidity the successive forces that eventually overthrew Constantinople. Many of his most famous chapters occur there. These include sections on Justinian, the Trinitarian controversies, the rise of Islam, and the history of Roman law. There is, in addition, a brilliant and moving story of the last siege and capture of Constantinople and, finally, the epilogue of chapters describing medieval and Renaissance Rome, which gives some hope that the long decline is over and that mankind has some prospect of recovering intellectual freedom. The vindication of intellectual freedom is a large part of Gibbon’s purpose as a historian. When toward the end of his work he remarks, “I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion,” he reveals epigrammatically his view of the causes of the decay of the Greco-Roman world. They can hardly be disputed. But there is the further question of whether the changes brought about are to be regarded as ones of progress or retrogression. Writing as a mid-18th-century “philosopher,” Gibbon saw the process as retrogression, and his judgment remains of perpetual interest.

Returning to Lausanne, Gibbon turned mainly to writing his memoirs. His happiness was broken first by Deyverdun’s death in 1789, quickly followed by the outbreak of the French Revolution and the subsequent apprehension of an invasion of Switzerland. He had now become very fat and his health was declining. In 1793 he suddenly returned to England on hearing of Lady Sheffield’s death. The journey aggravated his ailments, and he died in a house in St. James’s Street, London. His remains were placed in Lord Sheffield’s family vault in Fletching Church, Sussex.

Legacy

Modern knowledge of history, in Gibbon’s field alone, has increased conspicuously. Economic, social, and constitutional history have grown up. The study of coins, inscriptions, and archaeology generally has brought in a great harvest. Above all, the scientific examination of literary sources, so rigorously practiced now, was unknown to Gibbon. Yet he often exhibits a flair and an acumen that seem to anticipate these systematic studies. He had genius in large measure, as well as untiring industry and accuracy in consulting his sources. Though he was unsympathetic to Christianity, his sense of fairness and probity made him respectful of honest opinion and true devotion, even among those with whom he disagreed. These qualities, expressed with his command of historical perspective and his incomparable literary style, justify a modern historian’s dictum that “whatever else is read Gibbon must be read too,” or the conclusion of the great Cambridge historian J.B. Bury:

That Gibbon is behind date in many details and in some departments of importance, simply signifies that we and our fathers have not lived in an absolutely incompetent world. But in the main things he is still our master above and beyond “date.”