Beacons of belief: seasonal change and sacred trees in Britain from prehistory to the later Middle Ages

This chapter addresses the role of trees in religious belief in Britain from prehistory to the later Middle Ages. Despite considerable change to religious practices over the course of millennia, trees have retained a relatively constant symbolic function within systems of belief as beacons of the annual seasonal cycle, which affects humans no less than it does the world around us. The principal focus of this chapter is the earliest period for which there is surviving “historical” evidence, namely the early medieval, in which Anglo-Saxon traditional religion was supplanted by Christianity. In the form of the Holy Rood, trees remained a prominent symbolic presence in Christianity throughout the medieval period, being intimately intertwined with the life of Christ and Christian spiritual history.