Barbarism and Religion
Cambridge University Press, 6/13/2014
EAN 9781107464360, ISBN10: 1107464366
Paperback, 100 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
This sixth and final volume in John Pocock's acclaimed sequence of works on Barbarism and Religion examines Volumes II and III of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, carrying Gibbon's narrative to the end of empire in the west. It makes two general assertions: first, that this is in reality a mosaic of narratives, written on diverse premises and never fully synthesized with one another; and second, that these chapters assert a progress of both barbarism and religion from east to west, leaving much history behind as they do so. The magnitude of Barbarism and Religion is already apparent. Barbarism: Triumph in the West represents the culmination of a remarkable attempt to discover and present what Gibbon was saying, what he meant by it, and why he said it in the ways that he did, as well as an unparalleled contribution to the historiography of Enlightened Europe.
Introduction
Part I. The Constantinian Empire
1. Constantinople
a new city and a new history
2. Constantine to Julian
the disintegration of a dynasty
Part II. The Church in the Empire
3. Constantine's second revolution
4. Theology and the problems of authority
5. Nicaea and its aftermath
6. The reign of Constantius and the Arian triumph
7. The structure of chapter 21
Part III. The Interlude of Julian
8. Gibbon and Julian
the history of an anomaly
9. Julian apostate
the failure of an alternative
10. Julian as persecutor
from toleration to the failure of repression
11. The sojourn at Antioch and the Persian disaster
Part IV. Barbarism
The First Catastrophe
12. Valentinian I and Valens
the turn to the west
13. The geography and history of the western Decline and Fall
Part V. The Triumph of Orthodoxy and the Last Emperor
14. The reign of Theodosius
triumphs preceding disaster
15. Ambrose of Milan
the church and the empire
16. Theodosius narrated and re-narrated
the death and rebirth of polytheism
Part VI. The Barbarisation of the West
17. The Gothic phase
the sack of Rome and the loss of the transalpine west
18. Vandals and Huns
the twin empires and the loss of Africa
19. Attila and Aetius
the Hun invasions of the west
20. The end of the western succession
Part VII. After the Fall
Towards a History Not Written
21. Ends and beginnings
the conclusion of Gibbon's third volume
22. The barbarian kingdoms and their laws
the beginnings of a mediaeval history
23. The general observations
24. Gibbon's first trilogy and its successor volumes
Conclusion of the present series
Bibliography
Index.