Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

Quotation

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

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Biographical

Edward Gibbon (1737 - January 16, 1794) was a groundbreaking historian, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unabridged eight volume set) - please follow this link for the popular Penguin abridged version. He was born in Putney, ear London, England into a relatively well-to-do but not wealthy country family. His family had an estate in Hampshire. He was an only child, and after his mother died while he was 10 years old, he was raised by an aunt. His health while a boy was rather poor. When he was 14 years of age, his father sent him away to school at the University of Oxford. He later wrote that his father, out of "perplexity rather than prudence, without preparation or delay, carried me to Oxford, and I was matriculated in the university, as a gentleman commoner of Magdalen college, before I had accomplished the fifteenth year of my age".

His father became alarmed when young Gibbon began to espouse a belief in the Roman Catholic Church. Religious controversies raged on the Oxford campus. For a proper English gentleman to convert to Catholicism in the 18th century had significant implications for his life. He would have been ostracized by a great deal of society and had many doors of advancement closed to him. To prevent such an event, the elder Gibbon removed him from the University, and sent him instead to M. Pavilliard, a Protestant pastor and private tutor in Lausanne, Switzerland. His education in Lausanne was to have a profound and lasting impact. He wrote in his memoirs, "Whatsoever have been the fruits of my education, they must be ascribed to the fortunate banishment which placed me in Lausanne... Such as I am, in genius or learning or manners, I owe my creation to Lausanne: it was in that school that the statue was found in the block of marble." Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper says that "Without the experience of Lausanne there would have been no Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Edward Gibbon.]

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