The first thing that i would like to say is that a secondary source (book, article, whatever), being “old” does not necessarily make it outdated. Of course, Gibbon’s The History Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a little bit more than “old” seeing as the first volume was written before the United States even existed as a country, and is itself outdated. But with that aside let’s actually discuss Gibbon’s work. Now I will be the first to admit that I haven’t read the entirety of his work, or even the majority of it, despite having an MA focused on late antiquity (my thesis was even about the decline of the Roman Empire). I am personally most familiar with Gibbons’ views of Christianity and his argument for its role in the fall of the Roman Empire, as Christianity is one of the aspects of late antiquity that I studied in graduate school. In this regard Gibbon is not very reliable, frankly I would say he is outright wrong, though his personal dislike of Christinaity is often overstated. Most of the recent scholarship centered around the end of the Roman Empire agrees that Christianity played pretty much no role in the Empire’s collapse.

But Gibbon being wrong (and honestly me using “wrong” probably sounds more harsh than I mean it to), doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to study his work. This is because it is important to understand the historiography of any subject that you’re studying/researching because it shows you how we used to think, how we currently think, and how we got to that point. And Gibbon is absolutely an important piece of the historiography of late antiquity. I imagine that very few students ever read more than a few excerpts of his work outside of PhD programs, and as stated I haven’t, but I think that’s partially due to the fact that it can be hard to find affordable copies of his books. I only own the set that I own because one of my professors gave me his set as a gift a couple of years ago (by which point I was already done with my historiography). I think another issue is that Gibbon really isn’t discussed in Roman history classes partly because Roman history classes don’t often have much focus on late antiquity (in my experience anyway), and because his work isn’t necessarily relevant in the classroom unless you’re specifically discussing historiography.

But again, if you’re doing research into the fall of the Empire then I definitely think you should at least read the parts of Gibbon that are relevant to what you’re researching, if you have access to his work. On top of the historiography argument presented above (which is probably the most important reason), I think historians, if no one else, should have some understanding of Gibbon because unfortunately several of his ideas still permeate the popular opinion of the fall of the Roman Empire. This is especially true, and my apologies if I start to sound like a broken record, for his argument that Christianity played a large role in bringing about the downfall of Roman civilization. In fact, the History Channel, at least I believe it was them, published a list of “causes” for the fall of the Roman Empire back when they still had history related content. I don’t remember the exact context of the list, so I’m not sure if they were saying that those factors caused the fall of the Empire or if they were just listing things commonly believed to be the cause, but either way one of the things on that list was Christianity.

In fact, I’ve come across several articles and speeches online that rail against Christianity and use the fall of the Roman Empire as one of their main talking points for why Christianity is bad. In fact I even answered a question on this subreddit once that was prompted by one of these articles (I’ll try to find it if I can). Now, I am not religious personally so I’m not making an argument for Christianity nor one against it, but it does irk me when so many people present what is mostly an ahistorical argument to support their own beliefs. That is the main reason why I say that Gibbon is “wrong” for blaming Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire, because a lot of people continue to believe, and argue, this same point.

But I think we really need to understand the context of Gibbon’s life to understand why he felt the way that he did about Christinaity. Gibbon was born in England during the Age of Enlightenment, a time when a lot of educated people began to question religion in different ways. So it’s not really a surprise that he had some contempt for Christianity, and didn’t think that it was a good thing (well not wholly good anyway). The people who still parrot his argument, though I assume many of them don’t actually know where the argument originated, are likewise people who question Christianity, but I personally feel that this isn’t quite the same in a world where the church doesn’t really have as much sway as it did up to the Age of Enlightenment (and Gibbon was even vilified by many people for what he wrote about Christianity). While there is certainly still some, and in some places a lot, of societal pressure to identify as Christian in the western world, I don’t think it can be compared to the 18th century. This is why, or at least partly why, I feel that many of these people, no matter how genuine their beliefs are, are being somewhat unfair to Christianity.