Tim Blanning reviews Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe by Craig Koslofsky:
Christian disapproval of the night is as old as the New Testament. Unsurprisingly, St Paul’s epistles equate darkness with evil, as does John’s Gospel – “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness”. However, there was another albeit less obtrusive theological tradition advocating a path leading to God that was not brilliantly lit. Especially influential was Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the fifth-century Syrian thinker, who proclaimed: “I pray we could come to this darkness so far above light!”. … It was always those who preferred personal introspection to institutional dogma who found the dark side congenial.
The Dish 