Edward Gibbon’s sixth and final volume in his monumental “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” encapsulates the waning days of Byzantium, the growing supremacy of the Latin Christian church, and the evolving dynamics of post-Roman Western Europe. With an almost elegiac tone, Gibbon charts the Byzantine Empire’s last stand against the surging Ottomans, … Continue reading Gibbon’s Volume VI of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”: The Final Act of Byzantium, the Papal Ascendancy, and the Reflections on an Empire’s Demise