"One reason that the label ‘the Dark Ages’ has proven hard to untie from the neck of the Middle Ages is that for hundreds of years – between the sixth century and the 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 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."