Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737 (O.S.) (May 8, 1737 (N.S.)) - January 16, 1794) was arguably the most influential historian since the time of Tacitus. His magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first published in 1776, is a groundbreaking work whose influence endures to this day.

Assessment

Gibbon's literary art, the sustained excellence of his style, his piquant epigrams and his brilliant irony, would perhaps not secure for his work the immortality which it seems likely to enjoy, if it were not also marked by an ecumenical grasp, extraordinary accuracy and a wily acuteness of judgment which has rarely been equalled in historical, or even English, prose. Churchill memorably noted, "I set out upon Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was immediately dominated by both the story and the style. I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end." He later went on, in his own writings, to mimic Gibbon's prose style, although at a marginally less elevated level.

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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 fountainhead; my curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and 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." In this insistence upon the importance of primary sources, Gibbon is considered by many to be one of the first modern historians.

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Gibbon's verdict on the history of the Middle Ages is contained in the famous sentence, "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion." It is important to understand clearly the criterion that he applied, because it is frequently misunderstood. He was a son of the 18th century, had studied Locke and Montesquieu with sympathy, and few seem to have appreciated more keenly than he did, the human advantages of political liberty and the freedom of an Englishman. In short, the criterion by which Gibbon judged civilization and progress was the measure in which the happiness of men is secured, and of that happiness, he considered political freedom to be an essential precondition.

Related Topics:
Middle Ages - 18th century - Locke - Montesquieu

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Decline and Fall has had its detractors too, almost invariably in the form of religious commentators and religious historians who detested his querying not only of official church history, but also of the saints and scholars of the church, their motives and their accuracy. In particular, the Fifteenth Chapter, which documents the reasons for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire was particularly villified and resulted in the banning of the book in various countries until quite recently (Ireland for example, lifting the ban on sale in the early 1970's).

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Nonetheless, Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains arguably the finest history ever written, an inspiration to historians and students of High English prose, and, most of all, a brilliant, sustained and extraordinarily shrewd critique of the fraility of the human condition.

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