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 69 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 69: State of Rome from the twelfth century—Temporal dominion of the popes—Seditions of the city—Political heresy of Arnold of Brescia—Restoration of the Republic—The Senators—Pride of the Romans—Their wars—They are deprived of the election and presence of the popes, who retire to Avignon—The Jubilee—Noble Families of Rome—Feud of the Colonna and Ursini. The footnotes — Gibbon’s famous asides — are not in this reading. What you have is the narrative, in his own eighteenth-century English.