ABSTRACT
With the logic of ex nihilo in place by the end of the 5th century, the “Western world” has written the period from about the 5th century until the 12th as “the dark ages” or the “middle ages.” This period, of course, was no less historical than any other and some of the writings extant from this period have given to the Christian West the mystical side of Christianity. However, it is precisely this “mystery” that is covered over in the re-covery of Aristotelian thought (especially) by St. Thomas Aquinas and the re-claiming of the Christian and Greek traditions for “the Western world.” In order to fl oat the grand narrative that somehow the European Christian world laid direct claim to the Greco-Roman heritage, or that somehow the important
history of the Christian Western World moves from the great Constantine to the great Columbus, the period between the 6th and 12th centuries and the Islamic and Jewish infl uence therein had to be narratively transformed so that the European identity might experience a Renaissance, a Rebirth as if out of nothing.
