What was A Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?

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Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon, oil painting by Henry Walton, 1774; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

A Vindication of Some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1779) was a work written by the British historian Edward Gibbon.

Following the publication of the first volume of his history in 1776, Gibbon faced significant criticism and ridicule from various pamphleteers regarding his skeptical treatment of the rise of Christianity in the final two chapters of that volume. While he generally ignored his detractors, he authored this specific text as a "devastating reply" to those who had accused him of falsifying his historical evidence.1