It was at the end of August 2009, twenty-eight months ago, that I started to read Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and two weeks ago that I finished it. I thought then that I could read two chapters a week, and get through the lot in nine months. In fact, I found I needed the space of a weekend without visitors or travel to read and write up each chapter, so the 71 chapters took me 133 weeks (rather than the 36 I had optimistically first imagined). But such a rich diet is best digested slowly, morsel by delicious morsel, rather than trying to rush it. I strongly recommend a structured read-through of the entire work to anyone interested in history.

There are some things I would advise readers to do differently from me. I wish I had used the Bury edition, with its expanded footnotes, which is available online and in various hard copy formats, rather than sticking to the Penguin version, edited by David Womersley, with just the original text. I would also interleave a bit more with other reading - I have the Gibbon and Empire volume of essays sitting on the shelf waiting to be read, and I profited also from Gibbon's own Autobiography. I might even suggest splitting the longest chapters rather than religiously taking one a week: Chapter L, on Mahomet (sic) is 81 pages, and Chapter LI, on his successors, in 90 pages, full of intense detail.

I set this up as a separate LJ community, reading_gibbon, more to give the project a framework outside my usual bookblogging than out of any hope that I would build up a cohort of regular readers. Indeed there were a few people who commented regularly at the beginnning and more sporadically as it went on; I don't blame them in the slightest for flagging. I do now wonder what I will do with the entries in the long term, as LJ does not feel like a reliable archive right now. Probably I will simply shift them to my website.

I structured each entry to start with striking quotes from each chapter, followed by a short summary, followed by any points arising from the text. I should of course have put the summary first, then the quotes, then the points arising. I don't make any apology for rambling into favourite topics of mine such as Balkan geography and astrology, rather than more generally interesting points; I'm not an academic specialist in this area and have no ambition to be, and it seemed important to record when my pleasure in reading was enhanced by the intersection of the text with subjects that I already knew something about.

So, what did I learn?

The two things that will linger with me from Decline and Fall are the superb quality of the writing and the fact that Gibbon doesn't really prove his own case. The writing speaks for itself; some of the best passages are long - the fall of Constantinople being the one which most recently springs to mind - and some of the greatest lines are very brief - for example, that Artaxerxes "was driven into exile and rebellion by royal ingratitude, the customary reward for superior merit." It does sometimes drag a bit - I found the chapters around the fall of Rome rather tough going - but on form Gibbon is one of the best combiners of irony with substance that you will ever encounter.

However, his overall thesis is not especially clear and not especially well proven by his own account. Gibbon blames the decline and fall of the empire on decisions taken in the second century, after which Rome endured another 250 years and Constantinople more than a millennium; he blames Christianity, though his proof of this tends to degenerate into prejudice about monks and Papists; he extols liberty, but exactly what he means by liberty is never very clear; he argues that there is a straight decline from 410 to 1453, which means minimising Justinian's achievements (while yet giving him five chapters) and blatantly ignoring the later Byzantine empire. The building blocks are solid, and some of them extremely well made, but the overall structure is impressive more because of its size and style rather than its function.

One should not take this too far. This book, published precisely in the interval of years between the American Declaration of Independence and the French revolution, represent the effort of one of the smartest brains of the time trying to get to grips with the greatest historical catastrophe that he knew of, while yet fearing that his world was getting worse rather than better. And he also hopes to communicate his understanding of the past, and its application to the chaos of the present, to those who like him who have visited Rome as secular pilgrims:

Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful policy of the Caesars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorders of military despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East: the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.

Well done, Mr Gibbon; well done.

Book I
Preface
Chapter I
Chapter II: Of the Union and Internal Prosperity of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines
Chapter III: Of the Constitution of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines
Chapter IV: The cruelty, follies and murder of Commodus [with added Pertinax]
Chapter V: mostly about Septimius Severus
Chapter VI: Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus; and taxation
Chapter VII: The Year of Six Emperors, and Philip the Arab
Chapter VIII: Of the state of Persia after the restoration of the monarchy by Artaxerxes
Chapter IX: The state of Germany till the invasion of the Barbarians
Chapter X: mostly about the Goths
Chapter XI: mostly about Aurelian
Chapter XII: Tacitus, Probus, Carus, and the rise of Diocletian
Chapter XIII: Diocletian
Chapter XIV: The Rise of Constantine
Chapter XV: Early Christianity
Chapter XVI: Early Christianity and the Emperors

Book II
Chapter XVII: Constantinople and Constantine's system of government
Chapter XVIII: Constantine and his successors
Chapter XIX: Constantius, Gallus and Julian
Chapter XX: The conversion of Constantine and the establishment of Christianity
Chapter XXI: Heresy and paganism
Chapter XXII: The Rise of Julian the Apostate
Chapter XXIII: Julian and his Apostasy
Chapter XXIV: Julian's Persian campaign, and his death
Chapter XXV: Jovian, Valentinian, Valens, Valentinian's sons & the final division of the empire
Chapter XXVI: The Goths infiltrate

Book III
Chapter XXVII: Mostly about Theodosius
Chapter XXVIII: The Destruction of Paganism, and Worship of Relics and Saints by Christians
Chapter XXIX: The Sons of Theodosius; also Rufinus and Stilicho
Chapter XXX: The Goths are coming
Chapter XXXI: The Sack of Rome
Chapter XXXII: Arcadius, St John Chrysostom, and Theodosius II
Chapter XXXIII: The Vandals conquer Africa
Chapter XXXIV: Attila the Hun
Chapter XXXV: The End of Attila
Chapter XXXVI: The End of the Western Empire
Chapter XXXVII: Monks and Arians
Chapter XXXVIII: France, Spain and Britain
General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West

Book IV
Chapter XXXIX: Theodoric and Boethius
Chapter XL: Justinian, Part I
Chapter XLI: Justinian, Part II
Chapter XLII: Justinian, Part III
Chapter XLIII: Justinian, Part IV
Chapter XLIV: Justinian, Part V - his legal legacy
Chapter XLV: After Justinian's death: The Lombards and Italy
Chapter XLVI: The Persians, the Avars and Heraclius
Chapter XLVII: Christianity in the East

Book V
Chapter XLVIII: Plan of last two volumes, and later Byzantine emperors
Chapter XLIX: Iconoclasm, Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire
Chapter L: Mahomet
Chapter LI: the successors of Mahomet
Chapter LII: The limits of the early caliphate
Chapter LIII: The Byzantine Empire in the Tenth Century
Chapter LIV: The Paulicians and the Reformation
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, the Hungarians and the Russians
Chapter LVI: Italy and the Normans
Chapter LVII: The Turks

Book VI
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade
Chapter LIX: The Later Crusades
Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade
Chapter LXI: The Latin Empire, the Crusades and the Courtenays
Chapter LXII: the East in the later thirteenth century
Chapter LXIII: The East in the early 14th century
Chapter LXIV: Genghis Khan, and the return of the Turks
Chapter LXV: Tamerlane / Timour, and the Turks again
Chapter LXVI: The Eastern Empire and the Popes
Chapter LXVII: The Beginning of the End
Chapter LXVIII: The Fall of Constantinople
Chapter LXIX: Rome, 1100-1300
Chapter LXX: Rome, 1300-1590
Chapter LXXI: The End

Vindication of some passages in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters

Read it here or here

1) Great lines

In the last days of Pope Eugenius the Fourth, two of his servants, the learned Poggius and a friend, ascended the Capitoline hill; reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and temples; and viewed from that commanding spot the wide and various prospect of desolation. The place and the object gave ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her former greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable...

The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time, his life and his labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid edifice, it is not easy, however, to circumscribe the duration. As the wonders of ancient days, the pyramids attracted the curiosity of the ancients: a hundred generations, the leaves of autumn, have dropped into the grave; and after the fall of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the Caesars and caliphs, the same pyramids stand erect and unshaken above the floods of the Nile...

Our fancy may create, or adopt, a pleasing romance, that the Goths and Vandals sallied from Scandinavia, ardent to avenge the flight of Odin; to break the chains, and to chastise the oppressors, of mankind; that they wished to burn the records of classic literature, and to found their national architecture on the broken members of the Tuscan and Corinthian orders. But in simple truth, the northern conquerors were neither sufficiently savage, nor sufficiently refined, to entertain such aspiring ideas of destruction and revenge...

The value of any object that supplies the wants or pleasures of mankind is compounded of its substance and its form, of the materials and the manufacture. Its price must depend on the number of persons by whom it may be acquired and used; on the extent of the market; and consequently on the ease or difficulty of remote exportation, according to the nature of the commodity, its local situation, and the temporary circumstances of the world...

Whatever is fortified will be attacked; and whatever is attacked may be destroyed...

...the spectator, impatient to ascend the steps of St. Peter's, is detained by a column of Egyptian granite, which rises between two lofty and perpetual fountains, to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. The map, the description, the monuments of ancient Rome, have been elucidated by the diligence of the antiquarian and the student: (75) and the footsteps of heroes, the relics, not of superstition, but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of pilgrims from the remote, and once savage countries of the North.

Final Conclusion

Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful policy of the Caesars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorders of military despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East: the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.

LAUSANNE,
June 27 1787

2) Summary

Gibbon describes the causes of the ruin of the city of Rome, with a diversion to the coliseum and religious architecture, and then concludes the entire work.

3) Matters arising

i) it's all over

I feel a bit emotional now. It gook me only two years and a bit, rather less than Gibbon's twenty years, but it's been a remarkable reading experience.

ii) mild disappointment

It would be unthinkable today to have a historical study of any length which did not begin with a statement of its intellectual argument and which did not finish with an assessment of the entire work. But we must tease out Gibbon's thought from his ironic asides, and the only final thought he leaves us with is that the story told is "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind". After almost three thousand pages of detail, it seems a bit flat not to have a final reflection on what we have learned from all of this.

iii) envy

But that is I suppose forgiveable; Gibbon was not only a man of his own time, he helped to shape the practice of historical writing from his own time to the present day. I just wish that I could turn out phrases like his.

4) Coming next

I shall finish off this blog with a final post indexing the chapters and drawing my general conclusions, probably later today.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

A footnote on how silly it is to have a poet laureate:

⁸ I much doubt whether any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who in every reign, and at all events, is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel, and, I believe, in the presence, of the sovereign. I speak the more freely, as the best time for abolishing this ridiculous custom is while the prince is a man of virtue and the poet a man of genius.

I think the British Poet Laureate of the day was the now completely forgotten Thomas Warton, so I do wonder if Gibbon, as so often, has his tongue in his cheek.

More one-liners:

Avignon, the mystic Babylon, the sink of vice and corruption, was the object of his [ie Petrarch's] hatred and contempt; but he forgets that her scandalous vices were not the growth of the soil, and that in every residence they would adhere to the power and luxury of the papal court.

Can the death of a good man be esteemed a punishment by those who believe in the immortality of the soul? They betray the instability of their faith.

...the establishment of order has been gradually connected with the decay of liberty.

The dominion of priests is most odious to a liberal spirit...

For myself, it is my wish to depart in charity with all mankind, nor am I willing, in these last moments, to offend even the pope and clergy of Rome.

On that last point, Mr Gibbon? Probably too late.

2) Summary

A survey of the history of Rome from 1300 to 1590, which covers the history of Rienzi (which I knew nothing about), the Great Schism (which I did know something about) and the government of Rome once the Popes had returned.

3) Points arising

i) the Pope as temporal prince

...or rather, the peculiarities of the head of the church as wielder of temporal power as head of government:

A Christian, a philosopher, and a patriot, will be equally scandalized by the temporal kingdom of the clergy; and the local majesty of Rome, the remembrance of her consuls and triumphs, may seem to embitter the sense, and aggravate the shame, of her slavery. If we calmly weigh the merits and defects of the ecclesiastical government, it may be praised in its present state, as a mild, decent, and tranquil system, exempt from the dangers of a minority, the sallies of youth, the expenses of luxury, and the calamities of war. But these advantages are overbalanced by a frequent, perhaps a septennial, election of a sovereign, who is seldom a native of the country; the reign of a young statesman of threescore, in the decline of his life and abilities, without hope to accomplish, and without children to inherit, the labours of his transitory reign. The successful candidate is drawn from the church, and even the convent; from the mode of education and life the most adverse to reason, humanity, and freedom. In the trammels of servile faith, he has learned to believe because it is absurd, to revere all that is contemptible, and to despise whatever might deserve the esteem of a rational being; to punish error as a crime, to reward mortification and celibacy as the first of virtues; to place the saints of the calendar above the heroes of Rome and the sages of Athens; and to consider the missal, or the crucifix, as more useful instruments than the plough or the loom. In the office of nuncio, or the rank of cardinal, he may acquire some knowledge of the world, but the primitive stain will adhere to his mind and manners: from study and experience he may suspect the mystery of his profession; but the sacerdotal artist will imbibe some portion of the bigotry which he inculcates.

The duty of every educated Englishman was of course to inveigh against Popish iniquities (particularly those who were youthful converts and then returned to Protestantism). But even Catholics must surely admit that Gibbon lands some good points here.

ii) the Great Schism

When I was a teenager I remember reading a book about the Great Schism (most likely The Three Popes by the Baha'i writer Marzieh Gail). It's a rollicking good story of ecclesiastical division and Gibbon placed it rather better in the context of the return from Avignon than I remember Gail doing (if it was her and not John Holland Smith).

iii) how power transforms people

This is with reference to Rienzi, a totally new story to me:

...from every part of Italy, the tribune received the most friendly and respectful answers: they were followed by the ambassadors of the princes and republics; and in this foreign conflux, on all the occasions of pleasure or business, the low born notary could assume the familiar or majestic courtesy of a sovereign.<sup>29

29</sup> It was thus that Oliver Cromwell's old acquaintance, who remembered his vulgar and ungracious entrance into the House of Commons, were astonished at the ease and majesty of the protector on his throne. The consciousness of merit and power will sometimes elevate the manners to the station.

Not the only reference to Cromwell in this chapter:

It is an obvious truth that the times must be suited to extraordinary characters, and that the genius of Cromwell or Retz might now expire in obscurity. The political enthusiasm of Rienzi had exalted him to a throne; the same enthusiasm, in the next century, conducted his imitator to the gallows.

I was baffled by the reference to Retz but apparently it is this person and not a misprint for Rienzi as I half thought it might be.

iii) on the influence of holy women on the popes

God told the Popes to return from Avignon to Rome through two female saints:

The powers of heaven were interested in their cause: Bridget of Sweden, a saint and pilgrim, disapproved the return, and foretold the death, of the migration of Gregory the Eleventh was encouraged by St. Catherine of Sienna, the spouse of Christ and ambassadress of the Florentines; and the popes themselves, the great masters of human credulity, appear to have listened to these visionary females.<sup>59

59</sup> I have not leisure to expatiate on the legends of St. Bridget or St. Catharine, the last of which might furnish some amusing stories. Their effect on the mind of Gregory XI. is attested by the last solemn words of the dying pope, who admonished the assistants,

ut caverent ab hominibus, sive viris, sive mulieribus, sub specie religionis loquentibus visiones sui capitis, quia per tales ipse seductus, &c.
[to beware of any persons, be they men or women, who speak the visions of their own minds under the guise of religion, because he himself had been misled by such...]

iv) on who was right in the Great Schism

⁶⁷The ordinal numbers of the popes seem to decide the question against Clement VII. and Benedict XIII. who are boldly stigmatised as anti-popes by the Italians, while the French are content with authorities and reasons to plead the cause of doubt and toleration. It is singular, or rather it is not singular, that saints, visions, and miracles should be common to both parties.

4) Coming next

Believe it or not, there is only one more chapter to go: Chapter LXXI, the Conclusion. Read it here or here. Given that next weekend is Christmas, I expect that I will be reading it and writing it up on 1 January 2012.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

...the modern times of religious indifference are the most favourable to the peace and security of the clergy. Under the reign of superstition, they had much to hope from the ignorance, and much to fear from the violence, of mankind.

Porto and Ostia, the two keys of the Tyber, are still vacant and desolate: the marshy and unwholesome banks are peopled with herds of buffaloes, and the river is lost to every purpose of navigation and trade.

Ambition is a weed of quick and early vegetation in the vineyard of Christ.

⁸⁵ I am at a loss to determine whether the nephew of Boniface VIII [James Caietan] be a fool or a knave; the uncle is a much clearer character.

¹⁰³ Treason, sacrilege, and proscription are often the best titles of ancient nobility.

2) Summary

A deft sketch of the changing relationship between the papacy and the city of Rome in the early second millennium, including the exile to Avignon.

3) Matters arising

Only two this week.

i) the de Sade family

I was startled to read of the Abbé de Sade as an expert on this period in a couple of the footnotes, this being the first:

⁸¹ The exile of Avignon is compared by the Italians with Babylon and the Babylonish captivity. Such furious metaphors, more suitable to the ardour of Petrarch than to the judgment of Muratori, are gravely refuted in Baluze’s preface. The Abbé de Sade is distracted between the love of Petrarch and of his country. Yet he modestly pleads that many of the local inconveniences of Avignon are now removed; and many of the vices against which the poet declaims had been imported with the Roman court by the strangers of Italy.

...and wondered if this might be the famous Marquis, or one of his relatives. Indeed, it turns out to be Jacques de Sade, not only the uncle of the infamous Marquis, but also his guardian and tutor during the formative years of his childhood, much of that time spent near Avignon. It's slightly ironic that in a chapter with a lot of dubious uncle-nephew relationships, Gibbon was not aware of one right under his nose.

ii) the Jewish pope

An interesting anecdote, which I needed to unpack a bit.

...the elevation of an Hebrew race to the rank of senators and consuls is an event without a parallel in the long captivity of these miserable exiles.⁹⁴ In the time of Leo the Ninth, a wealthy and learned Jew was converted to Christianity, and honoured at his baptism with the name of his godfather, the reigning Pope. Family of Leo the jew. The zeal and courage of Peter the son of Leo were signalized in the cause of Gregory the Seventh, who entrusted his faithful adherent with the government of Adrian's mole, the tower of Crescentius, or, as it is now called, the castle of St. Angelo. Both the father and the son were the parents of a numerous progeny: their riches, the fruits of usury, were shared with the noblest families of the city; and so extensive was their alliance, that the grandson of the proselyte was exalted by the weight of his kindred to the throne of St. Peter. A majority of the clergy and people supported his cause: he reigned several years in the Vatican; and it is only the eloquence of St. Bernard, and the final triumph of Innocence the Second, that has branded Anacletus with the epithet of antipope. After his defeat and death, the posterity of Leo is no longer conspicuous; and none will be found of the modern nobles ambitious of descending from a Jewish stock.

⁹⁴ The origin and adventures of the Jewish family are noticed by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iv. p. 435, A.D. 1124, No. 3, 4,) who draws his information from the Chronographus Maurigniacensis, and Arnulphus Sagiensis de Schismate, (in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 423 - 432.) The fact must in some degree be true; yet I could wish that it had been coolly related, before it was turned into a reproach against the antipope.

I am glad that Gibbon appears to disapprove of anti-Semitism in the footnote. Poor old Anacletus II is one of the losers of history, through no fault of his own.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXX, Rome to 1590. Read it here or here. I may not have time to do this next weekend, which will mean that the whole project will wrap up in the New Year.

Read it here or here.

1) Great lines

In the main text we have the sublime:

Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade: the ambassadors of the emperor attempted, without success, to divert Mahomet from the execution of his design.

Amidst hope and fear, the fears of the wise, and the hopes of the credulous, the winter rolled away; the proper business of each man, and each hour, was postponed; and the Greeks shut their eyes against the impending danger, till the arrival of the spring and the sultan decide the assurance of their ruin.

In her last decay, Constantinople was still peopled with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants; but these numbers are found in the accounts, not of war, but of captivity; and they mostly consisted of mechanics, of priests, of women, and of men devoid of that spirit which even women have sometimes exerted for the common safety. I can suppose, I could almost excuse, the reluctance of subjects to serve on a distant frontier, at the will of a tyrant; but the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature. By the emperor's command, a particular inquiry had been made through the streets and houses, how many of the citizens, or even of the monks, were able and willing to bear arms for their country. The lists were entrusted to Phranza; and, after a diligent addition, he informed his master, with grief and surprise, that the national defence was reduced to four thousand nine hundred and seventy Romans.

...patience is not the attribute of zeal; nor can the arts of a court be adapted to the freedom and violence of popular enthusiasm.

The last speech of Palæologus was the funeral oration of the Roman empire: he promised, he conjured, and he vainly attempted to infuse the hope which was extinguished in his own mind.

The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skilful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion nor shall I strive, at the distance of three centuries, and a thousand miles, to delineate a scene of which there could be no spectators, and of which the actors themselves were incapable of forming any just or adequate idea.

[The historian will] seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ten volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece. We may reflect with pleasure that an inestimable portion of our classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy; and that the mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the havoc of time and barbarism.

Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a prince or a people. But she could not be despoiled of the incomparable situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great empire; and the genius of the place will ever triumph over the accidents of time and fortune.

But in the footnotes, Gibbon has an eye for the ridiculous:

²⁶ The Baron de Tott, (tom. iii. p. 85 - 89,) who fortified the Dardanelles against the Russians, describes in a lively, and even comic, strain his own prowess, and the consternation of the Turks. But that adventurous traveller does not possess the art of gaining our confidence.

As early as the beginning of April, five great ships, equipped for merchandise and war, would have sailed from the harbour of Chios, had not the wind blown obstinately from the north.^43
43 In bold defiance, or rather in gross ignorance, of language and geography, the president Cousin detains them in Chios with a south, and wafts them to Constantinople with a north, wind.

2) Summary

Constantinople falls to the Turks. (Gosh, I am not sure if I saw that coming.)

3) Points arising

i) the cannon

We've had a certain amount about gunpowder in the last few chapters, and the cannon gives a pretty good example of Gibbon's fascination with the shift of technology:

Among the implements of destruction, he studied with peculiar care the recent and tremendous discovery of the Latins; and his artillery surpassed whatever had yet appeared in the world. A founder of cannon, a Dane or Hungarian, who had been almost starved in the Greek service, deserted to the Moslems, and was liberally entertained by the Turkish sultan. Mahomet was satisfied with the answer to his first question, which he eagerly pressed on the artist. "Am I able to cast a cannon capable of throwing a ball or stone of sufficient size to batter the walls of Constantinople? I am not ignorant of their strength; but were they more solid than those of Babylon, I could oppose an engine of superior power: the position and management of that engine must be left to your engineers." On this assurance, a foundry was established at Adrianople: the metal was prepared; and at the end of three months, Urban produced a piece of brass ordnance of stupendous, and almost incredible magnitude; a measure of twelve palms is assigned to the bore; and the stone bullet weighed above six hundred pounds. A vacant place before the new palace was chosen for the first experiment; but to prevent the sudden and mischievous effects of astonishment and fear, a proclamation was issued, that the cannon would be discharged the ensuing day. The explosion was felt or heard in a circuit of a hundred furlongs: the ball, by the force of gunpowder, was driven above a mile; and on the spot where it fell, it buried itself a fathom deep in the ground. For the conveyance of this destructive engine, a frame or carriage of thirty wagons was linked together and drawn along by a team of sixty oxen: two hundred men on both sides were stationed, to poise and support the rolling weight; two hundred and fifty workmen marched before to smooth the way and repair the bridges; and near two months were employed in a laborious journey of one hundred and fifty miles. A lively philosopher[Voltaire, see below] derides on this occasion the credulity of the Greeks, and observes, with much reason, that we should always distrust the exaggerations of a vanquished people. He calculates, that a ball, even of two hundred pounds, would require a charge of one hundred and fifty pounds of powder; and that the stroke would be feeble and impotent, since not a fifteenth part of the mass could be inflamed at the same moment. A stranger as I am to the art of destruction, I can discern that the modern improvements of artillery prefer the number of pieces to the weight of metal; the quickness of the fire to the sound, or even the consequence, of a single explosion. Yet I dare not reject the positive and unanimous evidence of contemporary writers; nor can it seem improbable, that the first artists, in their rude and ambitious efforts, should have transgressed the standard of moderation. A Turkish cannon, more enormous than that of Mahomet, still guards the entrance of the Dardanelles; and if the use be inconvenient, it has been found on a late trial that the effect was far from contemptible. A stone bullet of eleven hundred pounds' weight was once discharged with three hundred and thirty pounds of powder: at the distance of six hundred yards it shivered into three rocky fragments; traversed the strait; and leaving the waters in a foam, again rose and bounded against the opposite hill.

It's also a good example of Gibbon weighing the accounts of contemporary observers with later analysis and bringing in as much objective evidence as he can. (And he is a little modest about being a stranger to the art of desctruction, given his years with the county militia.)

ii) transporting your navy over land

Gibbon is also fascinated by the crucial event of the transport of the Ottoman ships to upstream of the harbour:

In this perplexity, the genius of Mahomet conceived and executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast, of transporting by land his lighter vessels and military stores from the Bosphorus into the higher part of the harbour. The distance is about ten miles; the ground is uneven, and was overspread with thickets; and, as the road must be opened behind the suburb of Galata, their free passage or total destruction must depend on the option of the Genoese. But these selfish merchants were ambitious of the favour of being the last devoured; and the deficiency of art was supplied by the strength of obedient myraids. A level way was covered with a broad platform of strong and solid planks; and to render them more slippery and smooth, they were anointed with the fat of sheep and oxen. Fourscore light galleys and brigantines, of fifty and thirty oars, were disembarked on the Bosphorus shore; arranged successively on rollers; and drawn forwards by the power of men and pulleys. Two guides or pilots were stationed at the helm, and the prow, of each vessel: the sails were unfurled to the winds; and the labor was cheered by song and acclamation. In the course of a single night, this Turkish fleet painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and was launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. The real importance of this operation was magnified by the consternation and confidence which it inspired: but the notorious, unquestionable fact was displayed before the eyes, and is recorded by the pens, of the two nations.⁴⁸ A similar stratagem had been repeatedly practised by the ancients;⁴⁹ the Ottoman galleys (I must again repeat) should be considered as large boats; and, if we compare the magnitude and the distance, the obstacles and the means, the boasted miracle has perhaps been equalled by the industry of our own times.^51
48 The unanimous testimony of the four Greeks is confirmed by Cantemir (p. 96) from the Turkish annals; but I could wish to contract the distance of ten miles, and to prolong the term of one night.
⁴⁹ Phranza relates two examples of a similar transportation over the six miles of the Isthmus of Corinth; the one fabulous, of Augustus after the battle of Actium; the other true, of Nicetas, a Greek general in the xth century. To these he might have added a bold enterprise of Hannibal, to introduce his vessels into the harbour of Tarentum.
⁵¹ I particularly allude to our own embarkations on the lakes of Canada in the years 1776 and 1777, so great in the labor, so fruitless in the event.

It's an interesting case of Gibbon drawing a direct parallel between the fall of the Roman Empire and the loss of America. He is a bit unfair about the Canadian lakes, though of course he is writing shortly after the trauma of the loss of the war as a whole. The British actually won the Lake Champlain campaign in 1776, ensuring tha the Americans would not capture canada; it was in the subsequent over-reach that they lost the war at Saratoga in 1777, but Canada remained secure.

iii) Voltaire

Gibbon has an eye to the competition, I think:

A lively philosopher^25
25 See Voltaire, (Hist. Generale, c. xci. p. 294, 295.) He was ambitious of universal monarchy; and the poet frequently aspires to the name and style of an astronomer, a chemist, &c.

five⁴² great ships
⁴² It is singular that the Greeks should not agree in the number of these illustrious vessels; the five of Ducas, the four of Phranza and Leonardus, and the two of Chalcondyles, must be extended to the smaller, or confined to the larger, size. Voltaire, in giving one of these ships to Frederic III. confounds the emperors of the East and West.

the camp reechoed with the Moslem shouts of "God is God: there is but one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God;"^54
54 Phranza quarrels with these Moslem acclamations, not for the name of God, but for that of the prophet: the pious zeal of Voltaire is excessive, and even ridiculous.

⁸⁴ ...Voltaire, as usual, prefers the Turks to the Christians.

It's an unfair comparison in some ways, but I suspect Gibbon's account is nowadays more widely read than Voltaire's.

iv) Samuel Johnson and astronomy

My eye was caught by the following footnote, and I spent some time unpacking it:

⁵³ ... in the tragedy of Irene, Mahomet’s passion soars above sense and reason: —

Should the fierce North, upon his frozen wings,
Bear him aloft above the wondering clouds,
And seat him in the Pleiads’ golden chariot —
Thence should my fury drag him down to tortures.

Besides the extravagance of the rant, I must observe,

1. That the operation of the winds must be confined to the lower region of the air.
2. That the name, etymology, and fable of the Pleiads are purely Greek (Scholiast ad Homer, Σ 686; Eudocia in Ioniâ, p. 399; Apollodore, l. iii. c. 10; Heine, p. 229, Not. 682), and had no affinity with the astronomy of the East (Hyde ad Ulugbeg, Tabul. in Syntagma Dissert. tom. i. p. 40, 42; Goguet, Origine des Arts, &c. tom. vi. p. 73-78; Gebelin, Hist. du Calendrier, p. 73), which Mahomet had studied.
3. The golden chariot does not exist either in science or fiction; but I much fear that Dr. Johnson has confounded the Pleiads with the great bear or waggon, the zodiac with a northern constellation: —

   Ἅρκτον θ’ ἣν καὶ ἅμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσι.

This is rather overkill from Gibbon. Poor old Samuel Johnson had his most significant artistic flop with Irene, an overblown play about a Christian woman taken by the Sultan as a lover. But Johnson was under no obligation to give the Sultan knowledge of the winds, and it's surely not unreasonable to invent a chariot for any star or group of stars which one sees travelling across the sky.

The Greek quote is from the Odyssey, and (to be as pedantic with Gibbon as he was with Johnson) slightly incorrect - I find "Ἄρκτον θ᾽, ἣν καὶ ἄμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσιν" at 5.273 - "The Bear, which men also call the Wain". The Pleiades are mentioned in the previous line.

v) astrology and the launch of the attack

I was fascinated to see that the date of the Ottoman attack was fixed by astrological calcuation, and decided to try and reconstruct this forensically. Tuckerman's tables give the following positions for the relevant celestial bodies on 29 May 1453 (directly for the inner planets, by interpolation for the outer ones):

Moon: Pisces 7° (trine with Mercury)
Mercury: Cancer 5° (trine with Moon, square with Jupiter)
Venus: Taurus 24° (sextile with Mars)
Sun: Gemini 16°
Mars: Cancer 25° (sextile with Venus, square with Saturn)
Jupiter: Aries 9° (square with Mercury)
Saturn (retrograde): Libra 24° (square with Saturn)

Here and here are astrological charts for 11 am and midday in Istanbul on 29 May 1453 which more or less confirm the above. They vary slightly in detail with each other and with Tuckerman, but both include the interesting extra information that the 'Dragon's Head', the lunar ascending node ☊, was at Sagittarius 16°, directly opposite the otherwise unaspected Sun (and moving retrograde as it always does). This makes sense, as there was a lunar eclipse the previous week.

I reckon that the Ottoman astrologers expected the Sun hitting the 'Dragon's Tail', the lunar descending node ☋, to somehow purge any ill effects of the previous week's eclipse. (The nodes are normally considered to be malefic factors, but it's not as if astrology makes any sense anyway.) The Moon moving into favourable aspect with Mercury, and away from opposition with Mars from a few days earlier, will also have helped; likewise Venus, in its home sign of Taurus, moving to sextile with Mars to alleviate the latter's negative aspect with Saturn. But I think the Sun's position was probably the crucial determinant - the numbers fit so well, and the location of the invisible nodes was something a decently trained astrologer could skilfully and accurately calculate with an air of mystery.

Gibbon suggests that there was a more precise calculation about the best time to start the assault, which was delayed until after dawn rather than starting during the night which would have been usual practice. I don't see an obvious candidate for that though; Mercury rising, or Jupiter crossing the mid-heaven, or Saturn crossing the lower mid-heaven, all fit time-wise but not really astrologically, and in fact I could make a better astrological argument for starting the attack an hour or so before dawn (Venus rising; Part of Fortune conjunction with Jupiter). I suspect it may simply have been the moment when the Sun's precise conjunction with the Dragon's Tail was deemed to have taken place by the Ottoman calculators.

(I am slightly surprised that nobody seems to have done this calculation before.)

4) Coming next

Chapter LXIX, Rome from 1100 to 1500. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good quotes

A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness. If the most reasonable excuse be rejected, few acts of obedience will be found impossible; and guilt must tremble, where innocence cannot always be secure.

On the dervishes:

...the fanatics, who mistook the giddiness of the head for the illumination of the spirit.

On the failure of the union of the churches:

In the synod of Florence, the Greeks and Latins had embraced, and subscribed, and promised; but these signs of friendship were perfidious or fruitless; and the baseless fabric of the union vanished like a dream.

2) Summary

The carefully negotiated union of the eastern and western churches does not last, but the pressure on Constantinople is relieved for a few years by the Hungarians, to the north, and Scanderbeg and the Albanians, to the west. We end with Constantine Palæologus on the throne; but not for long.

3) Points arising

i) far-flung peoples

We get a couple of rather speculative footnotes on Siberian shamanism, and on life in India as recounted by a Georgian who claimed to have travelled widely.

⁹ The Shamanism, the ancient religion of the Samanæans and Gymnosophists, has been driven by the more popular Bramins from India into the northern deserts: the naked philosophers were compelled to wrap themselves in fur; but they insensibly sunk into wizards and physicians. The Mordvans and Tcheremisses in the European Russia adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly model of one king or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits who oppose his government. As these tribes of the Volga have no images, they might more justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of idolaters.

⁵⁰ The happy and pious Indians lived a hundred and fifty years, and enjoyed the most perfect productions of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The animals were on a large scale: dragons seventy cubits, ants (the formica Indica) nine inches long, sheep like elephants, elephants like sheep. Quidlibet audendi, &c.

That last tag being a reference to Horace's line from Ars Poetica, "Pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas", more or less that painters and poets have always had equal license in regard to daring invention.

ii) transliteration from the Arabic alphabet

Specifically, the Sultan who Gibbon calls Amurath II, in line with then-current practice, but as he admits at variance with the actual records:

¹¹ Murad, or Morad, may be more correct: but I have preferred the popular name to that obscure diligence which is rarely successful in translating an Oriental, into the Roman, alphabet.

The Ottoman Turkish was مراد which of course gives no clue as to the vowels (except for the a between the last two consonants), and that final د, though normally a "d", could easily be pronounced differently especially if a dot has got mislaid over the centuries and it was originally ذ, which would be closer to Gibbon's "th". I note that modern Turkish usage calls him Murat II, though Azeri sticks with Murad.

iii) Scanderbeg and Albanian geography

As an occasional visitor to Albanian-speaking territories (more Kovos and Macedonia than Albania itself) I was very aware of Scanderbeg as a historical figure but very scanty on the detail. It is a very exciting story, as Gibbon tells it, with some of his better circumstantial writing, slightly spoiled by the fact that, as he puts it, "we want a good map of Epirus". I can help a little: His Croya is the modern Albanian town of Krujë, which I have driven past on the motorway; Dibra is the Macedonian town of Debar (still called Dibra in Albanian which is the majority local language) which I have visited; the location of the castle of Sfetigrade is disputed, but one source gives me a Macedonian village now called Kodžadžik (also supposedly the original home of the parents of Kemal Ataturk, and still with an ethnic Turkish majority) and another makes it the Macedonian town of Demir Hisar, which is not as close to Debar but has a bigger castle. Lissus, where Scanderbeg died, is the northern Albanian town of Lezhë, which I have actually driven through though did not stop to see his tomb in the cathedral.

I should add that the story of the Hungarians and the Battle of Varna is just as intrinsically interesting for people with fewer Albanian memories than me.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXVIII: The Fall of Constantinople. Read it here or here.

Back after several weeks off, due to travel and visitors. Read it here or here.

1) Great quotes

On why good writing can outlast physical relics:

...the monuments of art may be annihilated by a single blow; but the immortal mind is renewed and multiplied by the copies of the pen...

Gibbon is sceptical about changing church doctrine on the fly:

Perhaps it may not be necessary to boast on this subject of my own impartial indifference; but I must think that the Greeks were strongly supported by the prohibition of the council of Chalcedon, against adding any article whatsoever to the creed of Nice, or rather of Constantinople. In earthly affairs, it is not easy to conceive how an assembly equal of legislators can bind their successors invested with powers equal to their own. But the dictates of inspiration must be true and unchangeable...

...and anyway has difficulties with theological nuance:

It was agreed (I must entreat the attention of the reader) that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, as from one principle and one substance; that he proceeds by the Son, being of the same nature and substance, and that he proceeds from the Father and the Son, by one spiration and production.

Quite so!

2) Summary

The successive emperors and popes of the early fifteenth century negotiate (again) union between the churches. The increased contact between East and West causes the Renaissance.

3) Points arising

Lots of them this month.

i) kissing and the English

I was amused and intrigued by Gibbon's transcription of Laonicus Chalcondyles' account of the English:

...in the habits of domestic life, they are not easily distinguished from their neighbours of France: but the most singular circumstance of their manners is their disregard of conjugal honour and of female chastity. In their mutual visits, as the first act of hospitality, the guest is welcomed in the embraces of their wives and daughters: among friends they are lent and borrowed without shame; nor are the islanders offended at this strange commerce, and its inevitable consequences.²⁷

Informed as we are of the customs of Old England and assured of the virtue of our mothers, we may smile at the credulity, or resent the injustice, of the Greek, who must have confounded a modest salute²⁸ with a criminal embrace.

²⁷ If the double sense of the verb Κύω (osculor [kiss], and in utero gero [conceive/impregnate]) be equivocal, the context and pious horror of Chalcondyles can leave no doubt of his meaning and mistake, (p. 49.)

²⁸ Erasmus (Epist. Fausto Andrelino) has a pretty passage on the English fashion of kissing strangers on their arrival and departure, from whence, however, he draws no scandalous inferences.

Gibbon, through Chalcondyles, is contrasting the English with the French and Germans here, and doesn't dispute Chalcondyles' observation that the English are more likely than their continental neighbours to greet their friends and acquaintances with an embrace of some kind. It's interesting because my perception, having grown up in Belfast and studied in England, but having lived in Belgium for almost thirteen years, is that nowadays the reverse is the case, and even shaking hands to greet male friends is a foreign habit which I have developed rather than something I was brought up to do. (My own carefully developed rule is, when greeting female friends other than in an Anglophone context, three cheek kisses; when greeting male friends from the Eastern Mediterranean on their home turf, one cheek kiss; otherwise shake hands.) I wonder if there is any data on whether and when this change of custom happened?

Gibbon draws an important lesson from this:

But his [Chalcondyles'] credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson; to distrust the accounts of foreign and remote nations, and to suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.<sup>29

29</sup> Perhaps we may apply this remark to the community of wives among the old Britons, as it is supposed by Caesar and Dion, (Dion Cassius, l. lxii. tom. ii. p. 1007,) with Reimar's judicious annotation. The Arreoy of Otaheite, so certain at first, is become less visible and scandalous, in proportion as we have studied the manners of that gentle and amorous people.

Sensible advice, which, thank heavens, Gibbon does not always follow himself.

ii) single versus double procession, again

Gibbon's summary of the filioque debate, partly quoted earlier, is one of his masterful passages:

The procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son, was an article of faith which had sunk much deeper into the minds of men; and in the sessions of Ferrara and Florence, the Latin addition of filioque was subdivided into two questions, whether it were legal, and whether it were orthodox. Perhaps it may not be necessary to boast on this subject of my own impartial indifference; but I must think that the Greeks were strongly supported by the prohibition of the council of Chalcedon, against adding any article whatsoever to the creed of Nice, or rather of Constantinople. In earthly affairs, it is not easy to conceive how an assembly equal of legislators can bind their successors invested with powers equal to their own. But the dictates of inspiration must be true and unchangeable; nor should a private bishop, or a provincial synod, have presumed to innovate against the judgment of the Catholic church. On the substance of the doctrine, the controversy was equal and endless: reason is confounded by the procession of a deity: the gospel, which lay on the altar, was silent; the various texts of the fathers might be corrupted by fraud or entangled by sophistry; and the Greeks were ignorant of the characters and writings of the Latin saints. Of this at least we may be sure, that neither side could be convinced by the arguments of their opponents. Prejudice may be enlightened by reason, and a superficial glance may be rectified by a clear and more perfect view of an object adapted to our faculties. But the bishops and monks had been taught from their infancy to repeat a form of mysterious words: their national and personal honour depended on the repetition of the same sounds; and their narrow minds were hardened and inflamed by the acrimony of a public dispute.

His account of how the debate ended has already been quoted.

iii) an Oxford footnote

⁸⁴ In the year 1357 the number at Oxford had decreased from 30,000 to 6000 scholars, (Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. iv. p. 478.) Yet even this decrease is much superior to the present list of the members of the university.

I remember checking through the history of my own Cambridge college, which admitted no new students at all for a five-year period in the 1780s, which is exactly when Gibbon would have been writing. One wonders how the Fellows filled their time.

iv) how one might miss out on becoming Pope

On Cardinal Bessarion:

his election to the chair of St. Peter floated for a moment on the uncertain breath of a conclave.<sup>103

103</sup> The cardinals knocked at his door, but his conclavist refused to interrupt the studies of Bessarion: "Nicholas," said he, "thy respect has cost thee a hat, and me the tiara."

The story comes from Paulus Jovius:

But after Paul [II]'s death a fatal chance in the conclave prevented his attaining so high an ambition. For they say that three very influential cardinals, who had gone to seek him out in the seclusion of his cell with the intention of saluting him as Pope, were turned away by the doorkeeper Niccolò Perotti, because the foolish fellow said that Bessarion was working and must not be disturbed. This made them so angry that they went away indignantly saying: "Is the supreme office then to be forced on a man who will not lay hold of it or even ask for it, so that, while he sits waiting for votes to fall from heaven, we must take orders from insolent and stupid doorkeepers?" And they immediately transferred their votes to Sixtus [IV]. After his election had been at once announced and he had been adored as Pope, Bessarion is reported to have said, "This untimely zeal of yours, Niccolò, has cost me the tiara and you the cardinal's hat."

It's certainly true that Bessarion was a plausible candidate for the papacy on more than one occasion, but this detail must be a legend; Bessarion was chairing the 1471 conclave (his fifth) as Dean of the College of Cardinals, so it is impossible that he have been unaware of the political currents to the extent that we are meant to believe here - a case of Gibbon not taking his own advice (see above under kissing and the English).

v) how to pronounce Ancient Greek

This is a point which has been known to cause confusion in the present day:

¹⁰⁷ ...The modern Greeks pronounce the β as a V consonant, and confound three vowels (η ι υ) and several diphthongs. Such was the vulgar pronunciation which the stern Gardiner maintained by penal statutes in the university of Cambridge: but the monosyllable βη represented to an Attic ear the bleating of sheep, and a bell-wether is better evidence than a bishop or a chancellor. The treatises of those scholars, particularly Erasmus, who asserted a more classical pronunciation, are collected in the Sylloge of Havercamp, but it is difficult to paint sounds by words: and in their reference to modern use, they can be understood only by their respective countrymen. We may observe, that our peculiar pronunciation of the θ to th is approved by Erasmus.

vi) The Renaissance

This chapter tells a very interesting story because it is the beginning of the Renaissance, of the modern era in a way. I must admit I had never really reflected on the fact that it had properly got going even before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In a sense this is the intellectual conclusion of the entire book, of how the remnants of the Roman Empire produced the intellectual world in which we now live. The peroration is another masterful summary:

Before the revival of classic literature, the Barbarians in Europe were immersed in ignorance; and their vulgar tongues were marked with the rudeness and poverty of their manners. The students of the more perfect idioms of Rome and Greece were introduced to a new world of light and science; to the society of the free and polished nations of antiquity; and to a familiar converse with those immortal men who spoke the sublime language of eloquence and reason. Such an intercourse must tend to refine the taste, and to elevate the genius, of the moderns; and yet, from the first experiments, it might appear that the study of the ancients had given fetters, rather than wings, to the human mind. However laudable, the spirit of imitation is of a servile cast; and the first disciples of the Greeks and Romans were a colony of strangers in the midst of their age and country. The minute and laborious diligence which explored the antiquities of remote times might have improved or adorned the present state of society, the critic and metaphysician were the slaves of Aristotle; the poets, historians, and orators, were proud to repeat the thoughts and words of the Augustan age: the works of nature were observed with the eyes of Pliny and Theophrastus; and some Pagan votaries professed a secret devotion to the gods of Homer and Plato. The Italians were oppressed by the strength and number of their ancient auxiliaries: the century after the deaths of Petrarch and Boccace was filled with a crowd of Latin imitators, who decently repose on our shelves; but in that aera of learning it will not be easy to discern a real discovery of science, a work of invention or eloquence, in the popular language of the country. But as soon as it had been deeply saturated with the celestial dew, the soil was quickened into vegetation and life; the modern idioms were refined; the classics of Athens and Rome inspired a pure taste and a generous emulation; and in Italy, as afterwards in France and England, the pleasing reign of poetry and fiction was succeeded by the light of speculative and experimental philosophy. Genius may anticipate the season of maturity; but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the powers of reason and fancy can be expanded: nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, the works of his predecessors.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXVII: The Beginning of the End. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

There is an early cynical line about justification for violence:

For every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honour or zeal, of right or convenience, may be readily found in the jurisprudence of conquerors.

That ties in very neatly with the end of the chapter, which is a brilliant peroration on military technology and peace:

The chymists of China or Europe had found, by casual or elaborate experiments, that a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, produces, with a spark of fire, a tremendous explosion. It was soon observed, that if the expansive force were compressed in a strong tube, a ball of stone or iron might be expelled with irresistible and destructive velocity. The precise aera of the invention and application of gunpowder is involved in doubtful traditions and equivocal language; yet we may clearly discern, that it was known before the middle of the fourteenth century; and that before the end of the same, the use of artillery in battles and sieges, by sea and land, was familiar to the states of Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and England. The priority of nations is of small account; none could derive any exclusive benefit from their previous or superior knowledge; and in the common improvement, they stood on the same level of relative power and military science. Nor was it possible to circumscribe the secret within the pale of the church; it was disclosed to the Turks by the treachery of apostates and the selfish policy of rivals; and the sultans had sense to adopt, and wealth to reward, the talents of a Christian engineer. The Genoese, who transported [the Ottoman sultan] Amurath into Europe, must be accused as his preceptors; and it was probably by their hands that his cannon was cast and directed at the siege of Constantinople. The first attempt was indeed unsuccessful; but in the general warfare of the age, the advantage was on their side, who were most commonly the assailants: for a while the proportion of the attack and defence was suspended; and this thundering artillery was pointed against the walls and towers which had been erected only to resist the less potent engines of antiquity. By the Venetians, the use of gunpowder was communicated without reproach to the sultans of Egypt and Persia, their allies against the Ottoman power; the secret was soon propagated to the extremities of Asia; and the advantage of the European was confined to his easy victories over the savages of the new world. If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

Gibbon's doubt about Chinese priority in inventing gunpowder contains an element of racism (not to mention the "savages of the new world"), but it's otherwise difficult to argue with his sentiment.

2) Summary

Timour / Tamerlane leads a Central Asian army to victory in Persia, Georgia, Tartary, Russia, India, Syria, and Anatolia, capturing the Ottoman sultan Bajazet (Bayezid I). But his conquests disintegrate when he dies, and the Ottoman Turks rebuild their realm and besiege Constantinople (on this occasion, unsuccessfully).

3) Points arising

i) Timour killed by water

Not quite sure what to make of this line on Timour's death:

Fatigue, and the indiscreet use of iced water, accelerated the progress of his fever; and the conqueror of Asia expired in the seventieth year of his age, thirty-five years after he had ascended the throne of Zagatai.

I suppose that the water was probably infected; but did Gibbon know that contaminated water carried disease? Why does the ice make a difference? And that use of the word 'indiscreet' is rather odd, suggesting that 'discreet' usage, whatever that may be, might not have been so dangerous.

ii) the sultan in an iron cage

Gibbon has a brilliant four pages of analysis of the story that Timour imprisoned Bajazet in an iron cage. He starts off with the sceptics:

The iron cage in which Bajazet was imprisoned by Tamerlane, so long and so often repeated as a moral lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. <sup>46

46</sup> The scepticism of Voltaire (Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, c. 88) is ready on this, as on every occasion, to reject a popular tale, and to diminish the magnitude of vice and virtue; and on most occasions his incredulity is reasonable.

(One of these days I shall do a tally of references to Voltaire in Decline and Fall, and see how many of them are favourable.)

But Gibbon then takes us carefully through his sources, citing French, Italians, Arabs, Greeks and even Turks, to show that on a clear balance of probabilities the story is most likely true. It's a great example of the art of the historian.

iii) Timour as boardgame geek

...the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements.<sup>67

67</sup> His new system was multiplied from 32 pieces and 64 squares to 56 pieces and 110 or 130 squares; but, except in his court, the old game has been thought sufficiently elaborate. The Mogul emperor was rather pleased than hurt with the victory of a subject: a chess player will feel the value of this encomium!

56 pieces would suggest that each player starts with two rows of 14 pieces (seems more likely than giving each player four rows of seven, especially if you think of Timour trying to reproduce the battlefields of Central Asia), so the likely number of squares would have been 112 or 126. I wonder if the rules for this chess variant survive, or have been reconstructed?

iv) on good governance, and why it is not enough

To maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the traveller and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to cherish the labours of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate assessment, to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes, are indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of these duties, he finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast, that, at his accession to the throne, Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, whilst under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the East to the West. Such was his confidence of merit, that from this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories, and a title to universal dominion.

Gibbon goes on to say that these achievements are more than counterbalanced by 1) the viciousness of his military campaigns, 2) the devastation of areas which defeated but did not integrate into his realm, 3) his failure to ensure good governance at home while he was campaigning abroad and 4) his failure to create lasting institutions. Lack of internal democracy does not figure on Gibbon's list; nor, rather more surprisingly, does liberty of the subjects of the realm.

v) on the fate of Timour's descendants

The race of Timour would have been extinct, if a hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Uzbek arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the great Moguls) extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire had been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber; and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern Ocean.

This is far too dismissive of the achievements of the Moghul Emperors, implying that they came to power by accident and that they are yet another large but shortlived empire that failed quickly, when in fact there were more than 200 years from Babur's success to the 1739 Persian invasion and even then it limped on for almost seventy years after this was published.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXVI: The Eastern Empire and the Popes. Read it here or here. I'm on the road over the next two weekends so it will probably be in three weeks' time.

Read it here or here.

0) General

This is a day or so late - I actually read through this short chapter pretty quickly on Saturday morning, but the unseasonably warm weather deterred me from writing it up until now.

1) Good lines

The global economic system:

The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a Russian fugitive carried the alarm to Sweden; and the remote nations of the Baltic and the ocean trembled at the approach of the Tartars,²⁸ whom their fear and ignorance were inclined to separate from the human species.

²⁸ In the year 1238, the inhabitants of Gothia (Sweden) and Frise were prevented, by their fear of the Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring fishery on the coast of England; and as there was no exportation, forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling, (Matthew Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical enough, that the orders of a Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have lowered the price of herrings in the English market.

On the dubious tastes of Samuel Johnson:

⁴¹ ... In one of the Ramblers, Dr Johnson praises Knolles (a General History of the Turks to the present Year. London, 1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only in the choice of his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of speeches and battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened age, which requires from the historian some tincture of philosophy and criticism.

On not reading too much into the last book of the New Testament:

The captivity or ruin of the seven churches of Asia was consummated; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the fall of the first angel, the extinction of the first candlestick, of the Revelations;⁴⁵ the desolation is complete; and the temple of Diana, or the church of Mary, will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. The circus and three stately theatres of Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes; Sardes is reduced to a miserable village; the God of Mahomet, without a rival or a son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamus; and the populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of the Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens defended their religion and freedom above fourscore years; and at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect; a column in a scene of ruins; a pleasing example, that the paths of honour and safety may sometimes be the same.

⁴⁵ See the Travels of Wheeler and Spon, of Pocock and Chandler, and more particularly Smith's Survey of the Seven Churches of Asia, p. 205 - 276. The more pious antiquaries labor to reconcile the promises and threats of the author of the Revelations with the present state of the seven cities. Perhaps it would be more prudent to confine his predictions to the characters and events of his own times.

2) Summary

The Mongols (or as Gibbon interchangeably calls them, the Moguls/Tartars) rise from Central Asia and make vast conquests to the north, south, east and west. But after the reign of Zingis/Genghis, the Turkes return as the main threat to the Byzantine empire.

3) Points arising

i) haven't we heard some of this before?

Back in Chapter XXXIV, ostensibly about Attila the Hun, we had a couple of large chunks about Zingis and the success of the Moguls, eight centuries later. Gibbon now rather disarmingly admits that those bits "were composed at a time when I entertained the wish, rather than the hope, of concluding my history." But we're on the last volume now, Eddie-boy, with only seven more chapters to go after this one.

ii) how do you pronounce that?

I noted last time this came up that Gibbon's standard spelling is different from ours. It was also different from Voltaire's, as he himself reports:

³ Since the history and tragedy of Voltaire, Gengis, at least in French, seems to be the more fashionable spelling; but Abulghazi Khan must have known the true name of his ancestor. His etymology appears just: Zin, in the Mogul tongue, signifies great, and gis is the superlative termination, (Hist. Genealogique des Tatars, part iii. p. 194, 195.) From the same idea of magnitude, the appellation of Zingis is bestowed on the ocean.

Nowadays, of course, we can just look up the Mongolian language version of Wikipedia, which spells his name Чингис хаан, "Chin-gis Khaan".

iii) the Mongols are better than the Catholics

Gibbon is actually fairly sound on toleration as a general principle, though of course unable to recognise his own country's shortcomings in that regard. So his praise for the Mongols is sincere (as is his mockery of the Papists):

But it is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a Barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy,⁶ and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the Author of all good; who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the same camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same honourable exemption from service and tribute: in the mosque of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran under his horse's feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects.

⁶ A singular conformity may be found between the religious laws of Zingis Khan and of Mr. Locke, (Constitutions of Carolina, in his works, vol. iv. p. 535, 4to. edition, 1777.)

The difference being that Locke's draft constitutional law was never actually enacted.

iv) Chinese etymology

I did not know this:

¹⁹ ... Pe-king and Nan-king are vague titles, the courts of the north and of the south. The identity and change of names perplex the most skilful readers of the Chinese geography

But it's absolutely true: Beijing / 北京 means 'northern capital', Nanjing / 南京 means 'southern capital', and while we're at it Tōkyō / 東京 means 'eastern capital', which was also an old name for Seoul (Namgyeong). Korea also had a 'western capital', 西京 / Seogyeong which is now, oddly enough, Pyongyang. China also had eastern and western capitals, but I have not heard of either of them (I have at least heard of Xi'an which was called Xijing / 西京 / western capital but only from 1930 to 1943).

v) The Battle of Kosovo

Knowing the Balkan iconography of this event as I do, it's interesting to read Gibbon's somewhat sceptical description, tagged onto the end of a paragraph abouth the Janissaries:

The Janizaries fought with the zeal of proselytes against their idolatrous countrymen; and in the battle of Cossova, the league and independence of the Sclavonian tribes was finally crushed. As the conqueror walked over the field, he observed that the greatest part of the slain consisted of beardless youths; and listened to the flattering reply of his vizier, that age and wisdom would have taught them not to oppose his irresistible arms. But the sword of his Janizaries could not defend him from the dagger of despair; a Servian soldier started from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath was pierced in the belly with a mortal wound. The grandson of Othman was mild in his temper, modest in his apparel, and a lover of learning and virtue; but the Moslems were scandalized at his absence from public worship; and he was corrected by the firmness of the mufti, who dared to reject his testimony in a civil cause: a mixture of servitude and freedom not infrequent in Oriental history.<sup>55

55</sup> See the life and death of Morad, or Amurath I., in Cantemir, (p 33 - 45,) the first book of Chalcondyles, and the Annales Turcici of Leunclavius. According to another story, the sultan was stabbed by a Croat in his tent; and this accident was alleged to Busbequius (Epist i. p. 98) as an excuse for the unworthy precaution of pinioning, as if were, between two attendants, an ambassador's arms, when he is introduced to the royal presence.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXV: Timour/Tamerlane, and the Turks again. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Great lines

Gibbon on meditation:

The fakirs of India, and the monks of the Oriental church, were alike persuaded, that in the total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinion and practice of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot, who flourished in the eleventh century. "When thou art alone in thy cell," says the ascetic teacher, "shut thy door, and seat thyself in a corner: raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first, all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night, you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light." This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God himself...

Not sure which Gibbon dreads more, an empty stomach or an empty brain?

2) Summary

The restored Byzantine empire staggers on, the emperors buffeted internally by the Church and externally by the militant and powerful trader cities of Genoa and Venice.

3) Points arising

i) Henry the Wonderful

An interesting translation problem is posed by the lineage of Agnes / Irene, the first wife of the younger Andronicus:

Her father¹⁴ was a petty lord¹⁵ in the poor and savage regions of the north of Germany:¹⁶ yet he derived some revenue from his silver mines;¹⁷ and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name.
¹⁴ Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of Duke Henry the Wonderful, the chief of the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in descent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and conqueror of the Sclavi on the Baltic coast. Her brother Henry was surnamed the Greek, from his two journeys into the East: but these journeys were subsequent to his sister's marriage; and I am ignorant how Agnes was discovered in the heart of Germany, and recommended to the Byzantine court. (Rimius, Memoirs of the House of Brunswick, p. 126 - 137.
¹⁵ Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of Grubenhagen, extinct in the year 1596, (Rimius, p. 287.) He resided in the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and possessed no more than a sixth part of the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh, which the Guelph family had saved from the confiscation of their great fiefs. The frequent partitions among brothers had almost ruined the princely houses of Germany, till that just, but pernicious, law was slowly superseded by the right of primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the last remains of the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and barren tract, (Busching's Geography, vol. vi. p. 270 - 286, English translation.)

I was fascinated to learn of Henry the Wonderful, and checked him out on Wikipedia, where his Latin nicklame Henricus Mirabilis is sadly (and I think less accurately) translated Henry the Admirable. But there is still some glamour in his family: his father-in-law (and thus the Empress's grandfather) was called Albert the Degenerate. (That's the best father-in-law story I've heard all week, easily beats Neil Kinnock being the father-in-law of the new Danish prime minister.)

ii) cral / краљ

My Balkanist eye was caught by this linguistic point:

The cral,²⁹ or despot of the Servians, received him with generous hospitality...
²⁹ The princes of Servia (Ducange, Famil. Dalmaticae, &c., c. 2, 3, 4, 9) were styled Despots in Greek, and Cral in their native idiom, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. p. 751.) That title, the equivalent of king, appears to be of Sclavonic origin, from whence it has been borrowed by the Hungarians, the modern Greeks, and even by the Turks, (Leunclavius, Pandect. Turc. p. 422,) who reserve the name of Padishah for the emperor...

I had thought it fairly well established that the etymology of the Serbian word краљ / kralj (see also Bulgarian крал and Hungarian király) was from none other than Carolus Magnus, ie Charlemagne, but Gibbon doesn't seem to have worked that one out.

4) Coming next

Genghis Khan (aka Zingis Khan); and then the Turks are back. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Great lines

A potentially gruesome trial by ordeal:

Yet a cloud of suspicion hung over the innocence of the constable; he was still pursued by the whispers of malevolence; and a subtle courtier, the archbishop of Philadelphia, urged him to accept the judgment of God in the fiery proof of the ordeal. Three days before the trial, the patient's arm was enclosed in a bag, and secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear a red-hot ball of iron three times from the altar to the rails of the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury. Palaeologus eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. "I am a soldier," said he, "and will boldly enter the lists with my accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with the gift of miracles. Your piety, most holy prelate, may deserve the interposition of Heaven, and from your hands I will receive the fiery globe, the pledge of my innocence." The archbishop started; the emperor smiled; and the absolution or pardon of Michael was approved by new rewards and new services.

An even more gruesome story of deliberate blinding:

( Yuck. )

A point against hereditary monarchy (which Gibbon seems to go back and forth on):

Palaeologus encouraged a free discussion into the advantages of elective monarchy; and his adherents asked, with the insolence of triumph, what patient would trust his health, or what merchant would abandon his vessel, to the hereditary skill of a physician or a pilot?

What's wrong with the modern world:

In modern times our debts and taxes are the secret poison which still corrodes the bosom of peace...

A warning of what may happen to your book after you are gone (in this case the writer is Luke Wadding, who Gibbon calls Wading, and the book his Annales Minorum, originally published in eight volumes in 1625-54):

³⁴ ...His Annals of the Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in folio (Rome, 1741), I have now accidentally seen among the waste paper of a bookseller.

He is (a little) more generous about Juan de Mariana:

⁴¹ ...The reader forgives the Jesuit’s defects, in favour always of his style, and often of his sense.

The chapter ends with typically acerbic commentary about the contemporary inhabitants of Athens:

...it would not be easy, in the country of Plato and Demosthenes, to find a reader or a copy of their works. The Athenians walk with supine indifference among the glorious ruins of antiquity; and such is the debasement of their character, that they are incapable of admiring the genius of their predecessors.

2) Summary

The Greek successors of the Byzantine empire gradually reincorporate its territory, and engage in an insincere reunification of the Eastern and Western churches.

3) Points arising

None really - this is a chapter of generally interesting incident, including the Sicilian Vespers, but I think we are saving up reflections for the drama to come.

4) Coming next

The East in the first half of the fourteenth century. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

...wealth is relative; and a prince who would be rich in a private station, may be exposed by the increase of his wants to all the anxiety and bitterness of poverty.

The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause.... some philosophers have applauded the propitious influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to have checked rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe. (69) The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the climates of the East.

2) Summary

The Fourth Crusade, having conquered Constantinople, installs a series of French and Belgian rulers whose state eventually collapses.

3) Points arising

i) geography: Romania and Belgium

I had been unaware that the Latin Empire actually used the name 'Romania' for itself. I was vaguely aware that 'Romania' was a term in use for the Ottoman possessions in Europe closest to the capital, a synonym for 'Rumelia' which is the term I would more naturally use (because of the protectorate of Eastern Rumelia in the 1880s) - see maps here and here. The term 'Romania', which obviously is the Greek Ῥωμανία, now applies to the territories then referred to as Wallachia, western Moldavia and most of Transylvania - here is a case of 'Romania' and 'Roumelia' being used in parallel. Gibbon has not heard of Rumelia; for him it is Romania all the way, with no overlap between the 13th century state and the modern state which bears the same name.

But another modern state is simply unmentioned here, even though denizens of its territory play an important part in events. The rulers of the Latin Empire were the families of the Counts of Flanders and the Marquesses of Namur (John of Brienne was from further south) and I can't help but note that they are described as varyingly French and Flemish, but nothing else. Romania is not the only state whose conceptualisation is fairly recent.

ii) miracles

Although Gibbon is generally sceptical about relics and miracles, I feel he actually slips from irony to sincere wonder here:

The truth of such remote and ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human testimony, must be admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they have performed. About the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by a holy prickle of the holy crown:⁵³ the prodigy is attested by the most pious and enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with a general antidote against religious credulity.<sup>54

53</sup> It was performed A.D. 1656, March 24, on the niece of Pascal; and that superior genius, with Arnauld, Nicole, &c., were on the spot, to believe and attest a miracle which confounded the Jesuits, and saved Port Royal, (Oeuvres de Racine, tom. vi. p. 176 - 187, in his eloquent History of Port Royal.)

⁵⁴ Voltaire (Siecle de Louis XIV. c. 37, (Oeuvres, tom. ix. p. 178, 179) strives to invalidate the fact: but Hume, (Essays, vol. ii. p. 483, 484,) with more skill and success, seizes the battery, and turns the cannon against his enemies.

Gibbon usually has his tongue in his cheek writing on such matters, but here he is pretty clearly saying that he rates Pascal's explanation over Voltaire's, even if Hume is better than both.

I looked up what Hume has to say on this; it's at the end of footnote 24 of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and he interestingly does not challenge the miracle's validity on its own terms:

The learning, genius, and probity of the gentlemen, and the austerity of the nuns of Port-Royal, have been much celebrated all over Europe. Yet they all give evidence for a miracle, wrought on the niece of the famous Pascal, whose sanctity of life, as well as extraordinary capacity, is well known. The famous Racine gives an account of this miracle in his famous history of Port-Royal, and fortifies it with all the proofs, which a multitude of nuns, priests, physicians, and men of the world, all of them of undoubted credit, could bestow upon it. Several men of letters, particularly the bishop of Tournay, thought this miracle so certain, as to employ it in the refutation of atheists and free-thinkers. The queen-regent of France, who was extremely prejudiced against the Port-Royal, sent her own physician to examine the miracle, who returned an absolute convert. In short, the supernatural cure was so uncontestable, that it saved, for a time, that famous monastery from the ruin with which it was threatened by the Jesuits. Had it been a cheat, it had certainly been detected by such sagacious and powerful antagonists, and must have hastened the ruin of the contrivers.

But instead he attacks his more local (presumably Scottish) antagonists for failing to include it in their efforts to prove the existence of God, because (he implies) it is not a sufficiently Protestant miracle.

Our divines, who can build up a formidable castle from such despicable materials; what a prodigious fabric could they have reared from these and many other circumstances, which I have not mentioned! How often would the great names of Pascal, Racine, Amaud, Nicole, have resounded in our ears? But if they be wise, they had better adopt the miracle, as being more worth, a thousand times, than all the rest of the collection. Besides, it may serve very much to their purpose. For that miracle was really performed by the touch of an authentic holy prickle of the holy thorn, which composed the holy crown, which, &c.

In a later footnote Gibbon says:

⁶⁹ ...a strong ray of philosophical light has broke from Scotland in our own times; and it is with private, as well as public regard, that I repeat the names of Hume, Robertson, and Adam Smith.

One does get the sense sometimes of the Decline and Fall not just as one man's work but as part of the intellectual project of the age.

iii) the Crusades as a whole

These four chapters on the crusades conclude with a four-page summary of the effects of the whole enterprise (and then a few pages on the Courtenay family). It's one of Gibbon's tours de force, also giving us a sense of impending closure of the entire Decline and Fall(only nine more chapters to go). He rates crusades as a whole as a sad and bad affair. The impact on the Arabs was negigible and negative:

As soon as the arms of the Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though not the memory, was erased in the Mahometan realms of Egypt and Syria. The faithful disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane desire to study the laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the simplicity of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration from their intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of the West.

Opportunities for intellectual exchange were not taken, or lost:

the Latins should have derived the most early and essential benefits from a series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world, and introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the more cultivated regions of the East.... But the intellectual wants of the Latins were more slowly felt and supplied; the ardour of studious curiosity was awakened in Europe by different causes and more recent events; and, in the age of the crusades, they viewed with careless indifference the literature of the Greeks and Arabians.

As quoted above, the whole thing was a colossal waste of resources:

The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the climates of the East.

But there is one silver lining:

In one respect I can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of the soil.

Gibbon is almost Whiggish here: the inevitable failure of the crusades allowed the growth of civil rights and capitalism, and becomes a useful moral for his overall political project.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXII, the East in the later thirteenth century. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Great Lines

A truth worth repeating;

Bigotry and national aversion are powerful magnifiers of every object of dispute...

And one of those notorious objects of dispute is the filioque clause:

³ The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Ghost is discussed in the historical, theological, and controversial sense, or nonsense, by the Jesuit Petavius (Dogmata Theologica, tom. ii. l. vii. p. 362-440).

And a brilliant passage on the eventual sack of Constantinople:

At the first view, it should seem that the wealth of Constantinople was only transferred from one nation to another, and that the loss and sorrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the miserable account of war the gain is never equivalent to the loss, the pleasure to the pain; the smiles of the Latins were transient and fallacious; the Greeks for ever wept over the ruins of their country; and their real calamities were aggravated by sacrilege and mockery. What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches of the city? What a stock of such things as could neither be used or transported was maliciously or wantonly destroyed! How much treasure was idly wasted in gaming, debauchery, and riot! And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the impatience or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was stolen by the base industry of the last of the Greeks! These alone who had nothing to lose might derive some profit from the revolution...

I find the use of the word "revolution" here rather striking, in a book published in 1788.

2) Summary

A very good chapter on a tragic and horrible episode, the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, illustrated by lucid narrative and pungent analysis.

3) Matters arising

i) Why is this such a good chapter?

We haven't had a chapter relating so closely to a single set of military incidents since Chapter XLI on Belisarius in Italy, which was good, or Chapter XXXI on the Sack of Rome, which was a refreshingly direct chapter after several dull ones. In a grand sweeping history like this, which covers 1300 years in 71 chapters, it makes sense to occasionally zoom in on key moments of inflection, and this is certainly one of them - the capital of the Eastern remnant of the Roman Empire, destroyed by the heirs of the West. Gibbon is helped, as he readily admits, by the survival of two eyewitness accounts of events from opposing sides, to both of whom he extends an essential sympathy while at the same time sparking off them. It enables him to show himself at his best.

ii) The Venetians are not libertarian heroes

Gibbon's description of Venice brings home to the reader that he doesn't really relate political liberty to free markets; indeed, he sees vigorous trade as likely to concentrate power in the hands of a few merchants.

Her [Venice's] primitive government was a loose mixture of democracy and monarchy; the doge was elected by the votes of the general assembly; as long as he was popular and successful, he reigned with the pomp and authority of a prince; but in the frequent revolutions of the state, he was deposed, or banished, or slain, by the justice or injustice of the multitude. The twelfth century produced the first rudiments of the wise and jealous aristocracy, which has reduced the doge to a pageant, and the people to a cipher.

That 'wise' is intriguing. In the words of Monty Python, it doesn't seem very wise to me.

iii) rape and pillage

( Read more... )

4) Coming Next

Chapter LXI: The Latin Emperors, the end of the Crusades, and a digression on the Courtenays. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

Why it's not really worth writing much about the differences between the first three Crusades:

These three expeditions may be compared in their resemblance of the greatness of numbers, their passage through the Greek empire, and the nature and event of their Turkish warfare, and a brief parallel may save the repetition of a tedious narrative. However splendid it may seem, a regular story of the crusades would exhibit the perpetual return of the same causes and effects; and the frequent attempts for the defence or recovery of the Holy Land would appear so many faint and unsuccessful copies of the original.

Being rude about Bernard of Clairvaux:

Bernard applauds his own success in the depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities and castles were emptied of their inhabitants; and computes that only one man was left behind for the consolation of seven widows.<sup>32

32</sup> Mandastis et obedivi . . . multiplicati sunt super numerum; vacuantur urbes et castella; et pene jam non inveniunt quem apprehendant septem mulieres unum virum; adeo ubique viduæ vivis remanent viris. Bernard. Epist. p. 247. We must be careful not to construe pene as a substantive.

The joke being that as an adverb, 'pene' means 'almost', but as a noun in the ablative it could mean 'using [Bernard's] penis'. Fnarr fnarr.

On Pope Innocent III:

Under that young and ambitious priest the successors of St. Peter attained the full meridian of their greatness; and in a reign of eighteen years he exercised a despotic command over the emperors and kings, whom he raised and deposed; over the nations, whom an interdict of months or years deprived, for the offence of their rulers, of the exercise of Christian worship. In the council of the Lateran he acted as the ecclesiastical, almost as the temporal, sovereign of the East and West. It was at the feet of his legate that John of England surrendered his crown; and Innocent may boast of the two most signal triumphs over sense and humanity, the establishment of transubstantiation and the origin of the inquisition.

I'm not sure that last line is really true on either count, but it's a good line.

When historians blame their own side rather than the enemy:

On the verge of the Turkish frontier Barbarossa spared the guilty Philadelphia,<sup>17

17</sup> The conduct of the Philadelphians is blamed by Nicetas, while the anonymous German accuses the rudeness of his countrymen (culpâ nostrâ). History would be pleasant, if we were embarrassed only by such contradictions.

2) Summary

The Crusades continue for almost two hundred years, as the Christian outposts in the Eastern Mediterranean dwindle and eventually disappear - some good descriptions of the eventual falls of Jerusalem, Louis IX and Acre. (The end of the Fourth Crusade is left for the next chapter.)

3) Matters arising

i) this week's casual essentialism:

a people hardy, strong, savage, impatient of the yoke, addicted to rapine, and tenacious of the government of their national chiefs... they still defend against the Ottoman Porte the antique freedom which they asserted against the successors of Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them to embrace the profession of mercenary soldiers...

This time it's the Kurds. (Or in Gibbon's spelling, the Curds.)

ii) constitutional theory

Gibbon comes out as anti-colonialist:

A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt above five hundred years.

I do have to wonder, first, if Gibbon really disapproved of the natives of a country (like, for instance, Ireland) being ruled by foreigners if the foreginers happened to be English; and second (though this may be my ignorance) if the Egyptian rulers were really seen as strangers (let alone slaves) by their subjects after 500 years had passed; the same argument could hardly be made about the Normans in England, or the Vikings in Russia.

iii) conflict and conciliation

Gibbon is not really a slavering warmonger, and rather deplores the militarism of the Crusades:

The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and admiration; that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand miles from their country.

It is contrasted with the record of Frederic[k] II, under whose leadership "every rational object of the crusades was accomplished without bloodshed" despite falling out with the Pope:

Frederic entered Jerusalem in triumph; and with his own hands (for no priest would perform the office) he took the crown from the altar of the holy sepulchre. But the patriarch cast an interdict on the church which his presence had profaned; and the knights of the hospital and temple informed the sultan how easily he might be surprised and slain in his unguarded visit to the River Jordan. In such a state of fanaticism and faction, victory was hopeless, and defence was difficult; but the conclusion of an advantageous peace may be imputed to the discord of the Mahometans, and their personal esteem for the character of Frederic. The enemy of the church is accused of maintaining with the miscreants an intercourse of hospitality and friendship unworthy of a Christian; of despising the barrenness of the land; and of indulging a profane thought, that if Jehovah had seen the kingdom of Naples he never would have selected Palestine for the inheritance of his chosen people. Yet Frederic obtained from the sultan the restitution of Jerusalem, of Bethlem and Nazareth, of Tyre and Sidon; the Latins were allowed to inhabit and fortify the city; an equal code of civil and religious freedom was ratified for the sectaries of Jesus and those of Mahomet; and, while the former worshipped at the holy sepulchre, the latter might pray and preach in the mosque of the temple, from whence the prophet undertook his nocturnal journey to heaven. The clergy deplored this scandalous toleration; and the weaker Moslems were gradually expelled; but every rational object of the crusades was accomplished without bloodshed; the churches were restored, the monasteries were replenished; and, in the space of fifteen years, the Latins of Jerusalem exceeded the number of six thousand.

It's always struck me as odd that we don't hear more about this second Christian conquest of Jerusalem, which in some ways is the most edifying of the three (counting 1917 as the last).

(I had not really heard of the Corasmians, or Khwarezmians as they are generally known today, who recaptured Jerusalem in 1244.)

4) Coming Next

Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

On Islamophobia:

A pernicious tenet has been imputed to the Mahometans, the duty of extirpating all other religions by the sword. This charge of ignorance and bigotry is refuted by the Koran, by the history of the Mussulman conquerors, and by their public and legal toleration of the Christian worship.

He does go on to point out that Muslim governments could be and were in fact a threat to Christian interests - more on this below.

On Anna Comnena (yet again):

⁶⁴ Anna Comnena was born on the 1st of December, 1083, indiction vii. (Alexiad, l. vi. p. 166, 167). At thirteen, the time of the first crusade, she was nubile, and perhaps married to the younger Nicephorus Bryennius, whom she fondly styles τὸν ἐμὸν Καίσαρα (l. x. p. 295, 296). Some moderns have imagined that her enmity to Bohemond was the fruit of disappointed love.

There is, I think, a certain erotic fascination about the way Anna writes of Bohemond; but there are elements of that also in the way Gibbon writes about her!

2) Summary

Peter the Hermit preaches the crusade to liberate Jerusalem from the Turks; the Pope and the western European rulers pick it up; Alexius Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, succeeds in channelling the Crusaders' energies to Syria and Palestine, where they carve out a set of new Christian kingdoms.

3) Points Arising

i) were the Crusades a just war?

Slightly surprising to see Gibbon get into this area of political morality, presumably one which he intended to have a direct read-across to the international politics of his own time; and his thinking on the lmoral legitimacy of the crusades reads in some ways as if it could have been written today:

The right of a just defence may fairly include our civil and spiritual allies: it depends on the existence of danger; and that danger must be estimated by the twofold consideration of the malice, and the power, of our enemies. A pernicious tenet has been imputed to the Mahometans, the duty of extirpating all other religions by the sword. This charge of ignorance and bigotry is refuted by the Koran, by the history of the Mussulman conquerors, and by their public and legal toleration of the Christian worship. But it cannot be denied, that the Oriental churches are depressed under their iron yoke; that, in peace and war, they assert a divine and indefeasible claim of universal empire; and that, in their orthodox creed, the unbelieving nations are continually threatened with the loss of religion or liberty. In the eleventh century, the victorious arms of the Turks presented a real and urgent apprehension of these losses. They had subdued, in less than thirty years, the kingdoms of Asia, as far as Jerusalem and the Hellespont; and the Greek empire tottered on the verge of destruction. Besides an honest sympathy for their brethren, the Latins had a right and interest in the support of Constantinople, the most important barrier of the West; and the privilege of defence must reach to prevent, as well as to repel, an impending assault. But this salutary purpose might have been accomplished by a moderate succour; and our calmer reason must disclaim the innumerable hosts, and remote operations, which overwhelmed Asia and depopulated Europe.

Two further points debunk the strategic usefulness of an outpost in Paestine for the wider interests of Christendom, and the invocation of religious difference as justification - the barbarians had over-run the western empire as well as the east, he points out. He then goes on to point out that greed must have been important for the crusaders:

Of the chiefs and soldiers who marched to the holy sepulchre, I will dare to affirm, that all were prompted by the spirit of enthusiasm; the belief of merit, the hope of reward, and the assurance of divine aid. But I am equally persuaded, that in many it was not the sole, that in some it was not the leading, principle of action. The use and abuse of religion are feeble to stem, they are strong and irresistible to impel, the stream of national manners. Against the private wars of the Barbarians, their bloody tournaments, licentious love, and judicial duels, the popes and synods might ineffectually thunder. It is a more easy task to provoke the metaphysical disputes of the Greeks, to drive into the cloister the victims of anarchy or despotism, to sanctify the patience of slaves and cowards, or to assume the merit of the humanity and benevolence of modern Christians. War and exercise were the reigning passions of the Franks or Latins; they were enjoined, as a penance, to gratify those passions, to visit distant lands, and to draw their swords against the nation of the East. Their victory, or even their attempt, would immortalize the names of the intrepid heroes of the cross; and the purest piety could not be insensible to the most splendid prospect of military glory. In the petty quarrels of Europe, they shed the blood of their friends and countrymen, for the acquisition perhaps of a castle or a village. They could march with alacrity against the distant and hostile nations who were devoted to their arms; their fancy already grasped the golden sceptres of Asia; and the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by the Normans might exalt to royalty the hopes of the most private adventurer.

For the modern reader none of this comes as a huge shock, but I wonder to what extent Gibbon's readership were prepared for this revisionist take on chivalry? (There are three more very revisionist pages on chivalry a bit further down.)

ii) the Celts among the crusaders

We have an unsubstantiated family tradition that a Sir James Whyte fought in the third crusade (I have seen no external evidence for this). So my eye was caught by Gibbon's note - though typically bigoted - about a Celtic presence in the region's conflicts ninety years earlier:

I am inclined to believe, that a larger number has never been contained within the lines of a single camp, than at the siege of Nice, the first operation of the Latin princes. Their motives, their characters, and their arms, have been already displayed. Of their troops the most numerous portion were natives of France: the Low Countries, the banks of the Rhine, and Apulia, sent a powerful reinforcement: some bands of adventurers were drawn from Spain, Lombardy, and England; and from the distant bogs and mountains of Ireland or Scotland⁷⁸ issued some naked and savage fanatics, ferocious at home but unwarlike abroad.

⁷⁸ Videres Scotorum apud se ferocium alias imbellium cuneos [you might see the Scoti, fierce at home but unwarlike elsewhere], (Guibert, p. 471;) the crus intectum [bare legs] and hispida chlamys [shaggy cloaks], may suit the Highlanders; but the finibus uliginosis [marshy borderlands] may rather apply to the Irish bogs. William of Malmsbury expressly mentions the Welsh and Scots, &c., (l. iv. p. 133,) who quitted, the former venatiorem, the latter familiaritatem pulicum.

None other than Conor Kostick has written a note on this for History Ireland.

iii) cannibalism

Not quite sure if Gibbon expects us to believe this:

They consumed, with heedless prodigality, their stores of water and provision: their numbers exhausted the inland country: the sea was remote, the Greeks were unfriendly, and the Christians of every sect fled before the voracious and cruel rapine of their brethren. In the dire necessity of famine, they sometimes roasted and devoured the flesh of their infant or adult captives. Among the Turks and Saracens, the idolaters of Europe were rendered more odious by the name and reputation of Cannibals; the spies, who introduced themselves into the kitchen of Bohemond, were shown several human bodies turning on the spit: and the artful Norman encouraged a report, which increased at the same time the abhorrence and the terror of the infidels.⁷⁹

This cannibal hunger, sometimes real, more frequently an artifice or a lye, may be found in Anna Comnena, (Alexias, l. x. p. 288,) Guibert, (p. 546,) Radulph. Cadom., (c. 97.) The stratagem is related by the author of the Gesta Francorum, the monk Robert Baldric, and Raymond des Agiles, in the siege and famine of Antioch.

The cannibalism taboo was, I'm sure, as strong in the twelfth and eighteenth century as it is now; I'm inclined to feel the Gibbon brings it up mainly to add fuel to his revisionist accout of the Crusaders.

iv) the Holy Lance

This is rather a fascinating anecdote of which I was previously unaware: the hard-pressed Crusade garrison of Antioch found its morale revived by the fortunate discoverey of the Holy Lance in the cathedral by Peter Bartholemy, a monk from Marseilles. But it was a fraud, and unusually, was soon exposed as such:

In the season of danger and triumph, the revelation of Bartholemy of Marseilles was unanimously asserted; but as soon as the temporary service was accomplished, the personal dignity and liberal arms which the count of Tholouse derived from the custody of the holy lance, provoked the envy, and awakened the reason, of his rivals. A Norman clerk presumed to sift, with a philosophic spirit, the truth of the legend, the circumstances of the discovery, and the character of the prophet; and the pious Bohemond ascribed their deliverance to the merits and intercession of Christ alone. For a while, the Provincials defended their national palladium with clamours and arms and new visions condemned to death and hell the profane sceptics who presumed to scrutinize the truth and merit of the discovery. The prevalence of incredulity compelled the author to submit his life and veracity to the judgment of God. A pile of dry faggots, four feet high and fourteen long, was erected in the midst of the camp; the flames burnt fiercely to the elevation of thirty cubits; and a narrow path of twelve inches was left for the perilous trial. The unfortunate priest of Marseilles traversed the fire with dexterity and speed; but the thighs and belly were scorched by the intense heat; he expired the next day; and the logic of believing minds will pay some regard to his dying protestations of innocence and truth.

It's an interesting example of rationality being used against religious fantasy at a time when this was far from the norm; but to an extent this is Gibbon reading his own preferred methodology back onto the situation - even by his own account, the clinching event was Bartholemy's failure to survive the ordeal by fire rather than the lucid analysis of his claims.

v) The Assizes of Jerusalem

Another aspect I had known nothing about - the survival of many of the laws of the Crusader state of Jerusalem, obviously not in their original home but in Cyprus (and now, though Gibbon doesn't say so, in Munich). Writing in an era when constitutional reform was a hot topic, Gibbon sees the Crusaders as having established the first free Latin polity:

The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal institutions, was felt in its strongest energy by the volunteers of the cross, who elected for their chief the most deserving of his peers. Amidst the slaves of Asia, unconscious of the lesson or example, a model of political liberty was introduced; and the laws of the French kingdom [of Jerusalem] are derived from the purest source of equality and justice. Of such laws, the first and indispensable condition is the assent of those whose obedience they require, and for whose benefit they are designed. No sooner had Godfrey of Bouillon accepted the office of supreme magistrate, than he solicited the public and private advice of the Latin pilgrims, who were the best skilled in the statutes and customs of Europe. From these materials, with the counsel and approbation of the patriarch and barons, of the clergy and laity, Godfrey composed the ASSISE OF JERUSALEM, a precious monument of feudal jurisprudence.

Having said that, although Gibbon approves its imitation of the House of Lords, he disapproves (with fascination) of trial by combat, and of the fact that the laws did not treat all equally, particularly not "the villains and slaves, the peasants of the land and the captives of war, who were almost equally considered as the objects of property." I do wonder though if the Kingdom of Jerusalem was particularly remarkable in its legal order by the standards of the time, or if it's just unusual that so much detail has survived.

4) Coming next

Chapter LIX: The later crusades, as they affected the Holy Land (and western Europe). Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

Which country is Gibbon talking about here?

...a race of men, whom Nature has cast in her most perfect mould, is degraded by poverty, ignorance, and vice; their profession, and still more their practice, of Christianity is an empty name; and, if they have emerged from heresy, it is only because they are too illiterate to remember a metaphysical creed.<sup>29

29</sup> See, in Chardin's Travels, (tom. i. p. 171 - 174,) the manners and religion of this handsome but worthless nation.

I shall leave the answer to the end.

A reflection on Al Arslan's epitaph (with humorous footnote):

The remains of the sultan were deposited in the tomb of the Seljukian dynasty; and the passenger might read and meditate this useful inscription: ⁴⁰

"O YE WHO HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF ALP ARSLAN EXALTED TO THE HEAVENS, REPAIR TO MARU, AND YOU WILL BEHOLD IT BURIED IN THE DUST."

The annihilation of the inscription, and the tomb itself, more forcibly proclaims the instability of human greatness.

⁴⁰ A critic of high renown, (the late Dr. Johnson,) who has severely scrutinized the epitaphs of Pope, might cavil in this sublime inscription at the words "repair to Maru," since the reader must already be at Maru before he could peruse the inscription.

Alp Arslan's tomb may be lost, but his grandson's mausoleum remains the greatest tourist attraction in the ruins of Merv.

2) Summary

The Turks emerge from Central Asia, spend some time in India, and then start to conquer the East and advance westwards into Asia Minor.

3) Matters arising

i) geography

Back in chapter XXVI, I was rather scornful of Gibbon's grasp of Asian geography. Things have much improved over the course of the 1780s; here Gibbon takes us pretty confidently around the Indian subcontinent and most of what we now call the Stans (particularly Afghanistan and Turkmenistan in this case). I'm sure that if I knew that region as well as I know the Balkans I could pick holes in his knowledge as easily as I do with his Balkan descriptions, but for now I just appreciate that he is doing it better.

ii) Anna Comnena

I was mildly kicking myself off and on over the last few days for neglecting to include a point on Gibbon's attitude to Anna Comnena in last week's post: in the course of Chapter LVI, while he maintains his general misogynistic hostility to her, he actually admits that she has much the best contemporary coverage of the Normans in Siciliy and the Balkans. But in fact it turns out to be just as well, because his hostility to her in this chapter seems to be much more justifiable; she confuses her Turkish rulers and minimises or even omits Byzantine defeats by the Turks. Certainly I remember no mention in the Alexiad of the steady Turkish advance. In this case Gibbon's criticism of her is clearly sound, if exaggerated on gender grounds, though in fairness she is no worse than any of the other Byzantine historians and better than some.

iii) Jerusalem

Gibbon's description of Jerusalem, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is derivative but well assembled. There is a great passage of Protestant smugness, copiously footnoted, about the Holy Fire:

...the Moslems smiled with indignation⁶² at the miraculous flame which was kindled on the eve of Easter in the holy sepulchre.⁶³ This pious fraud, first devised in the ninth century,⁶⁴ was devoutly cherished by the Latin crusaders, and is annually repeated by the clergy of the Greek, Armenian, and Coptic sects,⁶⁵ who impose on the credulous spectators⁶⁶ for their own benefit, and that of their tyrants. In every age, a principle of toleration has been fortified by a sense of interest: and the revenue of the prince and his emir was increased each year, by the expense and tribute of so many thousand strangers.
⁶² An Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem (apud Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 268, tom. iv. p. 368) attests the unbelief of the caliph and the historian; yet Cantacuzene presumes to appeal to the Mahometans themselves for the truth of this perpetual miracle.
⁶³ In his Dissertations on Ecclesiastical History, the learned Mosheim has separately discussed this pretended miracle, (tom. ii. p. 214 - 306,) de lumine sancti sepulchri.
⁶⁴ William of Malmsbury (l. iv. c. 2, p. 209) quotes the Itinerary of the monk Bernard, an eye-witness, who visited Jerusalem A.D. 870. The miracle is confirmed by another pilgrim some years older; and Mosheim ascribes the invention to the Franks, soon after the decease of Charlemagne.
⁶⁵ Our travellers, Sandys, (p. 134,) Thevenot, (p. 621 - 627,) Maundrell, (p. 94, 95,) &c., describes this extravagant farce. The Catholics are puzzled to decide when the miracle ended and the trick began.
⁶⁶ The Orientals themselves confess the fraud, and plead necessity and edification, (Memoires du Chevalier D'Arvieux, tom. ii. p. 140. Joseph Abudacni, Hist. Copt. c. 20;) but I will not attempt, with Mosheim, to explain the mode. Our travellers have failed with the blood of St. Januarius at Naples.

Some people still take the Holy Fire seriously.

iv) the Druzes

I was completely unaware of the connection between the Druzes and the notorious Caliph Hakim:

At first the caliph declared himself a zealous Mussulman, the founder or benefactor of moschs and colleges: twelve hundred and ninety copies of the Koran were transcribed at his expense in letters of gold; and his edict extirpated the vineyards of the Upper Egypt. But his vanity was soon flattered by the hope of introducing a new religion; he aspired above the fame of a prophet, and styled himself the visible image of the Most High God, who, after nine apparitions on earth, was at length manifest in his royal person. At the name of Hakem, the lord of the living and the dead, every knee was bent in religious adoration: his mysteries were performed on a mountain near Cairo: sixteen thousand converts had signed his profession of faith; and at the present hour, a free and warlike people, the Druses of Mount Libanus, are persuaded of the life and divinity of a madman and tyrant.^68
68 The religion of the Druses is concealed by their ignorance and hypocrisy. Their secret doctrines are confined to the elect who profess a contemplative life; and the vulgar Druses, the most indifferent of men, occasionally conform to the worship of the Mahometans and Christians of their neighborhood. The little that is, or deserves to be, known, may be seen in the industrious Niebuhr, (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 354 - 357,) and the second volume of the recent and instructive Travels of M. de Volney.

Gibbon's dismissive reductionism here reminds me of a point I left unresolved from earlier:

v) the Georgians

...are the "handsome but worthless nation", "degraded by poverty, ignorance, and vice", "too illiterate to remember a metaphysical creed". I bet Gibbon had never actually met a Georgian.

vi) the run-up to the Crusades

Gibbon ends this chapter, and thus the volume as a whole, with a good and righteous rant about the disproportionality of Christian Europe's reaction to the mad caliph Hakim, on the one hand, and the Turks' capture of Jerusalem from him, on the other. Under Hakem,

The temple of the Christian world, the church of the Resurrection, was demolished to its foundations; the luminous prodigy of Easter was interrupted, and much profane labor was exhausted to destroy the cave in the rock which properly constitutes the holy sepulchre. At the report of this sacrilege, the nations of Europe were astonished and afflicted: but instead of arming in the defence of the Holy Land, they contented themselves with burning, or banishing, the Jews, as the secret advisers of the impious Barbarian.

Compared with the Turks' systematic exploitation of Christian residents and pilgrims:

The pilgrims, who, through innumerable perils, had reached the gates of Jerusalem, were the victims of private rapine or public oppression, and often sunk under the pressure of famine and disease, before they were permitted to salute the holy sepulchre. A spirit of native barbarism, or recent zeal, prompted the Turkmans to insult the clergy of every sect: the patriarch was dragged by the hair along the pavement, and cast into a dungeon, to extort a ransom from the sympathy of his flock; and the divine worship in the church of the Resurrection was often disturbed by the savage rudeness of its masters. The pathetic tale excited the millions of the West to march under the standard of the cross to the relief of the Holy Land; and yet how trifling is the sum of these accumulated evils, if compared with the single act of the sacrilege of Hakem, which had been so patiently endured by the Latin Christians! A slighter provocation inflamed the more irascible temper of their descendants: a new spirit had arisen of religious chivalry and papal dominion; a nerve was touched of exquisite feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe.

I guess the sixth volume will take this narrative further.

4) Coming next

Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

Reasons to visit Salerno:

The treasures of Grecian medicine had been communicated to the Arabian colonies of Africa, Spain, and Sicily; and in the intercourse of peace and war, a spark of knowledge had been kindled and cherished at Salerno, an illustrious city, in which the men were honest and the women beautiful.

Reason to doubt Byzantine claims of legality to their attempts to reconquer Italy:

The prejudices of the Latins were gratified by a genuine or fictitious donation under the seal of the German Cæsars<sup>113

113</sup> The Latin, Otho, (de Gestis Frederici I. l. ii. c. 30, p. 734,) attests the forgery; the Greek, Cinnamus, (l. iv. c. 1, p. 78,) claims a promise of restitution from Conrad and Frederic. An act of fraud is always credible when it is told of the Greeks.

It is sad when good historians write about rather uninspiring subjects:

¹²⁶ The Historia Sicula of Hugo Falcandus, which properly extends from 1154 to 1169, is inserted in the viith volume of Muratori’s Collection (tom. vii. p. 259-344), and preceded by an eloquent preface or epistle (p. 251-258) de Calamitatibus Siciliæ. Falcandus has been styled the Tacitus of Sicily; and, after a just but immense abatement, from the first to the twelfth century, from a senator to a monk, I would not strip him of his title: his narrative is rapid and perspicuous, his style bold and elegant, his observation keen; he had studied mankind, and feels like a man. I can only regret the narrow and barren field on which his labours have been cast.

And on the end of the Normans:

...the adventurous Normans, who had raised so many trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East, were lost, either in victory or servitude, among the vanquished nations.

Though in fact they had won in England at least; what had happened was that the male line of rulers had died out, and they had rather crucially lost Normandy itself.

2) Summary

The Byzantines, Saracens and Franks battle over Italy, and the Normans arrive and take over the south of the peninsula and Sicily, as well as further adventures in the vicinity.

3) Points Arising

i) Italy

I was struck by Gibbon's story of the Normans establishing the roots of the eighteenth-century order:

The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the present kingdom of Naples; and the countries united by his arms have not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years.

For us, Italy is a nation state and has been for a century and a half; but the Risorgimento was barely conceived of until decades after Gibbon's death, and for him it is a geographical expression, not a country.

ii) learning and tolerance

Gibbon is full of praise for Salerno, as excerpted above:

Of the learned faculties, jurisprudence implies the previous establishment of laws and property; and theology may perhaps be superseded by the full light of religion and reason. But the savage and the sage must alike implore the assistance of physic; and, if our diseases are inflamed by luxury, the mischiefs of blows and wounds would be more frequent in the ruder ages of society. The treasures of Grecian medicine had been communicated to the Arabian colonies of Africa, Spain, and Sicily; and in the intercourse of peace and war, a spark of knowledge had been kindled and cherished at Salerno, an illustrious city, in which the men were honest and the women beautiful. (49) A school, the first that arose in the darkness of Europe, was consecrated to the healing art: the conscience of monks and bishops was reconciled to that salutary and lucrative profession; and a crowd of patients, of the most eminent rank, and most distant climates, invited or visited the physicians of Salerno. They were protected by the Norman conquerors; and Guiscard, though bred in arms, could discern the merit and value of a philosopher.

Here the Normans are not exactly champions of freedom but at least of tolerance, right up to the senior levels of the court:

After a war of thirty years, Roger, with the title of great count, obtained the sovereignty of the largest and most fruitful island of the Mediterranean; and his administration displays a liberal and enlightened mind, above the limits of his age and education. The Moslems were maintained in the free enjoyment of their religion and property: a philosopher and physician of Mazara, of the race of Mahomet, harangued the conqueror, and was invited to court; his geography of the seven climates was translated into Latin; and Roger, after a diligent perusal, preferred the work of the Arabian to the writings of the Grecian Ptolemy.

Gibbon reluctantly expresses some doubt about this story in a footnote, but modern scholarship has untangled the timings.

iii. a rude story about an attempted castration

Theobald, marquis of Camerino and Spoleto, supported the rebels of Beneventum; and his wanton cruelty was not incompatible in that age with the character of an hero. His captives of the Greek nation or party were castrated without mercy, and the outrage was aggravated by a cruel jest, that he wished to present the emperor with a supply of eunuchs, the most precious ornaments of the Byzantine court. The garrison of the castle had been defeated in a sally, and the prisoners were sentenced to the customary operation. But the sacrifice was disturbed by the intrusion of a frantic female, who, with bleeding cheeks, dishevelled hair, and importunate clamours, compelled the marquis to listen to her complaint. “It is thus,” she cried, “ye magnanimous heroes, that ye wage war against women, against women who have never injured ye, and whose only arms are the distaff and the loom?” Theobald denied the charge, and protested that, since the Amazons, he had never heard of a female war. “And how,” she furiously exclaimed, “can you attack us more directly, how can you wound us in a more vital part, than by robbing our husbands of what we most dearly cherish, the source of our joys, and the hope of our posterity? The plunder of our flocks and herds I have endured without a murmur, but this fatal injury, this irreparable loss, subdues my patience, and calls aloud on the justice of heaven and earth.” A general laugh applauded her eloquence; the savage Franks, inaccessible to pity, were moved by her ridiculous, yet rational despair; and, with the deliverance of the captives, she obtained the restitution of her effects. As she returned in triumph to the castle, she was overtaken by a messenger, to inquire, in the name of Theobald, what punishment should be inflicted on her husband, were he again taken in arms? “Should such,” she answered without hesitation, “be his guilt and misfortune, he has eyes, and a nose, and hands, and feet. These are his own, and these he may deserve to forfeit by his personal offences. But let my lord be pleased to spare what his little handmaid presumes to claim as her peculiar and lawful property.”¹⁴

Liutprand, Hist. l. iv. c. iv. in the Rerum Italic. Script. tom. i. pars i. p. 453, 454. Should the licentiousness of the tale be questioned, I may exclaim, with poor Sterne, that it is hard if I may not transcribe with caution what a bishop could write without scruple! What if I had translated, ut viris certetis testiculos amputare, in quibus nostri corporis refocillatio, &c.?

The reference, I think, is to the discourse on swearing which punctuates chapters 2.II-2.V of Tristram Shandy (Tristram's father becomes fascinated with an anathema pronounced by the medieval Bishop Ernulfus, and gets the family doctor to translate it from Latin on the spot while Tristram's uncle Toby loudly whistles 'Lillibullero' and his mother is upstairs giving birth to him).

4) Coming next

Chapter LVII: The Turks, ending volume 5 of the 6. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines
On why he is addressing centuries of barbarian activity in one short chapter, having devoted three long ones to the few decades of the rise of Islam:

If, in the account of this interesting people [the Arabs], I have deviated from the strict and original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will hide my transgression, or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and in their decay, the Arabians press themselves on our curiosity: the first overthrow of the church and empire of the Greeks may be imputed to their arms; and the disciples of Mahomet still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the Oriental world. But the same labor would be unworthily bestowed on the swarms of savages, who, between the seventh and the twelfth century, descended from the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad or perpetual emigration. Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful, their actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valour brutal, and the uniformity of their public and private lives was neither softened by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne repelled and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of these Barbarians has disappeared without leaving any memorial of their existence, and the despicable remnant continues, and may long continue, to groan under the dominion of a foreign tyrant.

That last statement is a grand rhetorical flourish, but it wasn't at all true of the Russians at the time Gibbon was writing, and not really true of the Hungarians though a better argument could be made. It's fair enough comment on the Bulgarians, and possibly the Ukrainians if we allow them to be the Scythians and the ruled rather than rulers of Kiev (Kiow as Gibbon calls it).

2) Summary

Another short chapter (30 pages) which does what it says on the tin, taking the Bulgarians, Hungarians and Russians in turn and looking at their interactions with the Byzantine Empire over its later centuries. Gibbon is clearly taken with the scholarship of the Hungarians, and the romance of the Russians; rather less so with the Bulgarians. Essentially this is a chapter of three short national histories, each with a different ending - the Bulgarians end up dominated and partially assimilated, the Hungarians assertive and free, and the Russians gain Christianity but become ever more isolated.

3) Points arising

Hungarians as libertarian heroes

Gibbon is puzzled because the Hungarians are related linguistically and ethnically to the apathetic inhabitants of Arctic Scandinavia:

With this narrative we might be reasonably content, if the penetration of modern learning had not opened a new and larger prospect of the antiquities of nations. The Hungarian language stands alone, and as it were insulated, among the Sclavonian dialects; but it bears a close and clear affinity to the idioms of the Fennic race, of an obsolete and savage race, which formerly occupied the northern regions of Asia and Europe. The genuine appellation of Ugri or Igours is found on the western confines of China; their migration to the banks of the Irtish is attested by Tartar evidence; a similar name and language are detected in the southern parts of Siberia; and the remains of the Fennic tribes are widely, though thinly scattered from the sources of the Oby to the shores of Lapland. The consanguinity of the Hungarians and Laplanders would display the powerful energy of climate on the children of a common parent; the lively contrast between the bold adventurers who are intoxicated with the wines of the Danube, and the wretched fugitives who are immersed beneath the snows of the polar circle. Arms and freedom have ever been the ruling, though too often the unsuccessful, passion of the Hungarians, who are endowed by nature with a vigorous constitution of soul and body. Extreme cold has diminished the stature and congealed the faculties of the Laplanders; and the arctic tribes, alone among the sons of men, are ignorant of war, and unconscious of human blood; a happy ignorance, if reason and virtue were the guardians of their peace!

There is of course a confusion here between the Ugric languages, of which Hungarian is one, and the Uighurs of western China, whose language is actually Turkic.

But my point is that the Hungarians are here anointed by Gibbon as passionate about "arms and freedom", thanks to their "vigorous constitution", a word definitely chosen to reflect political debate as well, as we can tell from the end of the Hungarian section:

...the house of Arpad reigned three hundred years in the kingdom of Hungary. But the freeborn Barbarians were not dazzled by the lustre of the diadem, and the people asserted their indefeasible right of choosing, deposing, and punishing the hereditary servant of the state.

Gibbon is a bit ambiguous about whether that last bit is a good idea - back in Chapter VII he was rather defensive of the hereditary principle, but he was writing that before Britain lost the American war.

4) Coming next

Chapter LVI: The Normans in Italy. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

A classic opener:

In the profession of Christianity, the variety of national characters may be clearly distinguished. The natives of Syria and Egypt abandoned their lives to lazy and contemplative devotion: Rome again aspired to the dominion of the world; and the wit of the lively and loquacious Greeks was consumed in the disputes of metaphysical theology. The incomprehensible mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, instead of commanding their silent submission, were agitated in vehement and subtile controversies, which enlarged their faith at the expense, perhaps, of their charity and reason.

Though in fact he then goes on to argue that the Greeks had stopped arguing, and that this was a Bad Thing.

This very short chapter doesn't pretend to be objective; it concerns...

...the doctrine and story of the PAULICIANS; and, as they cannot plead for themselves, our candid criticism will magnify the good, and abate or suspect the evil, that is reported by their adversaries.

Gibbon sometimes supports the historiographical underdog out of a sense of fair play (as he did with early Islam) but here he is supporting the Paulicians because he likes them.

2) Summary

At 18 pages this is one of the shortest chapters in the entire Decline and Fall - possibly even the shortest; I haven't gone back and counted. Gibbon outlines the early history of the Paulician heresy in Anatolia in the ninth century, links them to the Albigensians (who we now tend to call the Cathars) in the thirteenth century, and then explores the benefits of the Reformation.

3) Points arising

the Reformation and liberty

This turns into one of Gibbon's most political chapters, the central cult identified as martyrs for their ideals:

The visible assemblies of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, were extirpated by fire and sword; and the bleeding remnant escaped by flight, concealment, or Catholic conformity. But the invincible spirit which they had kindled still lived and breathed in the Western world. In the state, in the church, and even in the cloister, a latent succession was preserved of the disciples of St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome, embraced the Bible as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from all the visions of the Gnostic theology. The struggles of Wickliff in England, of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual; but the names of Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin, are pronounced with gratitude as the deliverers of nations.

This feeds automatically into the practice of tolerance, which for Gibbon is immutably linked to Protestantism (with telling footnotes):

Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the reformed churches; many weeds of prejudice were eradicated; and the disciples of Erasmus diffused a spirit of freedom and moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed as a common benefit, an inalienable right:³⁹ the free governments of Holland⁴⁰ and England⁴¹ introduced the practice of toleration; and the narrow allowance of the laws has been enlarged by the prudence and humanity of the times.

³⁹ I am sorry to observe, that the three writers of the last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all laymen and philosophers.
⁴⁰ See the excellent chapter of Sir William Temple on the Religion of the United Provinces. I am not satisfied with Grotius, (de Rebus Belgicis, Annal. l. i. p. 13, 14, edit. in 12mo.,) who approves the Imperial laws of persecution, and only condemns the bloody tribunal of the inquisition.
⁴¹ Sir William Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 53, 54) explains the law of England as it was fixed at the Revolution. The exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the Trinity, would still have a tolerable scope for persecution if the national spirit were not more effectual than a hundred statutes.

I don't quite get why Gibbon is 'sorry' in the first of those footnotes, but I'm slightly amused that in the last of the three he attributes English tolerance to national character rather than to any legal provision, which surely somewhat undermines the rest of his argument.

The closing sentences are interesting too:

In the exercise, the mind has understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows that might amuse the child can no longer satisfy his manly reason. The volumes of controversy are overspread with cobwebs: the doctrine of a Protestant church is far removed from the knowledge or belief of its private members; and the forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed with a sigh, or a smile, by the modern clergy. Yet the friends of Christianity are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry and scepticism. The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished: the web of mystery is unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and Socinians, whose number must not be computed from their separate congregations; and the pillars of Revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name without the substance of religion, who indulge the license without the temper of philosophy.

Here Gibbon attacks those who would attack religion under the guise of reason. Not that he would ever do that himself, of course.

4) Coming next

I'm on the road for the next two weekends, so it will be the end on the month before I next post here. Next up, Chapter LV, is about the Bulgarians, the Hungarians and the Russians. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

On the duty of an editor to his subject:

² A splendid Ms. of Constantine, de Caeremoniis Aulae et Ecclesiae Byzantinae, wandered from Constantinople to Buda, Frankfort, and Leipsic, where it was published in a splendid edition by Leich and Reiske, (A.D. 1751, in folio,) with such lavish praise as editors never fail to bestow on the worthy or worthless object of their toil.

I see that another edition of Gibbon has 'slavish' rather than 'lavish'; either would probably do.

On the use of English by soldiers of the Varangian guard at Byzantine court celebrations of the Emperor's majesty:

⁵⁵ Βάραγγοι κατὰ τὴν πατρίαν γλω̂σσαν καὶ οὑτοι, ἤγουν Ἰγκλινιστὶ πολυχρονίζουσι (Codin. p. 90). I wish he had preserved the words, however corrupt, of their English acclamation.

So do I.

2) Summary

A mercifully shorter chapter at 44 pages, compared to the epic length of some recent ones, very largely drawn from the works of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, and describing in detail the functioning of the court and culture of the Byzantine empire of the ninth century.

3) Points arising

i) the court

I was struck by Gibbon's fascination with the court ceremonies of Constantinople - a very long section here, and we had the whole of Chapter XVII on the same subject (admittedly from five hundred years earlier). While it's all interesting stuff, I'd have liked to see some interrogation of the reliability of Constantine Porphyrogenitus as a source: the emperor himself is surely almost the last person one should look to for a neutral account.

ii) warfare

There's some blurring of the boundaries of this topic with last chapter's discussion of Greek Fire, but it's a fairly lucid exploration of the military resources available in the ninth century. Though Gibbon admits he doesn't really have a handle on the economics, he does reflect a bit on the reliability of Constantine Porphyrogenitus in this instance, though excuses him for reasons familiar to Gibbon from his own militia experience:

⁷⁶ ...A critical reader will discern some inconsistencies in different parts of this account; but they are not more obscure or more stubborn than the establishment and effectives, the present and fit for duty, the rank and file and the private, of a modern return, which retain in proper hands the knowledge of these profitable mysteries.

iii) science

For the second chapter in a row, Gibbon reflects on a revival of scientific knowledge, this time among the Byzantines; he mentions two scholars in particular, Photius, who I had at least heard of, and Leo the Mathematician, who I have to admit was a new one on me. As Gibbon notes of the latter,

¹⁰⁶ ...Like fryar Bacon, the philosopher Leo has been transformed by ignorance into a conjurer...

4) Coming next

Chapter LIV, on the Paulicians. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Great lines

This includes one of the most famous lines in the entire book, reflecting on the importance of Charles Martel's pushing the Arabs back (though it is usually quoted without the diverting damning-with-faint-praise footnote):

A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.<sup>30

30</sup> Yet I sincerely doubt whether the Oxford mosch would have produced a volume of controversy so elegant and ingenious as the sermons lately preached by Mr. White, the Arabic professor, at Mr. Bampton's lecture. His observations on the character and religion of Mahomet are always adapted to his argument, and generally founded in truth and reason. He sustains the part of a lively and eloquent advocate; and sometimes rises to the merit of an historian and philosopher.

But this is a particularly good chapter for Gibbon's prose, with a brilliant opening paragraph:

When the Arabs first issued from the desert, they must have been surprised at the ease and rapidity of their own success. But when they advanced in the career of victory to the banks of the Indus and the summit of the Pyrenees; when they had repeatedly tried the edge of their scymetars and the energy of their faith, they might be equally astonished that any nation could resist their invincible arms; that any boundary should confine the dominion of the successor of the prophet. The confidence of soldiers and fanatics may indeed be excused, since the calm historian of the present hour, who strives to follow the rapid course of the Saracens, must study to explain by what means the church and state were saved from this impending, and, as it should seem, from this inevitable, danger. The deserts of Scythia and Sarmatia might be guarded by their extent, their climate, their poverty, and the courage of the northern shepherds; China was remote and inaccessible; but the greatest part of the temperate zone was subject to the Mahometan conquerors, the Greeks were exhausted by the calamities of war and the loss of their fairest provinces, and the Barbarians of Europe might justly tremble at the precipitate fall of the Gothic monarchy. In this inquiry I shall unfold the events that rescued our ancestors of Britain, and our neighbours of Gaul, from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran; that protected the majesty of Rome, and delayed the servitude of Constantinople; that invigorated the defence of the Christians, and scattered among their enemies the seeds of division and decay.

I was intrigued by the footnote on the historian of the Ummayads (the 'house of Ommiyah', as Gibbon calls them):

⁷ These domestic revolutions are related in a clear and natural style, in the second volume of Ockley's History of the Saracens, p. 253 - 370. Besides our printed authors, he draws his materials from the Arabic Mss. of Oxford, which he would have more deeply searched had he been confined to the Bodleian library instead of the city jail a fate how unworthy of the man and of his country!

Wikipedia reveals that Gibbon is not fair to Oxford, in that it was Cambridge where Ockley was imprisoned.

A nice line on chess and empire:

The caliph Almamon might proudly assert, that it was easier for him to rule the East and the West, than to manage a chess-board of two feet square: yet I suspect that in both those games he was guilty of many fatal mistakes...

We'll come back to this. Meanwhile have a cryptic line from footnote 52:

the bees are not masters of transcendent geometry.

2) Summary

The Arabs fail to capture Constantinople or to hold Rome or their gains in France, and start to lose ground to the Byzantines as well. Much discourse on Arabic learning. Gibbon concludes that three reason they failed to make much headway after the eighth century were:

1. "When the Arabian conquerors had spread themselves over the East, and were mingled with the servile crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they insensibly lost the freeborn and martial virtues of the desert."
2. "The sect of the Carmathians may be considered as the second visible cause of the decline and fall of the empire of the caliphs."
3. "The third and most obvious cause was the weight and magnitude of the empire itself."

I had not previously heard of the Carmathians (now usually Qarmatians); it's an interesting story.

3) Points arising

i) happiness

Gibbon reflects on happiness and power in the apparently successful career of the Andalusian ruler we now call Abd-ar-Rahman III, and adds a personal footnote:

In a private condition, our desires are perpetually repressed by poverty and subordination; but the lives and labours of millions are devoted to the service of a despotic prince, whose laws are blindly obeyed, and whose wishes are instantly gratified. Our imagination is dazzled by the splendid picture; and whatever may be the cool dictates of reason, there are few among us who would obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts and the cares of royalty. It may therefore be of some use to borrow the experience of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps excited our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph.

"I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen:—O man! place not thy confidence in this present world!"⁵⁰

⁵⁰ Cardonne, tom. i. p. 329, 330. This confession, the complaints of Solomon of the vanity of this world, (read Prior's verbose but eloquent poem,) and the happy ten days of the emperor Seghed, (Rambler, No. 204, 205,) will be triumphantly quoted by the detractors of human life. Their expectations are commonly immoderate, their estimates are seldom impartial. If I may speak of myself, (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty,) my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the present composition.

That's good to know; when one thinks of the royal duke who responded, on being presented with one of the volumes of Decline and Fall "Another damn'd thick, square book! Always, scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?" - it's cheering to hear from Gibbon himself that he enjoyed the writing process.

ii) science

There is so much in this chapter about Islamic and Byzantine learning and science that I cannot possibly do it justice. The slightly irritating thing is that it is in three chunks which are really in the wrong order. Let's start, as Gibbon finishes, with history, literature, philosophy and ethics:

But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of a familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of antiquity, the purity of taste, and the freedom of thought... Our education in the Greek and Latin schools may have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and I am not forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of whose language I am ignorant. Yet I know that the classics have much to teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to learn; the temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions of art, the forms of visible and intellectual beauty, the just delineation of character and passion, the rhetoric of narrative and argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetry. The influence of truth and reason is of a less ambiguous complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious freedom. Their moral and political writings might have gradually unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal spirit of inquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian sages to suspect that their caliph was a tyrant, and their prophet an impostor.

But it's a peculiar argument because there was Arabic philosophy, and particularly science, as Gibbon has described in an earlier passage:

They cultivated with more success the sublime science of astronomy, which elevates the mind of man to disdain his diminutive planet and momentary existence. The costly instruments of observation were supplied by the caliph Almamon, and the land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same spacious level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of Sinaar, and a second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians accurately measured a degree of the great circle of the earth, and determined at twenty-four thousand miles the entire circumference of our globe. From the reign of the Abbassides to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without the aid of glasses, were diligently observed; and the astronomical tables of Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand, correct some minute errors, without daring to renounce the hypothesis of Ptolemy, without advancing a step towards the discovery of the solar system. In the Eastern courts, the truths of science could be recommended only by ignorance and folly, and the astronomer would have been disregarded, had he not debased his wisdom or honesty by the vain predictions of astrology.

I know more about medieval astronomy and astrology than Gibbon did, certainly enough to know that he is being very unfair. (The circumference of the earth is about 24,900 miles, though of course easier to remember as 40,000 km). Moving slightly further west and nearer the beginning of the chapter, there are three excellent pages on Greek Fire, the Byzantines' chemical warfare device, ending with a reflection on the invention of gunpowder:

The use of the Greek, or, as it might now be called, of the Saracen fire, was continued to the middle of the fourteenth century, when the scientific or casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, effected a new revolution in the art of war and the history of mankind.<sup>24

24</sup> That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the consequences of his own discovery[.]

4) Coming next

Chapter LIII, the Byzantine Empire in the tenth century. Read it here or here.

Read it here (continued to here, here, here, here and here) or alternatively here. Apologies for late appearance of this chapter, due to visitors last weekend and good weather this weekend; in my defence, it is 90 pages long, which I think is the longest single chapter so far.

1) Great lines

Tooting his own trumpet:

perhaps the Arabs might not find in a single historian so clear and comprehensive a narrative of their own exploits as that which will be deduced in the ensuing sheets.

Actually there can be very few historians, Arab or otherwise, who have managed such a feat. Gibbon's account is far superior to the two twentieth-century accounts I have read.

On why the Emperor Constans II lost the Battle of the Masts:

...the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun.<sup>93

93</sup> He dreamed that he was at Thessalonica, an harmless and unmeaning vision; but his soothsayer, or his cowardice, understood the sure omen of a defeat concealed in that inauspicious word θὲς ἄλλῳ νίκην, Give to another the victory (Theophan. p. 286 [leg. 287; a.m. 6146]. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 88 [c. 19]).

It's originally Theophanes' story rather than Gibbon's, but he gives it a new spin.

I wonder if the word "bigot" had the same negative connotations for Gibbon as it does for us. He almost seems to use it as a term of praise when characterising Murtadi's descriptions of Cairo:

¹⁰⁴ ...He expatiates on the subject with the zeal and minuteness of a citizen and a bigot, and his local traditions have a strong air of truth and accuracy.

A quote from an unexpected source on the fate of Roderic, the last Visigothic ruler of Spain:

¹⁷⁶ ...Some credulous Spaniards believe that King Roderic, or Roderigo, escaped to an hermit’s cell; and others, that he was cast alive into a tub full of serpents, from whence he exclaimed, with a lamentable voice, "they devour the part with which I have so grievously sinned" (Don Quixote, part ii. l. iii. c. i.).

Gibbon's surprisingly often prepared to give us a good penis joke.

2) Summary

The Arabs conquer, in quick order, I. Persia; II. Syria; III. Egypt; IV. Africa; and, V. Spain. A brilliant summary of the campaigns of the Prophet's immediate successors. Really you need to read the full 90 pages to absorb what a tremendous synthesis of information this is.

3) Points arising

i) Why Islam prospered

Gibbon explains how Islam got it right at the time:

Religious toleration.

The wars of the Moslems were sanctified by the prophet; but among the various precepts and examples of his life, the caliphs selected the lessons of toleration that might tend to disarm the resistance of the unbelievers. Arabia was the temple and patrimony of the God of Mahomet; but he beheld with less jealousy and affection the nations of the earth. The polytheists and idolaters, who were ignorant of his name, might be lawfully extirpated by his votaries; but a wise policy supplied the obligation of justice; and after some acts of intolerant zeal, the Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan have spared the pagods of that devout and populous country. The disciples of Abraham, of Moses, and of Jesus, were solemnly invited to accept the more perfect revelation of Mahomet; but if they preferred the payment of a moderate tribute, they were entitled to the freedom of conscience and religious worship. 

Propagation of Mahometism.

In a field of battle the forfeit lives of the prisoners were redeemed by the profession of Islam; the females were bound to embrace the religion of their masters, and a race of sincere proselytes was gradually multiplied by the education of the infant captives. But the millions of African and Asiatic converts, who swelled the native band of the faithful Arabs, must have been allured, rather than constrained, to declare their belief in one God and the apostle of God. By the repetition of a sentence and the loss of a foreskin, the subject or the slave, the captive or the criminal, arose in a moment the free and equal companion of the victorious Moslems. Every sin was expiated, every engagement was dissolved: the vow of celibacy was superseded by the indulgence of nature; the active spirits who slept in the cloister were awakened by the trumpet of the Saracens; and in the convulsion of the world, every member of a new society ascended to the natural level of his capacity and courage. The minds of the multitude were tempted by the invisible as well as temporal blessings of the Arabian prophet; and charity will hope that many of his proselytes entertained a serious conviction of the truth and sanctity of his revelation. In the eyes of an inquisitive polytheist, it must appear worthy of the human and the divine nature. More pure than the system of Zoroaster, more liberal than the law of Moses, the religion of Mahomet might seem less inconsistent with reason than the creed of mystery and superstition, which, in the seventh century, disgraced the simplicity of the gospel.

And final reflections on the extent of its success:

At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. Their prerogative was not circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by the power of the nobles, the freedom of the commons, the privileges of the church, the votes of a senate, or the memory of a free constitution. The authority of the companions of Mahomet expired with their lives; and the chiefs or emirs of the Arabian tribes left behind, in the desert, the spirit of equality and independence. The regal and sacerdotal characters were united in the successors of Mahomet; and if the Koran was the rule of their actions, they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that divine book. They reigned by the right of conquest over the nations of the East, to whom the name of liberty was unknown, and who were accustomed to applaud in their tyrants the acts of violence and severity that were exercised at their own expense. Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days' journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their writers, the long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the march of a caravan. We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress of the Mahometan religion diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris.

Gibbon is actually teaching two moral lessons here: first, that his readers probably know much less about the early Caliphate than he does; but secondly, that its success was partly due to solid Enlightenment values of religious toleration.

ii) The destruction of the library of Alexandria

This is a beautiful bit of Gibbon source-criticism, deconstructing the popular legend that the Arabs destroyed the library (originally invented by an Arab historian), complete with snarky footnotes.

The Alexandrian library.

I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours, the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar and philosophy.¹¹⁵ Emboldened by this familiar intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion, contemptible in that of the Barbarians - the royal library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror. Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." The sentence was executed with blind obedience: the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel. Since the Dynasties of Abulpharagius¹¹⁶ have been given to the world in a Latin version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences. The fact is indeed marvellous. "Read and wonder!" says the historian himself: and the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two annalist of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of Alexandria.¹¹⁷ The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists they expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science, historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of the faithful.¹¹⁸ A more destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors of Mahomet; yet in this instance, the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of materials. I should not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Caesar in his own defence,¹¹⁹ or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry.¹²⁰ But if we gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of the Ptolemies.¹²¹ Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be enriched with a repository of books; but if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths,¹²² a philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the objects of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember, that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity¹²³ had adjudged the first place of genius and glory: the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared the writings of their predecessors;¹²⁴ nor can it fairly be presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.

¹¹⁵ Many treatises of this lover of labour (ϕιλόπονος) are still extant; but for readers of the present age the printed and unpublished are nearly in the same predicament. Moses and Aristotle are the chief objects of his verbose commentaries, one of which is dated as early as May 10th, 617 (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. ix. p. 458-468). A modern (John Le Clerc), who sometimes assumed the same name, was equal to old Philoponus in diligence, and far superior in good sense and real knowledge.
¹¹⁶ Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 114, vers. Pocock. Audi quid factum sit et mirare. It would be endless to enumerate the moderns who have wondered and believed, but I may distinguish with honour the rational scepticism of Renaudot (Hist. Alex. Patriarch. p. 170): historia . . . habet aliquid ἄπιστον ut Arabibus familiare est.
¹¹⁷ This curious anecdote will be vainly sought in the annals of Eutychius and the Saracenic history of Elmacin. The silence of Abulfeda, Murtadi, and a crowd of Moslems is less conclusive from their ignorance of Christian literature.
¹¹⁸ See Reland, de Jure Militari Mohammedanorum, in his iiird volume of Dissertations, p. 37. The reason for not burning the religious books of the Jews or Christians is derived from the respect that is due to the name of God.
¹¹⁹ Consult the collections of Frensheim (Supplement. Livian. c. 12, 43) and Usher (Annal. p. 469). Livy himself had styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiæ regum curæque egregium opus: a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly criticised by the narrow stoicism of Seneca (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 9), whose wisdom, on this occasion, deviates into nonsense.
¹²⁰ See this History [chapter 28 where Gibbon describes the destruction of the library by Christians in 389].
¹²¹ Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticæ, vi. 17), Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 16), and Orosius (l. vi. c. 15). They all speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably strong, fuerunt Bibliothecæ innumerabiles; et loquitur monumentorum veterum concinens fides, &c.
¹²² Renaudot answers for versions of the Bible, Hexapla Catenæ Patrum Commentaries, &c. (p. 170). Our Alexandrian MS., if it came from Egypt and not from Constantinople or Mount Athos (Wetstein, Prolegom. ad N. T. p. 8, &c.), might possibly be among them.
¹²³ I have often persued with pleasure a chapter of Quintilian (Institut. Orator. x. 1), in which that judicious critic enumerates and appreciates the series of Greek and Latin classics.
¹²⁴ Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c. On this subject Wotton (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 85 - 95) argues, with solid sense, against the lively exotic fancies of Sir William Temple. The contempt of the Greeks for Barbaric science would scarcely admit the Indian or Aethiopic books into the library of Alexandria; nor is it proved that philosophy has sustained any real loss from their exclusion.

That's a great zinger at the end, even if completely prejudiced and untrue.

Read it here, here or here.

1) Great lines

My eye was caught by this:

Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome.

For me, of course, this has a resonance with Danny Morrison's 1981 line: "But will anyone object if, with a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland?" I suppose that there are other examples of "with X in one hand and Y in the other", but I'm sure that Morrison, who is a well-read chap, was at least unconsciously and possibly consciously riffing on Gibbon.

Gibbon turns out to appreciate astronomy (more on this below):

⁵⁶ ... The earliest date of the Chaldæan observations is the year 2234 before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they were communicated, at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals of science!

And he is also into mythbusting in this chapter, this being one particularly pleasing example:

¹⁵¹ The Greeks and Latins have invented and propagated the vulgar and ridiculous story that Mahomet’s iron tomb is suspended in the air at Mecca (ση̂μα μετεωριζόμενον, Laonicus Chalcocondyles de Rebus Turcicis, l. iii. p. 66), by the action of equal and potent loadstones (Dictionnaire de Bayle, Mahomet, Rem. EE, FF). Without any philosophical inquiries, it may suffice that, 1. The prophet was not buried at Mecca; and, 2. That his tomb at Medina, which has been visited by millions, is placed on the ground (Reland de Relig. Moham. l. ii. c. 19, p. 209-211; Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 263-268).

2) Summary

This is one of the classic chapters of Decline and Fall, and also one of the classic accounts of the life of Mahomet (sic) and the early years of Islam. It is very readable - for once, Gibbon is not assuming much prior knowledge from the reader, and so he shows off his own reading in the best possible way. Although it's obviously a geographical jump away from the main narrative, I think I would heartily recommend it to anyone wondering if Gibbon is for them - as long as they are prepared to go through 81 pages, including 187 footnotes.

3) Points arising

i) the Prophet

Obviously the key point of this chapter is Gibbon's treatment of Mahomet. (I shall use that spelling, though of course it is no longer the standard English transliteration of محمد, on the basis that this blog entry is about a character in Gibbon's book rather than the historical person.) My other reading on the subject (Barnaby Rogerson and the Koran itself) has been much less satisfactory, and I appreciated Gibbon's frank statement of his own disbelief, combined with his defence of Mahomet against the bigotry of Christian writers.

First off, Gibbon vigorously asserts that the Koran is the product of Mahomet's own imagination - but begins that section by attacking claims that it was 'really' written by someone else.

From every region of that solitary world, the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of devotion and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. ​Some useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the composition of the Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist. ​From his earliest youth Mahomet was addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and from the arms of Cadijah: in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, he preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth, and a necessary fiction, THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD, AND THAT MAHOMET IS THE APOSTLE OF GOD.

Gibbon extends this respect also to his immediate successors:

An historian who balances the four caliphs with a hand unshaken by superstition, will calmly pronounce that their manners were alike pure and exemplary; that their zeal was fervent, and probably sincere; and that, in the midst of riches and power, their lives were devoted to the practice of moral and religious duties.

And in terms of giving Mahomet a fair hearing, he will chide even Voltaire:

Instead of indulging their passions and his own,¹³⁹ the victorious exile forgave the guilt, and united the factions, of Mecca.

¹³⁹ After the conquest of Mecca, the Mahomet of Voltaire imagines and perpetrates the most horrid crimes. The poet confesses that he is not supported by the truth of history, and can only allege que celui qui fait la guerre à sa patrie au nom de Dieu est capable de tout (Oeuvres de Voltaire, tom xv. p. 282). The maxim is neither charitable or philosophic; and some reverence is surely due to the fame of heroes and the religion of nations. I am informed that a Turkish ambassador at Paris was much scandalised at the representation of this tragedy.

Gibbon is clear enough about Mahomet's less attractive points - the many wives, the convenient timing of some of the revelations - but in the end he comes down as an admirer:

The talents of Mahomet are entitled to our applause; but his success has, perhaps, too strongly attracted our admiration. Are we surprised that a multitude of proselytes should embrace the doctrine and the passions of an eloquent fanatic? In the heresies of the church, the same seduction has been tried and repeated from the time of the apostles to that of the reformers. Does it seem incredible that a private citizen should grasp the sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and erect a monarchy by his victorious arms? In the moving picture of the dynasties of the East, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen from a baser origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a larger scope of empire and conquest. Mahomet was alike instructed to preach and to fight; and the union of these opposite qualities, while it enhanced his merit, contributed to his success: the operation of force and persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear, continually acted on each other, till every barrier yielded to their irresistible power. His voice invited the Arabs to freedom and victory, to arms and rapine, to the indulgence of their darling passions in this world and the other: the restraints which he imposed were requisite to establish the credit of the prophet, and to exercise the obedience of the people; and the only objection to his success was his rational creed of the unity and perfections of God.

Permanency of his religion.

It is not the propagation, but the permanency, of his religion, that deserves our wonder: the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina, is preserved, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, by the Indian, the African, and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran. If the Christian apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul, could return to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the name of the Deity who is worshipped with such mysterious rites in that magnificent temple: at Oxford or Geneva, they would experience less surprise; but it might still be incumbent on them to peruse the catechism of the church, and to study the orthodox commentators on their own writings and the words of their Master. But the Turkish dome of St. Sophia, with an increase of splendour and size, represents the humble tabernacle erected at Medina by the hands of Mahomet. The Mahometans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object of their faith and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. "I believe in one God, and Mahomet the apostle of God," is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue; and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion.

(I note, consistent with the previous chapter, that one of the plus points for Gibbon is Mahomet's dislike of idolatry.)

ii) freedom

One of Mahomet's other big selling points for Gibbon is his freedom agenda.

The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favour of the posterity of Ismael. Some exceptions, that can neither be dismissed nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous; the kingdom of Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians, the sultans of Egypt, and the Turks; the holy cities of Mecca and Medina have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman province of Arabia embraced the peculiar wilderness in which Ismael and his sons must have pitched their tents in the face of their brethren. Yet these exceptions are temporary or local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet, their intrepid valour had been severely felt by their neighbours in offensive and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback, and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the cimeter. The long memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity and succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and to maintain their inheritance.

But there is more to freedom than simply the absence of foreign rule:

...the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in some degree, the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives of nature. In every tribe, superstition, or gratitude, or fortune, has exalted a particular family above the heads of their equals. The dignities of sheich and emir invariably descend in this chosen race; but the order of succession is loose and precarious; and the most worthy or aged of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though important, office of composing disputes by their advice, and guiding valour by their example. Even a female of sense and spirit has been permitted to command the countrymen of Zenobia... If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are quickly punished by the desertion of their subjects, who had been accustomed to a mild and parental jurisdiction. Their spirit is free, their steps are unconfined, the desert is open, and the tribes and families are held together by a mutual and voluntary compact. ...the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the clearest evidence of public freedom. But their simple freedom was of a very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek and Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided share of the civil and political rights of the community. In the more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command; and the fear of dishonour guards him from the meaner apprehension of pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the mind is conspicuous in his outward demeanour; his speech is low, weighty, and concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of his own importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and his superiors without awe.

It's a really important passage in understanding what Gibbon sees as the ideal society. (And I'm afraid I cut the sentence about the 'softer natives of Yemen', though the eventws of the last few days have proved that stereotype wrong.)

iii) The Sabians

I'm always on the lookout for star-cults, and the Sabians of Harran are no disappointment:

Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land where they might profess what they thought, and practise what they professed. The religions of the Sabians and Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the science of the Chaldaeans⁵⁵ and the arms of the Assyrians. From the observations of two thousand years, the priests and astronomers of Babylon⁵⁶ deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored the seven gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven planets, and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere, were represented by images and talismans; the seven days of the week were dedicated to their respective deities; the Sabians prayed thrice each day; and the temple of the moon at Haran was the term of their pilgrimage.

⁵⁵Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. ii. p. 142 - 145) has cast on their religion the curious but superficial glance of a Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed stars.
⁵⁶ Simplicius, (who quotes Porphyry,) de Coelo, l. ii. com. xlvi p. 123, lin. 18, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474, who doubts the fact, because it is adverse to his systems. The earliest date of the Chaldaean observations is the year 2234 before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they were communicated at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals of science!

I note a stronger interest in astronomy than in previous chapters; had Gibbon been infected by the general excitement surrounding the discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781?

4) Coming next

I'm on the road for the next two weekends so we'll have to wait a bit for Chapter LI, which deals with the early Arab conquests. Read it here or here.

Read it here, here or here.

1) Good Lines

A footnote on the later history of iconoclasm:

⁷⁷ ...The Protestants, except Mosheim, are soured with controversy; but the Catholics, except Dupin, are inflamed by the fury and superstition of the monks; and even le Beau (Hist. du Bas Empire), a gentleman and a scholar, is infected by the odious contagion.

A later footnote, on why Charlemagne did not join the Rhine and Danube by canal:

¹¹² ...The The canal, which would have been only two leagues in length, and of which some traces are still extant in Swabia, was interrupted by excessive rains, military avocations, and superstitious fears

It is still to be seen at the appropriately named village of Graben, now in Bavaria; and apparently modern scholars think it did operate, despite the threat of superstitious fears.

Gibbon's whole section on the character of Charlemagne is one of the best examples of his lucid exposition combined with footnotes both snarky and reflective.

The appellation of great has been often bestowed, and sometimes deserved; but CHARLEMAGNE is the only prince in whose favour the title has been indissolubly blended with the name. That name, with the addition of saint, is inserted in the Roman calendar; and the saint, by a rare felicity, is crowned with the praises of the historians and philosophers of an enlightened age.⁹⁵ His real merit is doubtless enhanced by the barbarism of the nation and the times from which he emerged: but the apparent magnitude of an object is likewise enlarged by an unequal comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual splendour from the nakedness of the surrounding desert. Without injustice to his fame, I may discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness of the restorer of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity is not the most conspicuous: ⁹⁶ but the public happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, ⁹⁷ whom the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion. I shall be scarcely permitted to accuse the ambition of a conqueror; but in a day of equal retribution, the sons of his brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain, and the four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same spot, would have something to allege against the justice and humanity of Charlemagne. His treatment of the vanquished Saxons ⁹⁸ was an abuse of the right of conquest; his laws were not less sanguinary than his arms, and in the discussion of his motives, whatever is subtracted from bigotry must be imputed to temper. The sedentary reader is amazed by his incessant activity of mind and body; and his subjects and enemies were not less astonished at his sudden presence, at the moment when they believed him at the most distant extremity of the empire; neither peace nor war, nor summer nor winter, were a season of repose; and our fancy cannot easily reconcile the annals of his reign with the geography of his expeditions. But this activity was a national, rather than a personal, virtue; the vagrant life of a Frank was spent in the chase, in pilgrimage, in military adventures; and the journeys of Charlemagne were distinguished only by a more numerous train and a more important purpose. His military renown must be tried by the scrutiny of his troops, his enemies, and his actions. Alexander conquered with the arms of Philip, but the two heroes who preceded Charlemagne bequeathed him their name, their examples, and the companions of their victories. At the head of his veteran and superior armies, he oppressed the savage or degenerate nations, who were incapable of confederating for their common safety: nor did he ever encounter an equal antagonist in numbers, in discipline, or in arms The science of war has been lost and revived with the arts of peace; but his campaigns are not illustrated by any siege or battle of singular difficulty and success; and he might behold, with envy, the Saracen trophies of his grandfather. After the Spanish expedition, his rear-guard was defeated in the Pyrenaean mountains; and the soldiers, whose situation was irretrievable, and whose valour was useless, might accuse, with their last breath, the want of skill or caution of their general. ⁹⁹ I touch with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a series, of occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses, the reformation of manners, the economy of his farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to improve the laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts, however feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his government; ¹⁰⁰ but in his institutions I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal spirit of a legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of posterity. The union and stability of his empire depended on the life of a single man: he imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among his sons; and after his numerous diets, the whole constitution was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and despotism. His esteem for the piety and knowledge of the clergy tempted him to intrust that aspiring order with temporal dominion and civil jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped and degraded by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the imprudence of his father. His laws enforced the imposition of tithes, because the daemons had proclaimed in the air that the default of payment had been the cause of the last scarcity. ¹⁰¹ The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested by the foundation of schools, the introduction of arts, the works which were published in his name, and his familiar connection with the subjects and strangers whom he invited to his court to educate both the prince and people. His own studies were tardy, laborious, and imperfect; if he spoke Latin, and understood Greek, he derived the rudiments of knowledge from conversation, rather than from books; and, in his mature age, the emperor strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every peasant now learns in his infancy. ¹⁰² The grammar and logic, the music and astronomy, of the times, were only cultivated as the handmaids of superstition; but the curiosity of the human mind must ultimately tend to its improvement, and the encouragement of learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on the character of Charlemagne. ¹⁰³ The dignity of his person, ¹⁰⁴ the length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigour of his government, and the reverence of distant nations, distinguish him from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new aera from his restoration of the Western empire.

⁹⁵ By Mably (Observations sur l’Histoire de France), Voltaire (Histoire Générale), Robertson (History of Charles V.), and Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 18). In the year 1782, M. Gaillard published his Histoire de Charlemagne (in 4 vols. in 12mo), which I have freely and profitably used. The author is a man of sense and humanity; and his work is laboured with industry and elegance. But I have likewise examined the original monuments of the reigns of Pepin and Charlemagne, in the fifth volume of the Historians of France.
⁹⁶ The vision of Weltin, composed by a monk eleven years after the death of Charlemagne, shews him in purgatory, with a vulture, who is perpetually gnawing the guilty member, while the rest of his body, the emblem of his virtues, is sound and perfect (see Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 317-360).
⁹⁷ The marriage of Eginhard with Imma, daughter of Charlemagne, is, in my opinion, sufficiently refuted by the probrum and suspicio that sullied these fair damsels, without excepting his own wife (c. xix. p. 98-100, cum Notis Schmincke). The husband must have been too strong for the historian.
⁹⁸ Besides the massacres and transmigrations, the pain of death was pronounced against the following crimes: 1. The refusal of baptism. 2. The false pretence of baptism. 3. A relapse to idolatry. 4. The murder of a priest or bishop. 5. Human sacrifices. 6. Eating meat in Lent. But every crime might be expiated by baptism or penance (Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 241-247); and the Christian Saxons became the friends and equals of the Franks (Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicæ, p. 133).
⁹⁹ In this action, the famous Rutland, Rolando, Orlando, was slain — cum pluribus aliis. See the truth in Eginhard (c. 9, p. 51-56), and the fable in an ingenious Supplement of M. Gaillard (tom. iii. p. 474). The Spaniards are too proud of a victory which history ascribes to the Gascons, and romance to the Saracens.
¹⁰⁰ Yet Schmidt, from the best authorities, represents the interior disorders and oppression of his reign (Hist. des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 45-49).
¹⁰¹ Omnis homo ex suâ proprietate legitimam decimam ad ecclesiam conferat. Experimento enim didicimus, in anno, quo illa valida fames irrepsit, ebullire vacuas annonas a dæmonibus devoratas et voces exprobationis auditas. Such is the decree and assertion of the great Council of Frankfort (canon xxv. tom. ix. p. 105). Both Selden (Hist. of Tithes; Works, vol. iii. part ii. p. 1146) and Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 12) represent Charlemagne as the first legal author of tithes. Such obligations have country gentlemen to his memory!
¹⁰² Eginhard (c. 25, p. 119) clearly affirms, tentabat et scribere . . . sed parum prospere successit labor præposterus et sero inchoatus. The moderns have perverted and corrected this obvious meaning, and the title of M. Gaillard’s Dissertation (tom. iii. p. 247-260) betrays his partiality.
¹⁰³ See Gaillard, tom. iii. p. 138-176, and Schmidt, tom. ii. p. 121-129.
¹⁰⁴ M. Gaillard (tom. iii. p. 372) fixes the true stature of Charlemagne (see a Dissertation of Marquard Freher ad calcem Eginhard. p. 220, &c.) at five feet nine inches of French, about six feet one inch and a fourth English, measure. The romance writers have increased it to eight feet, and the giant was endowed with matchless strength and appetite: at a single stroke of his good sword Joyeuse he cut asunder an horseman and his horse; at a single repast he devoured a goose, two fowls, a quarter of mutton, &c.

I do wish I could write like that.

2) Summary

It's a chapter of three parts: first, the growth of the controversy about the use of icons in religious worship, and how this drove a wedge between the Pope and the Empire; second, the rise of Charlemagne and the re-foundation of the Western Empire; and third, the subsequent re-foundation of the Holy Roman Empire and a brief sketch of its history, finishing by contrasting the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, at his coronation in 1356, with Augustus, who started it all. I must say I found it a really enlightening chapter; I had had no idea that it was iconoclasm that made possible the rise of the Carolingians and brought an end to the Byzantine presence in Italy. (Is that still the received scholarly wisdom?)

3) Matters arising

i) anti-Catholicism

Usually Gibbon is relatively moderate in his dislike of Papistry, but here he goes over the top on two issues where one can see why his Protestant background, Enlightenment instincts, and brief history as a convert might lead him to that position, but where it's rather difficult to find common ground with him today. First, he firmly aligns himself with the iconoclasts and against the worship of graven images, consigning all religious art of all periods, no matter how aesthetically valuable, as instruments of idolatry and perdition. And second, he makes great play of the Pope's claimed ability to dethrone secular monarchs, a claim that I can't imagine many Catholics were making on the Pope's behalf by 1787, though of course it remains part of the intellectual underpinnings of, say, Ulster Unionism. On the whole, Gibbon is only slightly more snarky about Catholics than about Christians in general; somehow the material in this particular chapter has tipped him over the edge.

ii) Pope Joan

Gibbon's anti-Catholicism can always be exceeded by his misogyny. His examination of the historical record of Pope Joan (in the footnotes) is not too bad; but his description of the woman who inspired the legend is seriously askew.

The influence of two sister prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and their reign¹²⁹ may have suggested to the darker ages¹³⁰ the fable¹³¹ of a female pope.¹³² The bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen years that the second of these became the head of the Latin church.

¹²⁹The time of Pope Joan (papissa Joanna) is placed somewhat earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and the two years of her imaginary reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and Benedict III. But the contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links the death of Leo and the elevation of Benedict (illico, mox, p. 247), and the accurate chronology of Pagi, Muratori, and Leibnitz fixes both events to the year 857.
¹³⁰The advocates for Pope Joan produce one hundred and fifty witnesses, or rather echoes, of the xivth, xvth, and xvith centuries. They bear testimony against themselves and the legend, by multiplying the proof that so curious a story must have been repeated by writers of every description to whom it was known. On those of the ixth and xth centuries the recent event would have flashed with a double force. Would Photius have spared such a reproach? Could Liutprand have missed such scandal? It is scarcely worth while to discuss the various readings of Martinus Polonus, Sigebert of Gemblours, or even Marianus Scotus; but a most palpable forgery is the passage of Pope Joan, which has been foisted into some MSS. and editions of the Roman Anastasius.
¹³¹ As false, it deserves that name; but I would not pronounce it incredible. Suppose a famous French chevalier of our own times to have been born in Italy, and educated in the church, instead of the army; her merit or fortune might have raised her to St. Peter’s chair; her amours would have been natural; her delivery in the streets unlucky, but not improbable.
¹³² Till the Reformation, the tale was repeated and believed without offence; and Joan’s female statue long occupied her place among the popes in the cathedral of Sienna (Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p. 624-626). She has been annihilated by two learned Protestants, Blondel and Bayle (Dictionnaire Critique, Papesse, Polonus, Blondel); but their brethren were scandalised by this equitable and generous criticism. Spanheim and Lenfant attempt to save this poor engine of controversy; and even Mosheim condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion (p. 289).

It's fairly clear, contra Gibbon, that John XI was a legitimate son of Marozia; and she does not seem to have had a papal great-grandson. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

iii) 'a gentleman and a scholar'

I was struck by the description of Le Beau in my first quoted extract above as 'a gentleman and a scholar'. (I noted a previous use of the phrase, this time about Pietro della Valle - 'a gentleman and a scholar, but intolerably vain and prolix' - back in Chapter XXIV.) It was obviously a popular catchphrase at the time, as witness this poem by none other than Robert Burns, "The Twa Dogs", published two years earlier in 1785:

Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame,
Forgather'd ance upon a time.

The first I'll name, they ca'd him Caesar,
Was keepit for His Honor's pleasure:
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs,
Shew'd he was nane o' Scotland's dogs;
But whalpit some place far abroad,
Whare sailors gang to fish for cod.

His locked, letter'd, braw brass collar
Shew'd him the gentleman an' scholar...

Google Books finds a lot of examples of both 'a scholar and a gentleman' and 'a gentleman and a scholar' from The Gentleman's Magazine in the 1770s and 1780s, but I found two much earlier usages of the reversed form. The first is in Beaumont and Fletcher's 1606 play The Woman-Hater, from Act IV Scene II:

Sir, you are my friend,
And friend to all that profeſs good letters;
I muſt not uſe this office elſe ; it fits not
For a ſcholar, and a gentleman.

And the second is from William Camden's rather chaotic Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine, first published in 1605; I cannot be sure if this particular passage was in the first edition - it is in the final section, which is ostensibly about epitaphs, though by now Camden has somehow segued onto palindromes:

A Scholar and a Gentleman living in a rude Country Town, where he had no reſpect, wrote this with a Coal in the Town Hall.

Subi dura à rudibus

It means, "Endure hardships from the rude/uncouth", but the point of course is that it reads the same forwards and backwards.

And finally, I found a fake instance from Foxe's Book of Martyrs, originally published in 1563, from here:

Mr. John Philpot

This martyr was the son of a knight, born in Hampshire, and brought up at New College, Oxford, where for several years he studied the civil law, and became eminent in the Hebrew tongue. He was a scholar and a gentleman, zealous in religion, fearless in disposition, and a detester of flattery.

This text, however, is an 'easy reading' edition and probably pirated from somewhere; the 1570 text is quite different:

Next followeth the constant Martyrdome of M. Iohn Philpot, of whom partly ye heard before in þe beginning of Queene Maries tyme in prosecuting the disputation of the Conuocation house, pag. 1571. Hee was of a worshipfull house, a Knightes sonne borne in Hampshere, brought vp in þe new College in Oxford, where he studied the ciuill law the space of. vj. or. vij. yeares, besydes the study of other liberall artes, especially of the tonges, wherein very forwardly he profited, namely in the knowledge of the Hebrue toung. &c. In witte he was pregnant & happy, of a singular courage, in spyrite feruent, in religion zelous, and also well practised, and exercysed in the same (which is no small matter in a true Diuine) of nature and condition playne and aperte, farre from all flattery, farther from all hypocrisy and deceitfull dissimulation.

The unfortunate Philpot was burned at the stake in 1555.

That made a pleasant bit of historical research for a Sunday afternoon!

4) Coming Next

Chapter L: The Prophet Mahomet (sic). Read it here, here or here.

Read it here or here (my usual source here seems to be down).

I tried writing this chapter up two weeks ago, but my Penguin edition of Vols V and VI had not yet arrived and I have got into the habit of marking up my paper copy as I go, so found it difficult to work on electronic texts alone. I was also confused because the first of my two usual online sources, usually the more faithful to the original text, seemed to have omitted the footnotes. This was resolved when the hard copy arrived and it turned out that there are in fact no footnotes. Then last weekend I was recovering from some vile lurgy, so I started this write-up but did not finish it. Anyway, here we go with the first chapter of the original Volume V.

1) Good quotes

Basil I as architect:

A taste for building, however costly, may deserve some praise and much excuse: from thence industry is fed, art is encouraged, and some object is attained of public emolument or pleasure: the use of a road, an aqueduct, or a hospital, is obvious and solid...

Did Leo VI deserve his name?

The name of Leo the Sixth has been dignified with the title of philosopher; and the union of the prince and the sage, of the active and speculative virtues, would indeed constitute the perfection of human nature. But the claims of Leo are far short of this ideal excellence. Did he reduce his passions and appetites under the dominion of reason? His life was spent in the pomp of the palace, in the society of his wives and concubines; and even the clemency which he showed, and the peace which he strove to preserve, must be imputed to the softness and indolence of his character. Did he subdue his prejudices, and those of his subjects? His mind was tinged with the most puerile superstition; the influence of the clergy, and the errors of the people, were consecrated by his laws; and the oracles of Leo, which reveal, in prophetic style, the fates of the empire, are founded on the arts of astrology and divination. If we still inquire the reason of his sage appellation, it can only be replied, that the son of Basil was less ignorant than the greater part of his contemporaries in church and state; that his education had been directed by the learned Photius; and that several books of profane and ecclesiastical science were composed by the pen, or in the name, of the Imperial philosopher.

I guess not then.

On the end of the joint reign of Basil II and Constantine IX:

Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the curse of the people. After his decease, his brother Constantine enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather the pleasures, of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of the succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the title of Augustus; and the reign of the two brothers is the longest, and most obscure, of the Byzantine history.

Few writers would dare to tell us that a subject is boring, and fewer can do it in an interesting way.

2) Summary

Gibbon takes four and a half pages to tell us what will be in the next 24 chapters, and then takes 55 pages to cover 550 years of Byzantine emperors.

3) Points Arising

i) gender

Lots of women in this chapter. Let's start with Procopia, wife of Michael I:

Had Michael in an age of peace ascended an hereditary throne, he might have reigned and died the father of his people: but his mild virtues were adapted to the shade of private life, nor was he capable of controlling the ambition of his equals, or of resisting the arms of the victorious Bulgarians. While his want of ability and success exposed him to the contempt of the soldiers, the masculine spirit of his wife Procopia awakened their indignation. Even the Greeks of the ninth century were provoked by the insolence of a female, who, in the front of the standards, presumed to direct their discipline and animate their valour; and their licentious clamours advised the new Semiramis to reverence the majesty of a Roman camp.

Theophano, wife of Romanus II:

The death of Constantine was imputed to poison; and his son Romanus, who derived that name from his maternal grandfather, ascended the throne of Constantinople. A prince who, at the age of twenty, could be suspected of anticipating his inheritance, must have been already lost in the public esteem; yet Romanus was rather weak than wicked; and the largest share of the guilt was transferred to his wife, Theophano, a woman of base origin, masculine spirit, and flagitious manners... After the death of her husband, the empress aspired to reign in the name of her sons, the elder of whom was five, and the younger only two, years of age; but she soon felt the instability of a throne which was supported by a female who could not be esteemed, and two infants who could not be feared.

On the vicissitudes of the empire under the daughters of Constantine IX:

I have hastily reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females

On a later woman who did not become empress:

John Comnenus, the brother of the emperor Isaac, survived in peace and dignity his generous refusal of the sceptre. By his wife Anne, a woman of masculine spirit and policy, he left eight children...

Well, do we think that Gibbon is in favour of women being in positions of authority or not? Actually that's not as interesting a question as the way he used the word 'masculine' three times of women, with completely derogatory implications. Mary Wollstonecraft, who I've been reading this weekend, has things to say about that.

ii) liberty

There was a lot of liberty and freedom this chapter, and I was not sure what to make of it all:

In the last moments of her decay, Constantinople was doubtless more opulent and populous than Athens at her most flourishing aera, when a scanty sum of six thousand talents, or twelve hundred thousand pounds sterling was possessed by twenty-one thousand male citizens of an adult age. But each of these citizens was a freeman, who dared to assert the liberty of his thoughts, words, and actions, whose person and property were guarded by equal law; and who exercised his independent vote in the government of the republic. Their numbers seem to be multiplied by the strong and various discriminations of character; under the shield of freedom, on the wings of emulation and vanity, each Athenian aspired to the level of the national dignity; from this commanding eminence, some chosen spirits soared beyond the reach of a vulgar eye; and the chances of superior merit in a great and populous kingdom, as they are proved by experience, would excuse the computation of imaginary millions.

We also have Martina as an enemy of liberty (the words 'free' or 'freedom' used three times in that passage), and finally with the rise of the Comneni, we are told that "From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of spirit, begins to emerge" because, believe it or not, "the Greeks either preserved or revived the use of surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary virtue". There you are folks; use of surnames means hereditary virtue which means freedom. Not quite following the logic here.

4) Coming next

I'll leave it there: it's a rather bitty chapter racing through various bloody events too fast to really leave much of an impression. Coming next, we have Iconoclasm, Chalemagne, and much else besides. Read it here (if it gets its act together again), here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Great lines

This is a chapter about theological controversy, and we'll start with a decent one-liner from near the beginning:

In the polemic microscope, an atom is enlarged to a monster[.]

A bit further on, a footnote warns us not to take the disputants' mutual condemnation too seriously:

With equal haste and violence, the Oriental synod of fifty bishops degraded Cyril and Memnon from their episcopal honors, condemned, in the twelve anathemas, the purest venom of the Apollinarian heresy, and described the Alexandrian primate as a monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church.<sup>46

46</sup> Ὁ δὲ ἐπ’ ὀλέθρῳ τω̂ν ἐκκλησιω̂ν τεχθεὶς καὶ τραϕείς. After the coalition of John and Cyril, these invectives were mutually forgotten. The style of declamation must never be confounded with the genuine sense which respectable enemies entertain of each other’s merit.

This chapter has some great footnotes, of which the best is the first, on his sources:

¹ If I persist in supporting each fact or reflection by its proper and special evidence, every line would demand a string of testimonies, and every note would swell to a critical dissertation. But the numberless passages of antiquity which I have seen with my own eyes are compiled, digested, and illustrated by Petavius and Le Clerc, by Beausobre and Mosheim. I shall be content to fortify my narrative by the names and characters of these respectable guides; and in the contemplation of a minute or remote object I am not ashamed to borrow the aid of the strongest glasses.

1. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius are a work of incredible labour and compass; the volumes which relate solely to the incarnation (two folios, vth and vith, of 837 pages) are divided into xvi. books — the first of history, the remainder of controversy and doctrine. The Jesuit’s learning is copious and correct; his Latinity is pure, his method clear, his argument profound and well connected; but he is the slave of the fathers, the scourge of heretics, the enemy of truth and candour, as often as they are inimical to the Catholic cause.
2. The Arminian Le Clerc, who has composed in a quarto volume (Amsterdam, 1716) the ecclesiastical history of the two first centuries, was free both in his temper and situation; his sense is clear, but his thoughts are narrow; he reduces the reason or folly of ages to the standard of his private judgment, and his impartiality is sometimes quickened, and sometimes tainted, by his opposition to the fathers...
3. The Histoire Critique du Manichéisme (Amsterdam, 1734, 1739, in two vols. in 4to, with a posthumous dissertation sur les Nazarènes, Lausanne, 1745) of M. de Beausobre is a treasure of ancient philosophy and theology. The learned historian spins with incomparable art the systematic thread of opinion, and transforms himself by turns into the person of a saint, a sage, or an heretic. Yet his refinement is sometimes excessive; he betrays an amiable partiality in favour of the weaker side; and, while he guards against calumny, he does not allow sufficient scope for superstition and fanaticism. A copious table of contents will direct the reader to any point that he wishes to examine.
4. Less profound than Petavius, less independent than Le Clerc, less ingenious than Beausobre, the historian Mosheim is full, rational, correct, and moderate.

Occasionally, you may be astonished to learn, some more explicit snark creeps in.

¹⁵ The Valentinians embraced a complex and almost incoherent system.

1. Both Christ and Jesus were æons, though of different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the other as the divine spirit, of the Saviour.
2. At the time of the passion, they both retired, and left only a sensitive soul and an human body.
3. Even that body was ethereal, and perhaps apparent.

Such are the laborious conclusions of Mosheim. But I much doubt whether the Latin translator understood Irenæus, and whether Irenæus and the Valentinians understood themselves.

Sometimes the snark requires translation from the Greek:

...the infamous Pansophia, or Irene, was publicly entertained as the concubine of the patriarch.<sup>63

63</sup> Μάλιστα ἡ περιβόητος Πανσοϕία ἡ καλουμένη Ὀρεινὴ (perhaps Εἰρήνη) περὶ η̑̓ς καὶ ὁ πολυάνθρωπος τη̂ς Ἀλεξανδρέων δη̂μος ἀϕη̂κε ϕωνὴν αὐτη̂ς τε καὶ τον̂ ἐραστον̂ μεμνημένος [Especially the infamous Pansophia, who is called Oreine (perhaps Eirene = Irene), concerning whom the populous Alexandrians uttered a pronouncement concerning herself and her admirer] (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1276). A specimen of the wit and malice of the people is preserved in the Greek Anthology (l. ii. c. 5, p. 188, edit. Wechel.), although the application was unknown to the editor Brodæus. The nameless epigrammatist raises a tolerable pun, by confounding the episcopal salutation of “Peace be to all!” with the genuine or corrupted name of the bishop’s concubine:

Εἰρήνη πάντεσσιν, ἐπίσκοπος εɩ̂̓πεν ἐπελθών,
Πω̂ς δύναται πα̂σιν ἣν μόνος ἔνδον ἔχει;
[“Peace [= Irene] to all,” said the bishop as he arrived.
How is that that what he alone holds is available to everyone?]

I am ignorant whether the patriarch, who seems to have been a jealous lover, is the Cimon of a preceding epigram, whose πέος ἑστηκός [erect member] was viewed with envy and wonder by Priapus himself.

Sometimes I was not so sure what Gibbon was saying: is he arguing here that the Gospel of St Matthew was originally written in Greek or in Hebrew?

⁵ It is probable enough that the first of the gospels for the use of the Jewish converts was composed in the Hebrew or Syriac idiom: the fact is attested by a chain of fathers — Papias, Irenæus, Origen, Jerom, &c. It is devoutly believed by the Catholics, and admitted by Casaubon, Grotius, and Isaac Vossius, among the Protestant critics. But this Hebrew gospel of St. Matthew is most unaccountably lost; and we may accuse the diligence or fidelity of the primitive churches, who have preferred the unauthorised version of some nameless Greek. Erasmus and his followers, who respect our Greek text as the original gospel, deprive themselves of the evidence which declares it to be the work of an apostle.

He seems to me to be mocking both sides. (Personally I think it was Greek.)

Sometimes however his admiration is more obvious, as in this case of praising someone who we don't normally remember as a Biblical scholar, on the vexed question of whether 1 Timothy 3.16 should read "God appeared in the flesh" or "He appeared in the flesh" ("Θεὸς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί" or "ὃς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί"):

¹⁷ ...we are deceived by our modern Bibles. The word ὄ (which) was altered to θεός (God) at Constantinople in the beginning of the vith century: the true reading, which is visible in the Latin and Syriac versions, still exists in the reasoning of the Greek as well as of the Latin fathers; and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses of St. John, is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton. (See his two letters translated by M. de Missy, in the Journal Britannique, tom. xv. p. 148-190, 351-390.) I have weighed the arguments, and may yield to the authority, of the first of philosophers, who was deeply skilled in critical and theological studies.

He is cynical about reconciliation:

After three obstinate and equal campaigns, John of Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria condescended to explain and embrace: but their seeming reunion must be imputed rather to prudence than to reason, to the mutual lassitude rather than to the Christian charity of the patriarchs.

And also about Nestorius who was responsible for so much of the carnage:

Humanity may drop a tear on the fate of Nestorius; yet justice must observe, that he suffered the persecution which he had approved and inflicted.

And further along these lines:

In this pious rebellion [Vitalian] depopulated Thrace, besieged Constantinople, exterminated sixty-five thousand of his fellow-Christians, till he obtained the recall of the bishops, the satisfaction of the pope, and the establishment of the council of Chalcedon, an orthodox treaty, reluctantly signed by the dying Anastasius, and more faithfully performed by the uncle of Justinian. And such was the event of the first of the religious wars which have been waged in the name and by the disciples, of the God of peace.

The section on Justinian begins thus:

Toleration was not the virtue of the times, and indulgence to rebels has seldom been the virtue of princes.

And ends thus:

His death restored in some degree the peace of the church, and the reigns of his four successors, Justin Tiberius, Maurice, and Phocas, are distinguished by a rare, though fortunate, vacancy in the ecclesiastical history of the East.

Alas, we have some straightforward racism:

The long dominion of the Greeks, their colonies, and, above all, their eloquence, had propagated a language doubtless the most perfect that has been contrived by the art of man.

² ...the modern Jews, the few who divert their thoughts from money to religion...

During several ages, the bishops of Nubia were named and consecrated by the Jacobite patriarch of Alexandria: as late as the twelfth century, Christianity prevailed; and some rites, some ruins, are still visible in the savage towns of Sennaar and Dongola. But the Nubians at length executed their threats of returning to the worship of idols; the climate required the indulgence of polygamy, and they have finally preferred the triumph of the Koran to the abasement of the Cross. A metaphysical religion may appear too refined for the capacity of the negro race: yet a black or a parrot might be taught to repeat the words of the Chalcedonian or Monophysite creed.

Gibbon, a man of his time. Incidentally, there is a weakness in the theory that lack skin is darkened by the equatorial sun:

¹⁵⁵ The Abyssinians, who still preserve the features and olive complexion of the Arabs, afford a proof that two thousand years are not sufficient to change the colour of the human race. The Nubians, an African race, are pure negroes, as black as those of Senegal or Congo, with flat noses, thick lips, and woolly hair (Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. p. 117, 143, 144, 166, 219, edit. in 12mo, Paris, 1769). The ancients beheld, without much attention, the extraordinary phenomenon which has exercised the philosophers and theologians of modern times.

From which Gibbon fails to draw the obvious conclusion.

2) Summary

A masterful summary of the theological discussions of the origin of the Incarnation and also of the later development - up to Gibbon's own day - of the history of the Nestorians, Jacobites (Syrian rather than Scottish), Maronites, Armenians, Copts, and Abyssinians.

3) Points arising

There's such a wealth of detail and debate here that I was really absorbing the whole thing, and resolving to read a bit further in church history to get a better feel for the context and the extent to which Gibbon is being fair. I recently gave Anne both the book and DVD of Diarmaid MacCulloch's History of Christianity, so the material for such reading is close at hand. I'm just going to mention some trivial details here:

i) Ethiopia

Gibbon's discussion of the recent history of Ethiopia, where I have been several times since I started reading him, caught my eye:

Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the Æthiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world, by whom they were forgotten. They were awakened by the Portuguese, who, turning the southern promontory of Africa, appeared in India and the Red Sea, as if they had descended through the air from a distant planet. In the first moments of their interview, the subjects of Rome and Alexandria observed the resemblance, rather than the difference, of their faith; and each nation expected the most important benefits from an alliance with their Christian brethren. In their lonely situation, the Æthiopians had almost relapsed into the savage life. Their vessels, which had traded to Ceylon, scarcely presumed to navigate the rivers of Africa; the ruins of Axume were deserted, the nation was scattered in villages, and the emperor (a pompous name) was content, both in peace and war, with the immoveable residence of a camp. Conscious of their own indigence, the Abyssinians had formed the rational project of importing the arts and ingenuity of Europe; and their ambassadors at Rome and Lisbon were instructed to solicit a colony of smiths, carpenters, tilers, masons, printers, surgeons, and physicians, for the use of their country. But the public danger soon called for the instant and effectual aid of arms and soldiers to defend an unwarlike people from the Barbarians who ravaged the inland country, and the Turks and Arabs who advanced from the sea-coast in more formidable array. Æthiopia was saved by four hundred and fifty Portuguese, who displayed in the field the native valour of Europeans and the artificial powers of the musket and cannon. In a moment of terror, the emperor had promised to reconcile himself and his subjects to the Catholic faith; a Latin patriarch represented the supremacy of the pope; the empire, enlarged in a tenfold proportion, was supposed to contain more gold than the mines of America; and the wildest hopes of avarice and zeal were built on the willing submission of the Christians of Africa.

But the vows which pain had extorted were forsworn on the return of health. The Abyssinians still adhered with unshaken constancy to the Monophysite faith; their languid belief was inflamed by the exercise of dispute; they branded the Latins with the names of Arians and Nestorians, and imputed the adoration of four gods to those who separated the two natures of Christ. Fremona, a place of worship, or rather of exile, was assigned to the Jesuit missionaries. Their skill in the liberal and mechanic arts, their theological learning, and the decency of their manners inspired a barren esteem; but they were not endowed with the gift of miracles, and they vainly solicited a reinforcement of European troops. The patience and dexterity of forty years at length obtained a more favourable audience, and two emperors of Abyssinia were persuaded that Rome could ensure the temporal and everlasting happiness of her votaries. The first of these royal converts lost his crown and his life; and the rebel army was sanctified by the abuna, who hurled an anathema at the apostate, and absolved his subjects from their oath of fidelity. The fate of Zadenghel was revenged by the courage and fortune of Susneus, who ascended the throne under the name of Segued, and more vigorously prosecuted the pious enterprise of his kinsman. After the amusement of some unequal combats between the Jesuits and his illiterate priests, the emperor declared himself a proselyte to the synod of Chalcedon, presuming that his clergy and people would embrace without delay the religion of their prince. The liberty of choice was succeeded by a law which imposed, under pain of death, the belief of the two natures of Christ: the Abyssinians were enjoined to work and to play on the Sabbath; and Segued, in the face of Europe and Africa, renounced his connection with the Alexandrian church. A Jesuit, Alphonso Mendez, the Catholic patriarch of Æthiopia, accepted in the name of Urban VIII. the homage and abjuration of his penitent. “I confess,” said the emperor on his knees, “I confess that the pope is the vicar of Christ, the successor of St. Peter, and the sovereign of the world. To him I swear true obedience, and at his feet I offer my person and kingdom.” A similar oath was repeated by his son, his brother, the clergy, the nobles, and even the ladies of the court; the Latin patriarch was invested with honours and wealth; and his missionaries erected their churches or citadels in the most convenient stations of the empire. The Jesuits themselves deplore the fatal indiscretion of their chief, who forgot the mildness of the gospel and the policy of his order, to introduce with hasty violence the liturgy of Rome and the inquisition of Portugal. He condemned the ancient practice of circumcision, which health rather than superstition had first invented in the climate of Æthiopia. A new baptism, a new ordination, was inflicted on the natives; and they trembled with horror when the most holy of the dead were torn from their graves, when the most illustrious of the living were excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defence of their religion and liberty, the Abyssinians rose in arms, with desperate but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were extinguished in the blood of the insurgents; two abunas were slain in battle, whole legions were slaughtered in the field, or suffocated in their caverns: and neither merit nor rank nor sex could save from an ignominious death the enemies of Rome. But the victorious monarch was finally subdued by the constancy of the nation, of his mother, of his son, and of his most faithful friends. Segued listened to the voice of pity, of reason, perhaps of fear; and his edict of liberty of conscience instantly revealed the tyranny and weakness of the Jesuits. On the death of his father, Basilides expelled the Latin patriarch, and restored to the wishes of the nation the faith and the discipline of Egypt. The Monophysite churches resounded with a song of triumph, “that the sheep of Æthiopia were now delivered from the hyenas of the West;” and the gates of that solitary realm were for ever shut against the arts, the science, and the fanaticism of Europe.

It's a nice fable of a barbarous people, opening up to Europe and then closing again. I suspect this is not how the Ethiopians tell it though.

ii) King Alfred and India

I wasn't aware of this incident:

According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was preached in India by St. Thomas. At the end of the ninth century, his shrine, perhaps in the neighbourhood of Madras, was devoutly visited by the ambassadors of Alfred, and their return with a cargo of pearls and spices rewarded the zeal of the English monarch, who entertained the largest projects of trade and discovery.<sup>123

123</sup>Neither the author of the Saxon Chronicle (A.D. 833) not William of Malmesbury (de Gestis Regum Angliae, l. ii. c. 4, p. 44) were capable, in the twelfth century, of inventing this extraordinary fact; they are incapable of explaining the motives and measures of Alfred; and their hasty notice serves only to provoke our curiosity. William of Malmesbury feels the difficulty of the enterprise, quod quivis in hoc saeculo miretur [as anyone in this age would have wondered]; and I almost suspect that the English ambassadors collected their cargo and legend in Egypt.

Wouldn't surprise me, though I suppose it's also entirely possible that they went the whole way. Of course Gibbon was making the comparison with more recent British involvement with India.

iii) Cosmas Indicopleustes again

We had some discussion about Cosmas Indicopleustes last time he came up. Gibbon is clearer this time:

...a Nestorian traveller¹¹⁶...

¹¹⁶See the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes, or the Indian navigator, l. iii. p. 178, 179, l. xi. p. 337. The entire work, of which some curious extracts may be found in Photius, (cod. xxxvi. p. 9, 10, edit. Hoeschel,) Thevenot, (in the 1st part of his Relation des Voyages, &c.,) and Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. l. iii. c. 25, tom. ii. p. 603 - 617,) has been published by Father Montfaucon at Paris, 1707, in the Nova Collectio Patrum, (tom. ii. p. 113 - 346.) It was the design of the author to confute the impious heresy of those who maintained that the earth is a globe, and not a flat, oblong table, as it is represented in the Scriptures, (l. ii. p. 138.) But the nonsense of the monk is mingled with the practical knowledge of the traveller, who performed his voyage A.D. 522, and published his book at Alexandria, A.D. 547, (l. ii. p. 140, 141. Montfaucon, Praefat. c. 2.) The Nestorianism of Cosmas, unknown to his learned editor, was detected by La Croze, (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 40 - 55,) and is confirmed by Assemanni, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 605, 606.)

I don't think Gibbon is arguing that anyone other than Cosmas Indicopleustes, or possibly a few other Nestorians, actually held his beliefs about the shape of the earth.

4) Coming next

This marks the end of the original Volume 4, and of the second volume of my Penguin edition. We are two thirds of the way through in page count, and about the same in terms of chapters (47 out of 71). Thanks for sticking with me, those of you who have been.

Next week we start Gibbon's original Volume 5 with Chapter XLVIII: Plan of the Fifth and Sixth Volumes / Succession and Characters of the Greek Emperors of Constantinople, from the time of Heraclius to the Latin Conquest. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

On the futility of it all:

An experience of seven hundred years might convince the rival nations of the impossibility of maintaining their conquests beyond the fatal limits of the Tigris and Euphrates. Yet the emulation of Trajan and Julian was awakened by the trophies of Alexander, and the sovereigns of Persia indulged the ambitious hope of restoring the empire of Cyrus. Such extraordinary efforts of power and courage will always command the attention of posterity; but the events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities, undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.

In footnote 60 we read of the monk Antiochus,

whose one hundred and twenty-nine homilies are still extant, if what no one reads may be said to be extant.

Gibbon was prsumably confident by now that he need entertain no such fears.

2) Summary

This is one of the best chapters we have had for ages - I found myself marking almost every page with some point of interest. Gibbon describes the fatal interaction of the Byzantine and Persian empires in the early seventh century - close personal bonds between the respective emperors, which none the less deteriorate into dreadful combat and slaughter, with each empire's armies penetrating deep into the other's territory, to the point that both capitals were seriously threatened at different stages. We also have the Avars coming down the other side of the Black Sea to hit the Byzantines from the northwest. Gibbon seems really energised by it, and of course we end in the 620s, when events which would prove far more significant in terms of world history were unfolding a little to the south.

3) points arising

Quite a lot, but time limits me to comment on just a few:

i) how many fleets on the Caspian?

I was puzzled by this note:

that inland sea [the Caspian Sea] was explored, for the first time, by a hostile fleet,<sup>6

6</sup> In the history of the world I can only perceive two navies on the Caspian: 1. Of the Macedonians, when Patrocles, the admiral of the kings of Syria, Seleucus and Antiochus, descended most probably the River Oxus, from the confines of India, (Plin. Hist. Natur. vi. 21.) 2. Of the Russians, when Peter the First conducted a fleet and army from the neighborhood of Moscow to the coast of Persia, (Bell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 325 - 352.) He justly observes, that such martial pomp had never been displayed on the Volga.

So, surely the Byzantines make three?

ii) spicy stuff

On the tastes of the Avars:

their appetite was stimulated by the pepper and cinnamon of India;<sup>25

25</sup> Even in the field, the chagan delighted in the use of these aromatics. He solicited as a gift Ἰνδικὰς καρυκίας [Indian spices], and received πέπερι καὶ φύλλον Ἰνδῶν, κασίαν τε καὶ τὸν λεγόμενον κόστον [pepper, Indian bay leaf, cinnamon, and the thing called costus]. Theophylact, l. vii. c. 13. The Europeans of the ruder ages consumed more spices in their meat and drink than is compatible with the delicacy of a modern palate. Vie Privée de François, tom. ii. p. 162, 163.

This rather subverts my conception that the European states of Gibbon's own age were locked in mutual struggle over control of the valuable spice routes; he suggests that by his enlightened times, people had grown out of it!

iii) Balkan geography

I know, it's a hobby horse of mine, but I was struck by this passage:

“Inform the emperor,” said the perfidious Baian, “that Sirmium is invested on every side. Advise his prudence to withdraw the citizens and their effects, and to resign a city which it is now impossible to relieve or defend.” Without the hope of relief, the defence of Sirmium was prolonged above three years; the walls were still untouched; but famine was enclosed within the walls, till a merciful capitulation allowed the escape of the naked and hungry inhabitants. Singidunum, at the distance of fifty miles, experienced a more cruel fate: the buildings were razed, and the vanquished people was condemned to servitude and exile. Yet the ruins of Sirmium are no longer visible; the advantageous situation of Singidunum soon attracted a new colony of Sclavonians; and the conflux of the Save and Danube is still guarded by the fortifications of Belgrade, or the White City, so often and so obstinately disputed by the Christian and Turkish arms.

He makes it sound as if Sirmium's site was lost to history; but in fact the thriving town of Sremska Mitrovica was perfectly well known to be the site of Sirmium, and if no traces of the earlier city were visible in Gibbon's day, it was probably because they had been built over, just as Singidunum has largely been in Belgrade.

iv) in conclusion

The loss of two hundred thousand soldiers who had fallen by the sword was of less fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and population, in this long and destructive war; and, although a victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius, the unnatural effort appears to have exhausted rather than exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some troops who advanced to its relief: an ordinary and trifling occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution. These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valour had emerged from the desert; and in the last eight years of his reign Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from the Persians.

4) Coming next

We'll have to wait for the next volume for the payoff to that conclusion; the next chapter, the last of the original fourth volume and the 47th of the work as a whole, is about the history of Christianity, more or less from 300 to 600. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

Good old prejudice:

Terror preceded [Alboin's] march: he found every where, or he left, a dreary solitude; and the pusillanimous Italians presumed, without a trial, that the stranger was invincible.

Good summations of the reigns of the two emperors dealt with in this chapter:

When the nephew of Justinian ascended the throne, he proclaimed a new æra of happiness and glory. The annals of the second Justin are marked with disgrace abroad and misery at home.

Maurice ascended the throne at the mature age of forty-three years; and he reigned above twenty years over the East and over himself; expelling from his mind the wild democracy of passions, and establishing (according to the quaint expression of Evagrius) a perfect aristocracy of reason and virtue.

And it's not only emperors who get summarised so crisply:

The pontificate of Gregory the Great, which lasted thirteen years, six months, and ten days, is one of the most edifying periods of the history of the church. His virtues, and even his faults, a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense and superstition, were happily suited to his station and to the temper of the times.

Finally, having democracy is good, using it is bad:

...it is certain that the Lombards possessed freedom to elect their sovereign, and sense to decline the frequent use of that dangerous privilege.

2) Summary

The Byzantine Empire still has barbarians at the gates; the Lombards, however, are deflected to go and conquer Northern Italy.

3) Points arising

i) the longevity of the Byzantine presence in Italy

I'm still learning about this. Having been surprised, twenty years ago, to find out about Belisarius' reconquest of Italy, I'm surprised now to find that it endured as long as it did:

During a period of two hundred years, Italy was unequally divided between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna. The offices and professions, which the jealousy of Constantine had separated, were united by the indulgence of Justinian; and eighteen successive exarchs were invested, in the decline of the empire, with the full remains of civil, of military, and even of ecclesiastical, power.

ii) romance

There are a lot of romantic stories in this relatively short chapter. Rosamond of the Gepids, in particular, could be the subject of a three- or four-season series of medieval dramas on prime time television. And one also feels sympathetic to Pope Gregory the Great, hiding in the woods rather than taking up office, until his whereabouts are "discovered, as it is said, by a celestial light."

I do wonder whether it's Gibbon's sources getting a bit more lyrical, or Gibbon himself enjoying some obscure upturn in his love-life, or (just possibly) the facts of the historical situation which make this chapter such an exercise of romantic fantasy.

4) Coming Next

Chapter XLVI: Persia. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

Justinian's code as a mosaic:

If Cæsar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, his creative genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would have given to the world a pure and original system of jurisprudence. Whatever flattery might suggest, the emperor of the East was afraid to establish his private judgment as the standard of equity: in the possession of legislative power, he borrowed the aid of time and opinion; and his laborious compilations are guarded by the sages and legislators of past times. Instead of a statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an artist, the works of Justinian represent a tesselated pavement of antique and costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments.

I note in passing that Gibbon doesn't use the word 'mosaic' here. Was it not yet the usual term for a work of art composed of tesselated fragments?

2) Summary

An analysis of the Roman legal tradition, describing Justinian's crucial role in establishing a permanent legal code, and then taking it area by area, starting from philiosophical first principles about society and government and explaining how the law developed. Strongly recommended to my lawyer friends.

3) Points arising

i) assumed knowledge

Not having had the benefit of the usual education of an eighteenth century gentleman, I ground my teeth in frustration at the first sentence of the first substantial historical section:

I shall not repeat the well-known story of the Decemvirs,¹¹ who sullied by their actions the honor of inscribing on brass, or wood, or ivory, the TWELVE TABLES of the Roman laws.

¹¹ Compare Livy (l. iii. c. 31 - 59) with Dionysius Halicarnassensis, (l. x. p. 644 - xi. p. 691.) How concise and animated is the Roman - how prolix and lifeless the Greek! Yet he has admirably judged the masters, and defined the rules, of historical composition.

It's actually rather rare for me to run into a reference in Gibbon that sails so completely over my head, but I must admit I am completely unfamiliar with "the well-known story of the Decemvirs", and spent the next few pages trying to reconstruct it from Gibbon's remarks.

ii) philosophy of law

I've never really thought much about how a society develops a system of law ab initio. I've dealt often enough with lawless states, or states where the executive controls the courts, but the world as a whole is now so heavily rooted in various legal systems - including, for a large part of it, the direct legacy of Justinian's code - that activists in states where the legal system doesn't work are very aware that it shouldn't be like that. Gibbon's story is of a primitive Roman state where the legal system emerged to some extent without anyone noticing it, as a by-product of the existing political disupte resolution mechanism between the aristocrats and the common people. Servius Suplicius and Cicero then invent the philosophical underpinnings for the established system through a creative interpretation of Plato. I found Gibbon's account a fascinating early example of the sociology of knowledge, which we normally imagine to have strted more than a century later with Durkheim. The details may be wrong, but his instinctive challenging of the version of history received from the most venerable ancient authorities is surely right.

iii) neither democracy nor absolute monarchy

In this chapter, Gibbon is as clear as he has been anywhere about what he means by liberty: it is a society where there is a place for everyone and everyone knows their place, and people are not deluded by notions of equality.

The distinction of ranks and persons is the firmest basis of a mixed and limited government. In France, the remains of liberty are kept alive by the spirit, the honours, and even the prejudices, of fifty thousand nobles. Two hundred families supply, in lineal descent, the second branch of English legislature, which maintains, between the king and commons, the balance of the constitution. A gradation of patricians and plebeians, of strangers and subjects, has supported the aristocracy of Genoa, Venice, and ancient Rome. The perfect equality of men is the point in which the extremes of democracy and despotism are confounded; since the majesty of the prince or people would be offended, if any heads were exalted above the level of their fellow-slaves or fellow-citizens.

He goes on to say that the rot set in when the Roman Empire started to allow equality and then leadership to "bold adventurer from Germany or Arabia".

There's more. I was very surprised to find learn of one of the pernicious causes of the erosion of liberty:

A new method of secret ballot abolished the influence of fear and shame, of honor and interest, and the abuse of freedom accelerated the progress of anarchy and despotism.

Though I find myself more strongly in agreement over the question of the emperor's power:

The will of a single man, of a child perhaps, was allowed to prevail over the wisdom of ages and the inclinations of millions; and the degenerate Greeks were proud to declare that in his hands alone the arbitrary exercise of legislation could be safely deposited.

Though here again he explains pretty lucidly the reasons why this state of affairs came about, and why people at the time did not think it such a bad thing.

iv) sex

Of course, what we today have most certainly in common with Gibbon, the ancient Romans, and every other human who has everlived is an interest in sex. Here Gibbon throws in various nuggets of information, including one where he actually talks about a subject which he admits is not even covered in the Roman law just so that he can include a salacious footnote. Sice I too am interested in sex, I too will cut and paste the passgae, which is about the 'conjugal debt', ie how often married couples are obliged to have sex.

The inclination of the Roman husband discharged or withheld the conjugal debt, so scrupulously exacted by the Athenian and Jewish laws¹¹⁹...

¹¹⁹ Solon requires three payments per month. By the Misna, a daily debt was imposed on an idle, vigorous, young husband; twice a week on a citizen; once on a peasant; once in thirty days on a camel-driver; once in six months on a seaman. But the student or doctor was free from tribute; and no wife, if she received a weekly sustenance, could sue for a divorce; for one week a vow of abstinence was allowed. Polygamy divided, without multiplying, the duties of the husband (Selden, Uxor Ebraica, l. iii. c. 6, in his works, vol. ii. p. 717-720).

There is lots more, including the question of concubines (which I had never seen explained properly before). But then we reach homosexuality, ( the discussion of which may be triggering )

v) Justinian: good or bad?

The chapter's final peroration is rather damning of Justinian:

Justinian, the Greek emperor of Constantinople and the East, was the legal successor of the Latin shepherd who had planted a colony on the banks of the Tyber. In a period of thirteen hundred years, the laws had reluctantly followed the changes of government and manners; and the laudable desire of conciliating ancient names with recent institutions destroyed the harmony, and swelled the magnitude, of the obscure and irregular system. The laws which excuse, on any occasions, the ignorance of their subjects, confess their own imperfections: the civil jurisprudence, as it was abridged by Justinian, still continued a mysterious science, and a profitable trade, and the innate perplexity of the study was involved in tenfold darkness by the private industry of the practitioners. The expense of the pursuit sometimes exceeded the value of the prize, and the fairest rights were abandoned by the poverty or prudence of the claimants. Such costly justice might tend to abate the spirit of litigation, but the unequal pressure serves only to increase the influence of the rich, and to aggravate the misery of the poor. By these dilatory and expensive proceedings, the wealthy pleader obtains a more certain advantage than he could hope from the accidental corruption of his judge. The experience of an abuse, from which our own age and country are not perfectly exempt, may sometimes provoke a generous indignation, and extort the hasty wish of exchanging our elaborate jurisprudence for the simple and summary decrees of a Turkish cadhi. Our calmer reflection will suggest, that such forms and delays are necessary to guard the person and property of the citizen; that the discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny; and that the laws of a free people should foresee and determine every question that may probably arise in the exercise of power and the transactions of industry. But the government of Justinian united the evils of liberty and servitude; and the Romans were oppressed at the same time by the multiplicity of their laws and the arbitrary will of their master.

As Averil Cameron points out in her essay in McKitterick and Quinault, which I have referred to previously, Gibbon is generally unfair to Justinian whose success rather disrupts his framework of inexorable and relentless decline from the sseconmd century on. But in fact I think Cameron is just a little unfair to Gibbon. There are nine chapters and 480 pages in my edition of the original fourth volume of Decline and Fall; five of those chapters, covering 288 pages, are abut Justinian. That's not exactly ignoring him; and though there are indeed some unfair sideswipes (the insect on the Hagia Sophia, the implication above that Justinian was particularly bad at uniting the evils of liberty and servitude), let's also remember the opening sentences of this chapter, which are surely a fair assessment, and ignore the subsequent more snarky sentences:

The vain titles of the victories of Justinian are crumbled into dust; but the name of the legislator is inscribed on a fair and everlasting monument. Under his reign, and by his care, the civil jurisprudence was digested in the immortal works of the CODE, the PANDECTS, and the INSTITUTES: the public reason of the Romans has been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of Europe, and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or obedience of independent nations. Wise or fortunate is the prince who connects his own reputation with the honor or interest of a perpetual order of men.

4) Coming next

Chapter XLV: What happened in Italy after Justinian's death? Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

Several interesting turns of phrase but I'll save them for discussion below.

2) Summary

Africa revolts; Italy is conquered by Totila of the Goths and then re-conquered by Narses for the Byzantines; and we end with a discussion of comets, earthquakes and plague.

3) Matters arising

This chapter is a fairly straightforward military narrative (apart from the last few pages), so the things that caught my eye were a couple of side details (again, apart from the last few pages).

i) freedom

It's a while since we had much about freedom, but here suddenly the Goths become its champions:

...Pavia was defended by one thousand Goths, inspired by a sense of honor, the love of freedom, and the memory of their past greatness... the death of [Hildebald] excited the indignation of a free people... The ardor of freedmen, who fought to regain their country, was opposed to the languid temper of mercenary troops, who were even destitute of the merits of strong and well-disciplined servitude... the Goths soon embraced a more generous resolution: to descend the hill, to dismiss their horses, and to die in arms, and in the possession of freedom.

Perhaps I have missed something in previous chapters, but I found this sudden shift in portrayal of the Goths from barbarian invaders of Italy to noble resisters of Byzantine oppression (unable even to provide that second-best option of "strong and well-disciplined servitude") rather startling.

ii) Indians or Æthiopians?

I was also startled by this footnote to the account of the assassination attempt of Marcellinus and Sergius upon Justinian:

their black slaves<sup>65

65</sup> Ἰνδούς. They could scarcely be real Indians; and the Æthiopians, sometimes known by that name, were never used by the ancients as guards or followers: they were the trifling, though costly, objects of female and royal luxury (Terent. Eunuch. act i. scene ii. Sueton. in August. c. 83, with a good note of Casaubon, in Caligulâ, c. 57).

Why could they not be real Indians? Sure, I accept that Ethiopia and India were often confused - from the Byzantine perspective, they're both in the Indian Ocean (which has always been a corridor rather than a barrier). What is interesting is that Gibbon has himself inserted the concept of 'black slaves' into the narrative: I managed to track down his source - Theophanes the Confessor, page 451 of that download - which refers only to ἀνθρώπους συνεργοῦντας Ἰνδούς, glossed in Latin as quosdam homines Indos. Whatever Terence or Suetonius may have written about black slaves, there is no mention in Gibbon's source that the co-conspirators in this case were either African or slaves.

iii) comets

As a teenager working in the Armagh Observatory I had the thrill of showing visitors Halley's Comet through the same telescope which had been used a century earlier by J.L.E. Dreyer to compile the NGC. But I had forgotten about the importance of the Great Comet of 1680 which was used by Newton to verify Kepler's laws. But, alas, today's calculations indicate that its period is more like 9,000 years than the rather precise 575 which would have made it the same one seen by Justinian. The caluclation of its orbit is an important metaphor for Gibbon's theory of enlightenment, and I love his closing hope that "the mathematical science of Bernoulli, Newton, and Halley... may perhaps be verified by the astronomers of some future capital in the Siberian or American wilderness."

iv) earthquakes and plague

Caused apparently by the collapse of vast underground caverns, and foul air, respectively. Those are the latest scientific findings.

4) Coming next

Chapter XVIV: Justinian's legal legacy. Read it here or here.