Byzantine Tree Life: Christianity and the Arboreal Imagination

This book examines the many ways Byzantines lived with their trees. It takes seriously theological and hagiographic tree engagement as expressions of that culture’s deep involvement—and even fascination—with the arboreal. These pages tap into the current attention paid to plants in a wide range of scholarship, an attention that involves the philosophy of plant life as well as scientific discoveries of how communicative trees may be, and how they defend themselves. Considering writings on and images of trees from Late Antiquity and medieval Byzantium sympathetically, the book argues for an arboreal imagination at the root of human aspirations to know and draw close to the divine.

About the Author

Thomas Arentzen is Researcher in Greek Philology at Uppsala University and Reader in Church History at Lund University, Sweden.

Virginia Burrus is Bishop W. Earl Ledden Distinguished Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, USA.

Glenn Peers is Professor in the Department of Art and Music Histories at Syracuse University, USA.