–the first volume of The DECLINE and FALL of the ROMAN EMPIRE
The first of six volumes. The total endeavor would consume fifteen years. The last of the six volumes was released thirteen years later, in 1789.
Gibbon’s work has been attacked as a polemic by the Catholic Church for its scathing treatment of same. Historically, any work castigating the Church is branded as a “polemic” by the Church. There is, alas, much to criticize about the Catholic Church, and if one criticizes just 5 percent of their misdeeds, the work appears polemical. In any event, the Gibbons work was banned (as a consequence of Church criticism) in several European countries.
In any event, in chapters 15 and 16, Gibbons thematically attacks the Church for “supplanting in an unnecessarily destructive way, the great cultures which preceded it,” and for “the outrage of practicing religious warfare and intolerance.”
No choir boy, himself, Gibbons, although immortalized by his work, was not a master of tolerance.