J. G. A. Pocock begins his study of Edward Gibbon's relation to the various currents of enlightenment to which he was exposed by quoting the self-description which gives Pocock his own title: ‘I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion’, remarks Gibbon, towards the close of his philosophic history. Pocock's study does much to show that barbarism and the Christian religion were for Gibbon not so nearly synonymous as has sometimes been thought; and, in particular, that Gibbon's peculiar variety of philosophical history owes much to varieties of enlightenment unlike those which we are most used to hearing about: an ‘Arminian’ enlightenment with English, Dutch and Swiss origins, as well as a tradition of deep historical erudition which D'Alembert praised faintly in his preliminary discourse to the Encyclopédie. If there was one aspect of early Christianity of which it can be said with some confidence, however, that Gibbon regarded it as barbarous, the early asceticism of the desert fathers is a strong candidate.