The world of Dionysius Exiguus, Boethius, and Bede was dark indeed. Rome had collapsed, and Western civilization seemed but a shadow of Rome’s past glory. The future seemed more horrid than the past. It is no wonder that in the search for wisdom medieval scholars didn’t look to their peers for ideas. Instead, they turned to the ancients like Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. As these medieval thinkers imported the philosophy and science of the ancients, they inherited the ancient prejudices: a fear of the infinite and a horror of the void.
