Questions about "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Edward Gibbon

For Discussion, July 28, 2009

Chapter XV: "The Progress of the Christian Religion, and the Sentiments, Manners, Numbers, and Condition of the Primitive Christians"

Gibbon writes (p. 195): "From the first of the fathers to the last of the popes, a succession of bishops, of saints, of martyrs, and of miracles, is continued without interruption; and the progress of superstition was so gradual and almost imperceptible, that we know not in what particular link we should break the chain of tradition." In this statement and in the subsequent discussion, does Gibbon imply there was a "golden age" of miracles, and that the Church needed to sustain its traditions regardless of whether evidence supported a continued succession of miracles (cf. end of paragraph, p. 196)?

When Gibbon writes, "According to the more rigid doctors, the moral virtues, which may be equally practiced by infidels, are destitute of any value or efficacy in the work of our justification" (p. 217), does he imply that Christianity doesn't value moral actions?

Gibbon writes (p. 231): "Such is the constitution of civil society, that, while a few persons are distinguished by riches, by honors, and by knowledge, the body of the people is condemned to obscurity, ignorance, and poverty." He then states that as a natural consequence, the Christian religion recruited many from the lower orders of society into its ranks. Does he consider this form of social hierarchy to be the natural order of things?

Re: Gibbon's discussion of the "love of pleasure" and the "love of action" (p. 200): Does his sentence "The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonized would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature" ring true? Is it a helpful distinction in his discussion of the "primitive" Christians?

Page 201: "In their censures of luxury the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any color except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread (!), foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practise of shaving the beard .... " Do you agree with Gibbon when he says it was easier for the poor than for the rich to accept privation, and with it a sense of moral superiority?

Chapter XVI: "The Conduct of the Roman Government Towards the Christians, from the Reign of Nero to that of Constantine"

Gibbon writes of the Jews, "Their irreconcilable hatred of mankind, instead of flaming out in acts of blood and violence, evaporated in less dangerous gratifications. They embraced every opportunity of overreaching the idolators in trade, and they pronounced secret and ambiguous imprecations against the haughty kingdom of Edom [Rome]" (p. 240). How does this jibe with Gibbon's belief that the Jews of the diaspora "assumed the behavior of peaceful and industrious subjects"?

Why did the enemies of the Christians portray them as a "society of atheists" (p. 241) ?!?

Do you buy Gibbon's conclusion at the end of his description of the persecution of Cyprian (pp. 264-269) that the fact that we don't have more accounts of funerals of Christian martyrs is evidence that there was an "inconsiderable number of those who suffered and died for the profession of Christianity"?

Does Gibbon support his argument that "the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of the infidels"? (p. 302)?

Does Gibbon allow for the possibility that the persecutions of the Christians may have been a factor in the growth of their numbers?

History's Greatest Cautionary Tale

Our "author of the month" is Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). Gibbon composed his magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (often simply referred to as the Decline and Fall) over a time period of almost 20 years.

When the first volume was published in the eventful year of 1776, it went through three editions in a short span of time. In addition to being an undeniably great and influential work, the book represents a milestone in the craft of historical writing. Peter P.Witonski, in Gibbon for Moderns, an annotated and abridged version of the Decline and Fall, remarks that Gibbon combined the "renewed historical perspective" of the Renaissance -- i.e., that contemporary authors were capable of writing histories superior to the first-hand accounts of classical authors -- with the scientific mindset developed in the 17th century.

Gibbon was unusual among British intellectuals of his time in that he was educated abroad (in Lausanne). Gibbon tells us that he conceived of The Decline and Fall "among the ruins of the Capitol" in Rome. The work is a product of Gibbon's formidable linguistic skills and his prodigious study of history. In his book The Ruins of the Roman Empire, James J. O'Donnell writes, "No page of Gibbon is not worth reading; few of his footnotes are not worth considering carefully."

It his difficult to imagine a contempory historian undertaking a work quite as massive in scope as Gibbon's. In our selection this month, we read two chapters from The Decline and Fall, which discuss the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

Every subsequent age has seen a mirror of itself in the story of cycles of growth and decay of ancient Rome. Gibbon's account, written during an age of Empire and so-called Enlightenment, stands as perhaps the best.