Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England by Michael D. J. Bintley (review)

Michael D. J. Bintley is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Canterbury Christ Church University. He previously co-authored a volume from Oxford University Press with Michael G. Shapland of University College London entitled Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World, which explores the roles of forest and woodland in the culture of ancient Britain, including uses of lumber in building and industry, sacred and philosophical conceptions of trees, and the impact of the densely wooded landscape on local art and literature. Bintley’s newest solo work Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England is somewhat of a companion to that volume in which he has undertaken more specifically-focused research into the syncretic symbolism of trees in the Germanic religious roots of England and their equal importance as emblems of the new religion in the Christian conversion period. As he states in the introduction, though the worship of pagan gods came to be forbidden as the church gained power, other practices, including the veneration of sacred trees, not only persisted but became deeply woven into the newer devotion. Shared imagery of trees in both traditions formed a natural bridge from one historical phase to the next. The tree of life is a universal archetypal symbol, and as such, is found copiously represented in mythic systems worldwide. In a sylvan land such as Britain it takes on a special resonance. Wood and other forest products contributed to the survival and well-being of the island’s inhabitants and surrounded them in their daily lives. The sacralization of trees was matter-of-course in such an environment. Comparatively, trees also played an enormous role in Biblical stories and in life in Judea, from the mystic messianic lineage of the Tree of Jesse to the acacia wood from which the Ark of the Covenant was made and, most centrally, to the paired trees in the Garden of Eden, representing both prelapsarian perfection and the corrupting effects of the Fall on the material world.

Bintley has employed a number of well-chosen examples of trees in Anglo-Saxon culture to bolster his thesis. He credits University College London English Studies Professor Richard North’s analysis of tree-men in the Nordic epic Hávamál as the inspiration that led to his line of inquiry. Scandinavian myths employ a common motif identifying humans with trees, the prime example being Ask and Embla, the Nordic Adam and Eve figures of the first man and woman whose names mean Ash and Elm. A Judaic parallel to the relation of human bodies to those of trees is found in the kabbalistic concept of Adam Kadmon, primordial archetypal man, as mystically identical to the axis mundi or world tree, a possible comment on the arborescent qualities of the nervous system. Bintley’s studies into this rich content lead him to sources both Christian and pagan in the art, literature, religion and daily life of the Anglo-Saxons. Among the most important of these are the poem “The Dream of the Rood” and the associated Ruthwell Cross monument. “The Dream of the Rood” records the voice of the arbor vitae, the living tree, which became the instrument of crucifixion in the events recounted in the New Testament. The poem is found in manuscript form in the Vercelli Book as well as in carven runic form on the stone Ruthwell Cross, and was also incorporated into the design of a later reliquary. Bintley takes care to stress that this particular work in its myriad manifestations never refers to the instrument of execution and resurrection as a cross or crux but only by terms identifying it as a tree or gallows. The latter is another echo of Scandinavian influence that referred to the great tree Yggdrasil as the horse of Odin, a wordplay for the scaffold which referenced the legend of the All-Father hanging himself on the tree as a sacrifice to gain the...