GHISLERI
GIBBON
Erlangen University. He served as a
Lutheran minister at Nuremberg for some
years, but abandoned the Church and
ministry. In 1835 he became a teacher at
Nuremberg, and in 1841 the City librarian.
Under the pseudonym of " Eichard von der
Aim " he issued a number of nationalist
works. One of these, Jesus von Nazareth
(1870), was re-issued under the pseudonym
of Eugen Braun." His work on human
sacrifices among the ancient Hebrews (Die
Menschenopfer der alien Hebraer, 1842)
had great influence. D. June 26, 1876.
GHISLERI, Professor Arcangelo,
Italian geographer. B. 1855. From teacher of geography in provincial colleges he became Director of the Geographical Section of the Istituto d Arti Grafiche at Bergamo. He adopted Eationalism in his nineteenth year. In 1877 he published a drastic Rationalistic work, II prete e la donna, which was followed by several others, in addition to various technical works. Professor Ghisleri founded the Bivista Beppublicana (1878), and edited Cuore e Critica and La Geografia per Tutti. The Almanack de la Libre Pensee Inter nationale for 1908 quotes a speech in which Prof. Ghisleri says : " The battle of Free- thought must also be waged against all who, though they do not believe in God or priest, maintain religion and priests because they are good policemen." He edits the Italian Rationalist paper La Bagione.
GIANNONE, Pietro, Italian writer. B. May 7, 1676. Ed. Naples. He was a lawyer who spent twenty years in writing an anti-clerical Storia Civile del Begno di Napoli (4 vols., 1723), which drew upon him such persecution from the Church that he quitted Italy for Vienna. The Austrian Emperor pensioned him for a time, but he returned to Italy, and was again expelled in 1735. He continued his anti-Papal work in Switzerland, but he was treacherously arrested on the Italian frontier, and died in prison Mar. 7, 1748. 285
GIBBON, Edward, historian. B. (Put
ney) Apr. 27, 1737. Ed. private tutors
and Oxford (Magdalen). At Oxford, where
he spent (he says) some of " the most idle
and unprofitable " months of his life, he
entered the Roman Church. His father,
after fruitlessly trying a Deistic tutor, sent
him to Lausanne, and he returned to the
Church of England in 1754. During a
visit to Italy in 1764 he, as he stood on
the Capitol (Oct. 15), conceived the idea of
his great work, and the death of his father
in 1770 left him ample means and leisure.
Already Johnson described him as one of
the " infidel wasps " of the clubs. The
first volume was issued in 1776, the second
and third in 1781, and the remaining three
in 1788. It ought to be read in Bury s
finely annotated edition (7 vols.). His
Miscellaneous Works, including his auto
biographical Memoirs of My Life and
Writings, were published in 1796 (2 vols.).
For some years Gibbon represented Lym-
ington in Parliament, but his life is wholly
identified with his Decline and Fall, the
most elegant, destructive, and learned
historical work that had yet appeared.
He was a Deist, though the absence from
his letters and minor works of the Theistic
phraseology which was then much used is
significant. In his Outlines of the History
of the World (Miscell. Works, ii, 437) he
says of the fifteenth century : " By a pro
pensity natural to man, the multitude had
easily relapsed into the grossest polytheism.
The existence of a Supreme Being was
indeed acknowledged ; his mysterious attri
butes were minutely, and even indecently,
canvassed in the schools." Such passages,
without the usual capital letters, do not
indicate a very profound Deism. The
finest study of Gibbon from this point of
view is in Mr. J. M. Robertson s Pioneer
Humanists. See also Mr. E. Clodd s Gibbon
and Christianity (1916). The gibes of
some recent religious writers at Gibbon s
" errors " are amusing. Historical science
was, of course, not then the science it is
to-day, but Gibbon s care and industry
were amazing. Sir Leslie Stephen, who at
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