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Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 1737Old Style 27 April. Gibbon's birthday is 27 April 1737 of the old style (O.S.) Julian calendar; England adopted the new style (N.S.) Gregorian calendar in 1752, and thereafter Gibbon's birthday was celebrated on 8 May 1737 N.S.16 January 1794) was a British essayist, historian and politician. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organized religion.The most recent and also the first critical edition, in three volumes, is that of David Womersley. For commentary on Gibbon's irony and insistence on primary sources whenever available, see Womersley, "Introduction". While the larger part of Gibbon's caustic view of Christianity is declared within the text of chapters XV and XVI, Gibbon rarely neglects to note its baleful influence throughout the remaining volumes of the Decline and Fall.
Within weeks of his conversion, he was removed from Oxford and sent to live under the care and tutelage of Daniel Pavillard, Reformed pastor of Lausanne, Switzerland. There, he made one of his life's two great friendships, that of Jacques Georges Deyverdun (the French-language translator of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther), and that of John Baker Holroyd (later Lord Sheffield). Just a year and a half later, after his father threatened to disinherit him, on Christmas Day, 1754, he reconverted to Protestantism. "The various articles of the Romish creed," he wrote, "disappeared like a dream".John Murray (ed.). The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon. (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 137.
On 12 June 1759 Gibbon was commissioned as a Captain in the South Hampshire Militia when that regiment was embodied during the Seven Years' War (his father served as the regiment's Major). For the next three years he commanded the regiment's Grenadier Company in home defence. The militia was disembodied in December 1762 but he remained an officer in the regiment, resigning as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1770. Gibbon later credited his militia service with providing him "a larger introduction into the English world." There was further, the matter of a vast utility: "The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire."Murray, p. 190.Lloyd-Verney, pp. 144, 151, 164–74.Womersley, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, pp. 11, 12.
In 1763 he returned, via Paris, to Lausanne, where he made the acquaintance of a "prudent worthy young man" William Guise. On 18 April 1764, he and Guise set off for Italy, crossed the Alps, and after spending the summer in Florence arrived in Rome, via Lucca, Pisa, Livorno and Siena, in early October.Edward Chaney, "Reiseerlebnis und 'Traumdeutung' bei Edward Gibbon und William Beckford", Europareisen politisch-sozialer Eliten im 18.Jahrhundert, eds. J. Rees, W. Siebers and H. Tilgner (Berlin 2002), pp. 244–245; cf. Chaney, "Gibbon, Beckford and the Interpretation of Dreams," pp. 40–41. In his autobiography, Gibbon vividly records his rapture when he finally neared "the great object of my pilgrimage":
...at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Cicero spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation.Chaney, p. 40 and Murray, pp. 266–267.
Here, Gibbon first conceived the idea of composing a history of the city, later extended to the entire Roman Empire, a moment he described later as his "Capitoline vision":Pocock, "Classical History," ¶ #2.
It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitoline Hill, while the barefooted fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.Murray, p. 302.
Womersley notes the existence of "good reasons" to doubt the statement's accuracy. Elaborating, Pocock ("Classical History," ¶ #2) refers to it as a likely "creation of memory" or a "literary invention", given that Gibbon, in his autobiography, claimed that his journal dated the reminiscence to 15 October, when in fact the journal gives no date.
Soon after abandoning his History of Switzerland, Gibbon made another attempt towards completing a full history. His second work, Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne, was a two-volume set describing the literary and social conditions of England at the time, such as Lord Lyttelton's history of Henry II and Nathaniel Lardner's The Credibility of the Gospel History.Cecil, Algernon. Six Oxford thinkers: Edward Gibbon, John Henry Newman, R.W. Church, James Anthony Froude, Walter Pater, Lord Morley of Blackburn. London: John Murray, 1909, p. 61. Gibbon's Memoires Litteraires failed to gain any notoriety and was considered a flop by fellow historians and literary scholars.
After he tended to his father's estate—which was in poor condition—enough remained for Gibbon to settle fashionably in London at 7 Bentinck Street free of financial concern. By February 1773, he was writing in earnest, but not without the occasional self-imposed distraction. He took to London society quite easily, joined the better social clubs (including Samuel Johnson's Literary Club), and looked in from time to time on his friend Holroyd in Sussex. He succeeded Oliver Goldsmith at the Royal Academy as 'professor in ancient history', an honorary but prestigious position. In late 1774, he was initiated as a Freemasonry of the Premier Grand Lodge of England.i.e., in London's Lodge of Friendship No. 3. See Gibbon's freemasonry.
He was also, perhaps least productively in that same year, returned to the House of Commons for Liskeard, Cornwall through the intervention of his relative and patron, Edward Eliot. He became the archetypal back-bencher, benignly "mute" and "indifferent," his support of the Whig ministry invariably automatic. Gibbon lost the Liskeard seat in 1780 when Eliot joined the opposition, taking with him "the Electors of Leskeard who are commonly of the same opinion as Mr. Elliot." (Murray, p. 322.) The following year, owing to the good grace of Prime Minister Lord North, he was again returned to Parliament, this time for Lymington on a by-election.Gibbon's Whiggery was solidly conservative, in favour of the propertied oligarchy, while upholding the subject's rights under the rule of law—though staunchly against ideas such as the natural rights of man and popular sovereignty, which he referred to as "the wild & mischievous system of Democracy" (Dickinson, "Politics," 178–179).
Volumes II and III appeared on 1 March 1781, eventually rising "to a level with the previous volume in general esteem." Volume IV was finished in June 1784;Norton, Biblio, pp. 49, 57. Both Norton and Womersley ( Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, p. 14) establish that vol. IV was substantially complete by the end of 1783. the final two were completed during a second Lausanne sojourn (September 1783 to August 1787) where Gibbon reunited with his friend Deyverdun in leisurely comfort. By early 1787, he was "straining for the goal" and with great relief the project was finished in June. Gibbon later wrote:
Volumes IV, V, and VI finally reached the press in May 1788, their publication having been delayed since March so it could coincide with a dinner party celebrating Gibbon's 51st birthday (the 8th).Norton, Biblio, p. 61. Mounting a bandwagon of praise for the later volumes were such contemporary luminaries as Adam Smith, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Lord Camden, and Horace Walpole. Adam Smith told Gibbon that "by the universal assent of every man of taste and learning, whom I either know or correspond with, it sets you at the very head of the whole literary tribe at present existing in Europe."
In November 1788, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the main proposer being his good friend Lord Sheffield.
In 1783 Gibbon had been intrigued by the cleverness of Sheffield's 12-year-old eldest daughter, Maria, and he proposed to teach her himself. Over the following years he continued, creating a girl of sixteen who was both well educated, confident and determined to choose her own husband. Gibbon described her as a "mixture of just observation and lively imagery, the strong sense of a man expressed with the easy elegance of a female".
Among Edward Gibbon's maladies was gout. Gibbon is also believed to have suffered from an extreme case of scrotal swelling, probably a hydrocele testis, a condition that causes the scrotum to swell with fluid in a compartment overlying either testicle. In an age when close-fitting clothes were fashionable, his condition led to a chronic and disfiguring inflammation that left Gibbon a lonely figure.After more than two centuries, the exact nature of Gibbon's ailment remains a bone of contention. Patricia Craddock, in a very full and graphic account of Gibbon's last days, notes that Sir Gavin de Beer's medical analysis of 1949 "makes it certain that Gibbon did not have a true hydrocele...and highly probable that he was suffering both from a 'large and irreducible hernia' and cirrhosis of the liver." Also worthy of note are Gibbon's congenial and even joking moods while in excruciating pain as he neared the end. Both authors report this late bit of Gibbonian bawdiness: "Why is a fat man like a Cornish Borough? Because he never sees his member." see Womersley, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, p. 16; Craddock, Luminous Historian, 334–342; and Beer, "Malady". As his condition worsened, he underwent numerous procedures to alleviate the condition, but with no enduring success. In early January, the last of a series of three operations caused an unremitting peritonitis to set in and spread, from which he died.
The "English giant of the Enlightenment"so styled by the "unrivalled master of Enlightenment studies," historian Franco Venturi (1914–1994) in his Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge: 1971), p. 132. See Pocock, Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, p. 6; x. finally succumbed at 12:45 pm, 16 January 1794 at age 56. He was buried in the Sheffield Mausoleum attached to the north transept of the Church of St Mary and St Andrew, Fletching, East Sussex, having died in Fletching while staying with his great friend, Lord Sheffield. Gibbon's estate was valued at approximately £26,000. He left most of his property to cousins. As stipulated in his will, Sheffield oversaw the sale of his library at auction to William Beckford for £950.Womersley, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 17–18. What happened next suggests that Beckford may have known of Gibbon's moralistic, 'impertinent animadversion' at his expense in the presence of the Duchess of Devonshire at Lausanne. Gibbon's wish that his 6,000-book library would not be locked up 'under the key of a jealous master' was effectively denied by Beckford who retained it in Lausanne until 1801 before inspecting it, then locking it up again until at least as late as 1818 before giving most of the books back to Gibbon's physician Dr Scholl who had helped negotiate the sale in the first place. Beckford's annotated copy of the Decline and Fall turned up in Christie's in 1953, complete with his critique of what he considered the author's 'ludicrous self-complacency ... your frequent distortion of historical Truth to provoke a gibe, or excite a sneer ... your ignorance of oriental languages etc.'.Edward Chaney, "Gibbon, Beckford and the Interpretation of Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents", The Beckford Society Annual Lectures 2000–2003 (Beckford Society, 2004), pp. 45-47
Many scholars argue that Gibbon did not in fact blame Christianity for the decline and fall of the empire. Rather, he attributed them to the effects of luxury and the consequent erosion of the Romans' martial character. Such a view echoes the outlook of the Greek historian Polybius, who similarly explained the eclipse of the decadent Greek world by the ascendant Roman Republic in Mediterranean affairs. In this understanding of Gibbon, the process of Rome's decay was well under way before Christian adherents had become a large proportion of the population. Hence, although Gibbon might have seen Christianity as hastening Rome's fall, he did not consider it as the root cause. p. 137Pocock, Religion: The First Triumph. See p. ix, xiii.
Gibbon's work has been criticised for its scathing view of the Christian church, as laid down in chapters XV and XVI, which resulted in the banning of the book in several countries. Gibbon was accused of disrespecting Christian doctrine by "treating the Christian church as a phenomenon of general history, not a special case admitting supernatural explanations and disallowing criticism of its adherents". More specifically, the chapters excoriated the church for "supplanting in an unnecessarily destructive way the great culture that preceded it", and for "the outrage of practising religious intolerance and warfare".Craddock, Luminous Historian, p. 60; also see Shelby Thomas McCloy, Gibbon's Antagonism to Christianity (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1933). Gibbon, however, begins chapter XV with what appears to be a moderately positive appraisal of the Church's rise to power and authority. He documents one primary and five secondary causes of the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire: primarily, "the convincing evidence of the doctrine itself, and ... the ruling providence of its great Author"; secondarily, "exclusive zeal, the immediate expectation of another world, the claim of miracles, the practice of rigid virtue, and the constitution of the primitive church". (first quotation: Gibbon in Craddock, Luminous Historian, p. 61; second quotation: Gibbon in Womersley, Decline and Fall, vol. 1, ch. XV, p. 497.)
In letters to Holroyd and others, Gibbon showed that he expected some church-inspired backlash, but the harshness of the ensuing criticisms exceeded anything he or his friends had anticipated. Contemporary detractors such as Joseph Priestley and Richard Watson stoked the nascent fire, but the most severe of the attacks was an "acrimonious" piece by the young cleric Henry Edwards Davis.Henry Edwards Davis, An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: J. Dodsley, 1778). online.
Gibbon's apparent antagonism to Christian doctrine spilled over into hostility to Judaism, leading to charges of anti-Semitism. For example, he wrote:
Gibbon's work has been praised for its style, its piquant epigrams and its effective irony. Winston Churchill wrote in My Early Life, "I set out upon ... Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and was immediately dominated both by the story and the style. ... I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all."Winston Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), p. 111. Churchill modelled much of his own literary style on Gibbon's. Like Gibbon, he dedicated himself to producing a "vivid historical narrative, ranging widely over period and place and enriched by analysis and reflection".Roland Quinault, "Winston Churchill and Gibbon," in Edward Gibbon and Empire, eds. R. McKitterick and R. Quinault (Cambridge: 1997), 317–332, at p. 331; Pocock, "Ironist," ¶: "Both the autobiography...."
Unusually for the 18th century, Gibbon was never content with secondhand accounts when the primary sources were accessible, though most of these were drawn from well-known printed editions. "I have always endeavoured," he wrote, "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 that, if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend."Womersley, Decline and Fall, vol. 2, Preface to Gibbon vol. 4, p. 520. In this insistence upon the importance of primary sources, Gibbon is considered by many to be one of the first modern historians:
The subject of Gibbon's writing, as well as his ideas and style, have influenced other writers. Besides his influence on Churchill, Gibbon was also a model for Isaac Asimov in his writing of The Foundation Trilogy, which, Asimov wrote, involved "a little bit of cribbin' from the works of Edward Gibbon".Groat, Brian. " Asimov on How to Be Prolific". Medium.com, 25 October 2016. Retrieved 30 April 2018
Evelyn Waugh admired Gibbon's style but not his secularism. In Waugh's novel Helena (1950), the early Christian author Lactantius worries about the possibility of a false historian, with the mind of Cicero or Tacitus and the soul of an animal,' and he nodded towards the gibbon who fretted his golden chain and chattered for fruit".London: Chapman and Hall, 1950. Chapter 6, p. 122.
Late career: 1765–1776
Work
In June 1765, Gibbon returned to his father's house, remaining there until the latter's death in 1770.Cecil, Algernon. Six Oxford thinkers: Edward Gibbon, John Henry Newman, R.W. Church, James Anthony Froude, Walter Pater, Lord Morley of Blackburn. London: John Murray, 1909, p. 59. These five years were considered by Gibbon as the worst of his life, but he tried to remain busy by making early attempts at full histories. His first historical narrative, known as the History of Switzerland, representing Gibbon's love for Switzerland, was never finished nor published. Even under the guidance of Deyverdun, his German translator, Gibbon became too self-critical and completely abandoned the project after writing only 60 pages of text.Cecil, Algernon. Six Oxford thinkers: Edward Gibbon, John Henry Newman, R.W. Church, James Anthony Froude, Walter Pater, Lord Morley of Blackburn. London: John Murray, 1909, p. 60.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: 1776–1788
After several rewrites, with Gibbon "often tempted to throw away the labours of seven years," the first volume of what was to become his life's major achievement, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published on 17 February 1776. Through 1777, the reading public eagerly consumed three editions, for which Gibbon was rewarded handsomely: two-thirds of the profits, amounting to approximately £1,000 (equivalent of around £210,000 in 2025).Norton, Biblio, pp. 37, 45. Gibbon sold the copyrights to the remaining editions of volume 1 and the remaining 5 volumes to publishers Strahan & Cadell for £8000. The great History earned the author a total of about £9000.
Later life: 1789–1794
The years following Gibbon's completion of The History were filled largely with sorrow and increasing physical discomfort. He had returned to London in late 1787 to oversee the publication process alongside Lord Sheffield. With that accomplished, in 1789 it was back to Lausanne only to learn of and be "deeply affected" by the death of Deyverdun, who had willed Gibbon his home, La Grotte. He resided there with little commotion, took in the local society, received a visit from Sheffield in 1791, and "shared the common abhorrence" of the French Revolution. In 1793, word came of Lady Sheffield's death; Gibbon immediately left Lausanne and set sail to comfort a grieving but composed Sheffield. His health began to fail critically in December, and at the turn of the new year, he was on his last legs.
Legacy
A view frequently attributed to Gibbon, that the Roman Empire fell due to its embrace of Christianity, is not widely accepted by scholars today. Gibbon argued that with the empire's new Christian character, large sums of wealth that would have otherwise been used in secular affairs, promoting the state, were transferred to promoting the activities of the Church. However, the pre-Christian empire also spent large financial sums on religious affairs and it is unclear whether or not the change of religion increased the resources the empire spent on religion. Gibbon further argued that the new attitudes introduced by Christianity caused many Christians of wealth to renounce their lifestyles and enter hermitages or monasteries, and so stop participating in the support of the empire. However, while many Christians of wealth did become monastics, their numbers paled in comparison to the numbers of participants in the imperial bureaucracy. Although Gibbon further pointed out that the emphasis Christianity placed on peace caused a decline in the number of people serving the military, the decline was so small as to be negligible for the army's effectiveness.Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire. Oxford University Press, 2005, 122–123.
From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in Diaspora Revolt, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives; and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of legions against a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but also of mankind.Womersley, ed., Decline and Fall, vol. 1, ch. XVI, p. 516. see online Gibbon's first footnote here reveals even more about why his detractors reacted so harshly: In Cyrene, the massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus, 240,000; in Egypt, a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed asunder, according to a precedent to which David had given the sanction of his examples. The victorious Jews devoured the flesh, licked up the blood, and twisted the entrails like a girdle around their bodies. see Dion Cassius l. lxviii, p. 1145. As a matter of fact, this is a verbatim citation from Dio Cassius, Historia Romana LXVIII, 32:1–3: The Jewish Uprising : Meanwhile, the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two, from the head downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators. In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt, also, they performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished. For this reason no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon the island by force of the wind, he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan.
Influence
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."Womersley, Decline and Fall, vol. 3, ch. LXXI, p. 1068. Politically, he rejected the radical egalitarian movements of the time, notably the American and French Revolutions, and dismissed overly rationalistic applications of the Human rights.Burke supported the American rebellion, while Gibbon sided with the ministry; but with regard to the French Revolution they shared a perfect revulsion. Despite their agreement on the FR, Burke and Gibbon "were not specially close," owing to Whig party differences and divergent religious beliefs, not to mention Burke's sponsorship of the Civil List and Secret Service Money Act 1782 which abolished, and therefore cost Gibbon his place on, the government's Board of Trade and Plantations in 1782. see Pocock, "The Ironist," ¶: "Both the autobiography...."
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.Stephen, DNB, p. 1134.
Monographs by Gibbon
Other writings by Gibbon
See also
Notes
Most of this article, including quotations unless otherwise noted, has been adapted from Stephen's entry on Edward Gibbon in the Dictionary of National Biography.Original text:
Sources
Further reading
Before 1985
Since 1985
External links
Categories: 1737 Births, 1794 Deaths, 18th-century English Diarists, 18th-century English Historians, 18th-century English Male Writers, 18th-century English Non-fiction Writers, Edward, Alumni Of Magdalen College, Oxford, British Byzantinists, British Critics Of Religions, British Freemasons, British Historians Of Religion, English Male Essayists, English Monarchists, British Mps 1774–1780, British Mps 1780–1784, British Protestants, British Rhetoricians, Burials In East Sussex, Converts To Protestantism From Catholicism, Deaths From Peritonitis, English Book And Manuscript Collectors, English Classical Scholars, English Essayists, English Protestants, English Rhetoricians, Hampshire And Isle Of Wight Militia Officers, Fellows Of The Royal Society, Freemasons Of The Premier Grand Lodge Of England, Historians Of Ancient Rome, Historians Of Christianity, Irony Theorists, People Educated At Kingston Grammar School, People Educated At Westminster School, London, People From Buriton, People From Putney, Rhetoric Theorists, Theorists On Western Civilization, Intellectual Historians
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