Gibbon and Religion
When Gibbon completed the first volume of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he was roundlyl criticized by many Christians for his attitude towards the history of the Church. As Pelikan points out, what they found most distasteful was Gibbon's using the same methods and standards for church history as he would for any other type of history. As Gibbon said:
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more meloncholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discovere the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
He also had a few ironic words to say about the beliefs of the Empire before Christianity,
The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.
posted by Clemens @ 11:43 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Now, I know next to nothing about this field... so this may be completely wrong. But my impression, picked up from here and there, was that Gibbon, beneath his tongue-in-cheek barbs against Catholicism, actually did have big chip on his shoulder against Christianity, and that in places this distorted his history. Not just that Christians were upset because he was being objective - but that in places he blames the church for things which are better explained by other factors. IE, his biases sometimes made him fail as a historian, despite his massive erudition and wit.
The Pelikan book sounds fascinating. I read part of his 'History of Christian Thought' and found it very interesting (if challenging.)
Depends - one historian's failure may another historian's success. Pelikan, in some ways, is trying to put Gibbon in exactly that context. He uses Gibbon's observations and then shows what he (Pelikan) thinks about the situation from the viewpoint of the 'social triumph' of the Church. In general, in my reading of Gibbon I find him much more subtle and nuanced that common repute would have it, and not just on the question of Christianity. It's the main reason I am finding Pelikan so much fun.
Gibbon himself had his ups and down with religion - raised a Protestant he converted briefly to Catholicism and then back again. He was primarily a skeptic and a rationalist - a true Enlightenment character. If anything he was probably a Deist along the lines of, say, Thomas Jefferson, the secular patron saint of the US. His irony and mock pomposity may be an acquired taste, but if so I have acquired it! I suspect he himself viewed religion in general exactly in terms of his quote on the uses of religion in the Roman Empire.
Interesting!
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