Edward gibbon atheist vs agnostic

“I am now re-reading, for the nth time, that greatest of historians, as I continually find myself declaring – Gibbon,” wrote eminent English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper to Renaissance art expert Bernard Berenson.

“What a splendid writer he is! If only historians could write like him now! How has the art of footnotes altogether perished and the gift of irony disappeared!”Edward Gibbon’s work was the end result, as we shall see, of several important factors: an innate knack for felicitous style and the telling detail, thorough scholarship, his early removal from staid academia in London, his belief that the course of history is influenced by many factors, and his distrust of all isms, including Catholicism.Weak and sickly from infancy, Gibbon had had the good fortune to be born in a well-to-do family and was educated at home.

When his mother died in 1747, he was sent to live with his aunt, Catherine