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The ‘Supposed Infidelity’ of Edward Gibbon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Paul Turnbull
Paul Turnbull
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, New South Wales
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Extract

For the last two centuries Edward Gibbon has been regarded—either favourably or disparagingly - as the Enlightenment's greatest celebrant of the ‘triumph of human reason’. He has been almost invariably portrayed as an essentially optimistic believer in rational man's potential for social progress and moral advancement. Much of Gibbon's modern reputation as the Enlightenment's historian par excellence is due to early and widespread acceptance of certain assumptions about his religious sentiments. There has been a strong tendency to assume that Gibbon stood in the vanguard of what Peter Gay has called ‘modern paganism’: ‘The French philosophes and British infidels like Hume or Gibbon rejected revealed religion so vehemently and so completely that the Christian contribution to their ideas was modest and subterranean; they were usually unaware of it’. Gibbon has been traditionally seen as a vocal deist, while the account of the rise and consolidation of the Christian church contained within The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire (1776–88) has often been thought intrinsically anti-christian.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 23 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Bond, H., The literary art of Edward Gibbon (Oxford, 1960), p. 160.Google Scholar

2 Gay, P., The Enlightenment: an interpretation (London, 1966), 1, 326.Google Scholar

3 Trevor-Roper, H. R., ‘Edward Gibbon, an appreciation’, in The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, ed. and abr. Trevor-Roper, H. R. (New York, 1963), p. 666Google Scholar. Arnaldo Momigliano, who formerly accepted Gibbon as an enlightened anti-christian sceptic, also appears to be having second thoughts. See the discussion following M. Baridon's ‘Le style ďune pensée: politique et esthétique dans le decline and fall‘ in Gibbon et Rome, à la lumière de l’historiographie moderne (Lausanne, 1977), pp. 99–100Google Scholar, where dissatisfaction emerges with the identification of Gibbon's ‘leading moral and religious ideas’ with those of Voltaire he made in his influential article ‘Gibbon's contribution to historical method’ (1954), reprinted in Momigliano, A., Studies in historiography (London, 1969 edn), pp. 40–55. My own interest in Gibbon's religion was stimulated by the suggestion of P. L. Rose that a convincing intellectual biography of the historian requires further understanding of the relations between such an important aspect of the man's personality as his religious sentiments and his historical writings.Google Scholar

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19 Draft B. ‘My own life’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874. fos. 36–6 v.

20 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 33 v.

21 Read, Historic studies, II, 325–48, provides a fair account of Gibbon's affair with Curchod, although Herold, J. C., in his life of Madame de Staël entitled Mistress to an age (London, 1759), pp. 10–22 ff., presents a thorough and quite perceptive account of a rather strange romance.Google Scholar

22 Album studiosorum Academiae Lausannensis (2 vols., Lausanne, 1937), II (1602–1837), n. 6384.Google Scholar

23 The definitive intellectual study of de Crousaz remains J. de la Harpe's Jean-Pierre de Crousaz et le conflit des idées au siècle des lumières (Geneva, 1955).Google Scholar

24 Examen de l’essai de m. Pope sur l’homme (Lausanne, 1737)Google Scholar and Commentaire sur le traduction en vers de m. l’abbé du Resnel de l’essai de M. Pope sur l’homme (Lausanne, 1738). English translation of the former by Elizabeth Carter in 1738, the latter by Samuel Johnson in 1742.Google Scholar

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27 See Gibbon, , Memoirs of my life and writings, ed. Bonnard, G. A. (London 1966), p. xxviii.Google Scholar

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29 Ibid., III, 264.

30 Ibid., III, 312.

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32 Gibbon, The misc. works, I, 1.

33 Recollection of Frederic Harrison, Autobiographic memoirs (2 vols., London, 1911), II, 94. Harrison was responsible for the Royal Historic society's 1894 Gibbon commemoration and for persuading the recluse third Earl of Sheffield to sell the Gibbon papers to the nation in late July 1895.Google Scholar

34 Gibbon, Memoirs, p. xxiv.

35 Gibbon, Memoirs, p. xxiv.

36 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 31 v.

37 Draft C: ‘Memoirs of the life and writings of Edward Gibbon’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 62 v. Not a great deal is known about Lewis. He was not John Lewis, as suggested by E. Hutton in ‘The conversion of Edward Gibbon’, but William Lewis, described by F. T. Wood in his ‘Notes on London booksellers 1700–50’, Notes and queries, s. 13. xi (1931), 188, as follows: ‘The publisher of the Essay on criticism. He was a noted Catholic bookseller in Convent Garden (see Disraeli's Quarrels and calamities of authors). According to his son, who died at Knightsbridge on August 7, 1802, he was at school with Pope. As early as 1708 he had a shop at the Dolphin in Russel Street and he lived to be one of the oldest booksellers in London’.

38 Draft D: ‘Without title’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 81.

39 Draft E: ‘My own life’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 87.

40 Draft F: ‘Without title’, Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 121. Gibbon's reluctance to go beyond hinting at the bookseller's identity (and perhaps his profession of ‘present ignorance’ of the priest's name and order) probably induced Sheffield to reproduce substantially the account of the affair which appeared in the second and the last draft in the first edition of The miscellaneous works (1796), without the additional information provided by the third draft. However, in the second edition of The misc. works (1814), Sheffield added this footnote: ‘His [the priest's] name was Baker, a Jesuit, and one of the chaplains of the Sardinian Ambassador. Mr Gibbon's conversion made some noise: and Mr Lewis was summoned before the Privy Council’. Bonnard notes this in his notes to the Memoirs, pp. 264–5. My examination of surviving documents in the Public Records Office in June, 1979 brought nothing to light; nor for that matter are there records of correspondence between the younger Lewis and Sheffield. (Again, see Bonnard, Memoirs, pp. 264–5.).

41 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.

42 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.

43 R. L. Poole, offprint of article ‘Gibbon's matriculation’ from The Oxford magazine (c. 1913?). Offprint signed and dated by author 7 Jan. 1914, Rare Book Collection, Australian National Library, Canberra.

44 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.

45 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 120 v.

46 Church, T., A vindication of the miraculous powers, which subsisted in the first three centuries of the Christian church (London, 1750)Google Scholar, and Dodwell, W., A free answer to Dr Middleton's free enquiry (London, 1749). See also Bonnard's note, Memoirs, p. 263.Google Scholar

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48 Ibid.. fo. 120 V.

49 Ibid.. fo. 120 v.

50 Ibid.. fo. 121.

51 Ibid.. fo. 30.

52 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 121 v. Bonnard, Memoirs, p. 265 suggests Gibbon has taken this phrase from Pierre Desmaizeaux's Life of William Chillingworth (London, 1725)Google Scholar, a work I have not been able to consult. Perhaps Desmaizeaux was in turn paraphrasing Chillingworth's ‘Additional discourse’ in The works of William Chillingworth D.D. (London, 1704 edn), p. 43.Google Scholar

53 Orr, R., Reason and authority: the thought of William Chillingworth (Oxford, 1967), p. 29. The motives underlying the divine's conversion are carefully treated, pp. 1–22 ff.Google Scholar

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55 See Heyd's, M. review article ‘A disguised atheist or a sincere Christian? The enigma of Pierre Bayle’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme el renaissance, xxxix, i (1977), 157–66.Google Scholar

56 A good example is his treatment of the emperor Constantine's character in chapter xviii of The decline and fall. See below.

57 Gibbon papers, Add. MSS 34874, fo. 122 v.

58 Ibid.. fo. 122 v.

59 Ibid.. fo. 31.

60 Gibbon, Memoirs, ed. Bonnard, p. 266.

61 Read, Historic studies, II, 281, a translation of the doyen Bridel's testimony as recorded by de Lalonde, B., in Le Léman, ou voyage pittoresque, historique et littéraire à Genève et dans le canton de Vaud (2 vols., Paris, 1856 edn), I, 28.Google Scholar

62 See Read, Historic studies, II, 281.

63 Douglas, S., The diaries of Sylvester Douglas, Lord Glenbervie, ed. Bickley, F. (2 vols., London 1927), I, 94.Google Scholar

64 Ibid.. I, 18–19.

65 Read, Historic studies, II, 286–7.

66 Ibid.. II, 7–8.

67 Ibid.. II, 417, 420–1.

68 Ibid.. II, 286.

69 Hayley, W., The life of George Romney esq. (Chichester, 1890), pp. 210–11.Google Scholar

70 ‘Think not my verse blindly to engage In rash defence of thy profaner page! Tho’ keen her spirit, her attachment fond, Bare service cannot suit with friendship's bond; Too firm from Duty's sacred path to turn, She breathes an honest sigh of deep concern. And pities Genius, when his wild career Gives faith a wound, or innocence a fear. Hayley, W., Essay on History (1780), ep. III, 371–8.Google Scholar

71 Read's translation of Gibbon to Deyverdun, 7 May 1776, in Historic studies, II, 320–1. Original French text appears in Gibbon, Letters, II, 104–8.Google Scholar

72 Gibbon, Letters, II, 320–1.