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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume III: A.D. 1185 to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 (A Modern Library E-Book) [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader]
eBook by Edward Gibbon
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eBook Category: History
eBook Description:  "I set out upon Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [and] was immediately dominated by both the story and the style," recalled Winston Churchill. "I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all.... I was not even estranged by his naughty footnotes." In the two centuries since its completion, Gibbon's magnum opus--which encompasses some thirteen hundred years as it swings across Europe, North Africa, and Asia--has refused to go the way of many "classics" and grow musty on the shelves. "Gibbon is a landmark and a signpost--a landmark of human achievement: and a signpost because the social convulsions of the Roman Empire as described by him sometimes prefigure and indicate convulsions which shake the whole world today," wrote E.M. Forster. Never far below the surface of the magnificent narrative lies the author's wit and sweeping irony, exemplified by Gibbon's famous definition of history as "little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." The third volume contains chapters forty-nine through seventy-one of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
eBook Publisher: Random House, Inc./Modern Library, Published: 2000
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2002
This eBook is part of the following series:
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Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT [5.0 MB], SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT [3.5 MB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More., SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT [1.9 MB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [2.8 MB]
Words: 150000
Reading time: 428-600 min.
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN: 9780679641483
Mobipocket Reader ISBN: 9780679641483
eReader ISBN: 9780679641483
GEOGRAPHIC RESTRICTIONS: Available to customers in: US What's this?
 
XLIX
In the connexion of the church and state I have considered the former as
subservient only and relative to the latter: a salutary maxim, if in
fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever been held sacred. The
oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the dark abyss of predestination
and grace, and the strange transformation of the Eucharist from the sign
to the substance of Christ's body, I have purposely abandoned to the
curiosity of speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence
and pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which the
decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected, the
propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic church,
the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the mysterious
controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation. At the head of
this class, we may justly rank the worship of images, so fiercely
disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries; since a question of popular
superstition produced the revolt of Italy, the temporal power of the
popes, and the restoration of the Roman empire in the West.
The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable repugnance
to the use and abuse of images, and this aversion may be ascribed to
their descent from the Jews and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic
law had severely proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that
precept was firmly established in the principles and practice of the
chosen people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against
the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their own
hands: the images of brass and marble, which, had they been
endowed with sense and motion, should have started rather from the
pedestal to adore the creative powers of the artist. Perhaps some recent
and imperfect converts of the Gnostic tribe might crown the statues of
Christ and St. Paul with the profane honours which they paid to those of
Aristotle and Pythagoras; but the public religion of the Catholics was
uniformly simple and spiritual; and the first notice of the use of
pictures is in the censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred
years after the Christian æra. Under the successors of
Constantine, in the peace and luxury of the triumphant church, the more
prudent bishops condescended to indulge a visible superstition for the
benefit of the multitude; and, after the ruin of Paganism, they were no
longer restrained by the apprehension of an odious parallel. The first
introduction of a symbolic worship was in the veneration of the cross
and of relics. The saints and martyrs, whose intercession was implored,
were seated on the right hand of God; but the gracious and often
supernatural favours, which, in the popular belief, were showered round
their tomb, conveyed an unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims,
who visited, and touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, the
memorials of their merits and sufferings. But a memorial, more
interesting than the skull or the sandals of a departed worthy, is a
faithful copy of his person and features, delineated by the arts of
painting or sculpture.
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