Description
Book SynopsisThere has never been much doubt about the faith of the infidel historian Edward Gibbon. But for all of Gibbon's skepticism regarding Christianity's central doctrines, the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire did not merely seek to oppose Christianity; he confronted it as a philosophical and historical puzzle. Gibbon's Christianity tallies the results and conditions of that confrontation. Using rich correspondence, private journals, early works, and memoirs that were never completed, Hugh Liebert provides intimate access to Gibbon's life in order to better understand his complex relationship with religion. Approaching the Decline and Fall from the context surrounding its conception, Liebert shows how Gibbon adapted explanations of the Roman republic's rise to account for a new spiritual republic and, subsequently, the rise of modern Europe. Taken together, Liebert's analysis of this context, including the nuance of Gibbon's relationship to Christianity, an
Trade Review“Liebert has made extensive use of the most recent scholarship, and his study broadens the context for understanding Gibbon’s words by discussing in detail the kinds of narratives of conversion that were familiar to Gibbon and in light of which he shaped his own distinctive story. One of the most striking features of Gibbon’s Christianity is that it re-creates the genealogy of Gibbon’s evolution in telling his own story and that of Rome. The connection of the two, as shown here in detail, is an outstanding advance in the scholarship on the author and his great work.”
—Ralph Lerner,author of Naïve Readings: Reveilles Political and Philosophic
