Edward Gibbon, an English historian, published The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. This is Chapter 66 of that work. He follows Rome from the prosperous age of Trajan and the Antonines, around the year 100, through the fall of the West and on to the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453.

Chapter 66: Applications of the Eastern Emperors to the popes—Visits to the West, of John the First, Manuel, and John the Second, Palaeologus—Union of the Greek and Latin Churches, promoted by the Council of Basil, and concluded at Ferrara and Florence—State of literature at Constantinople—Its revival in Italy by the Greek fugitives—Couriosity and emulation of the Latins. The footnotes — Gibbon’s famous asides — are not in this reading. What you have is the narrative, in his own eighteenth-century English.