Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

and other non-Christian greats, Justinian’s reign, and the sixth century in general, was marked by a self-blinkering in the Christian world. Doctrinal minutiae assumed ever bigger and bloodier importance, while anything non-Christian was regarded with gathering suspicion. The Roman Empire had once been a super-spreader of classical learning across its vast territories. But as it fell to pieces in the west and became ever-more doctrinally obsessed in the east, it became an active blocker to knowledge chains across the ages, and the transmission of ancient learning throughout the empire began to fail. One reason that the label “the Dark Ages” has proven so hard to untie from the neck of the Middle Ages is that for hundreds of years—between the sixth century and the first beginnings of the Renaissance in the late thirteenth—the scientific and rational insights of the ancient world were forgotten or suppressed in the west. This was not simply an unfortunate symptom of creeping cultural dementia. It sprang from the deliberate policies of eastern emperors like Justinian, who made it their business to hound out of their world the self-appointed but unfortunately unchristian guardians of priceless knowledge.