In the beginning, the quintessential sacred place was the Woods. Full of life, of berries useful as food, wood for heating, medicinal herbs, where sunlight penetrates with difficulty, altering the landscape with ever-new lights and shadows.

Frightening, dangerous, refuge of fantastic beasts, where it is easy to get lost. The voice of Nature is particularly intense in the Woods, time seems to stand still and the human soul manages to come into contact with the divine.
It is also the favored dwelling of spirits, fauns, satyrs, nymphs, Gods of Nature, sometimes benevolent, sometimes hostile: it becomes necessary to pay them homage to win their favor with food, fragrant herbs, prayers, dances and songs or votive offerings to be left on stones hidden in secret places.
The gatherer women were the first to come into contact with the magical world of the Woods and became the first priestesses of that space where, in hidden and protected clearings, rites and ceremonies took place.

It is a time when Europe is covered in forests and many peoples elect the woods as a sacred place of worship, charged with beneficial energy.

Trees and woods hold central importance in the religiosity of the Greeks, the Germanic peoples, and the Romans. Especially among the Celts, trees are symbols and instruments of initiatory knowledge and spiritual teaching: the woods are the residence of the powerful Druids and a source of ingredients for their magical and medicinal potions.

The Celts call the sacred woods Nemeton; for the Romans it is the Lucus or Nemus, the part of the woods where sunlight manages to reach; for the Etruscans it is Luk Eri, the woods sacred to the divinity Veltha, also called Voltumna, protector of the fields and patroness of the Lucumonies.

It is surprising to discover that for all, it is the sacred space linked to natural divinities and encloses rock altars and springs.
The sacred woods can only be accessed on special occasions, public festivals and processions; one witnesses rites performed by priests on the altar and can take away a small piece of a branch from the sacred tree housed in the sacellum, the sacred enclosure.

In Central Italy, Sacred Woods are extremely numerous. Over time, they are equipped with stone altars and statues up to a final evolution of Etruscan heritage: that of the temple.

The population increases, with a consequent need for more living space.

A vast area of the woods is used for profane purposes such as hunting, and trees are felled to obtain land for cultivation and timber for construction.

Since the woods were the dwelling of gods, nymphs, satyrs, it was necessary to ask the God of the woods for permission to hunt or cut wood.
With the advent of Christianity, the Woods loses all sacredness: everything was made by God for Man, who can dispose of nature as he wishes, and the Woods is considered lifeless matter.

All spiritual meaning of Nature is removed because it is an obstacle to its exploitation and antithetical to the anthropomorphic vision of the divine.

From its very birth, the Catholic Church worked towards the conversion and Christianization of so-called pagan peoples.
Authoritarian power and the spread of the Christian Church grew, and the greatest difficulty encountered by priests in this work was the clash with cults and beliefs based on a close relationship with Nature in its manifestations: trees, springs, and sacred stones.

In 292, an edict of Emperor Theodosius would prohibit and severely penalize dendrolatry.

The most famous persecutor of woods was Saint Martin (315-397), one of the founders of monasticism in the West and remembered for the episode of dividing his cloak with a half-naked, cold beggar.

As Bishop of Tours, he initiated an energetic fight against rural tree cults by tearing down temples, sacred trees, and pagan idols.

The Council of Arles first (452 AD) and then the Council of Nantes (568 AD) definitively sanctioned the abolition of tree worship, defining it as sacrilegious and outlawing once and for all the cults held in the woods.

So much intolerance was not very successful. Chronicles testify to the persistence of rites linked to springs or trees, especially in the countryside.

Numerous are the Milk Springs, for example, where new mothers went to receive help with breastfeeding; they are a memory handed down to the present day.

The cross itself was an archaic symbol depicting the Sun; the Madonna, to whom Springs and Sacred Springs with strong miraculous power were dedicated, recalled pagan female divinities.

Feronia, an Etruscan divinity later Romanized, was the protector of spring waters, wild animals (from Latin fera ferae, the wild beasts), fire, and everything that emerges from underground into the sunlight. Numerous were the Sacred Woods and springs with therapeutic properties dedicated to her. Among these is the Fonte Feronia in Narni, located in a sacred woods of shady holm oaks.

The ancient sacred forests are “exorcised” by building monasteries around them and clearing them.

The Capitularies, the laws issued by Charlemagne – representative of triumphant Christianity – harshly condemn those who practice cults of any kind near trees, stones, and springs.
Despite this, the common people continue to go to these places and make offerings to tree spirits, rendering edicts and prohibitions ineffective.

The Church then decided to appropriate these places by Christianizing them: ancient sacred trees, instead of being cut down, were consecrated to the Madonna and the Saints; small sanctuaries, votive niches, and aedicules were built. The same applies to standing stones and rock altars, which were also Christianized.

In the most inaccessible places, hermits settled.

One example is the Hermitage of Monteluco, near Spoleto. The name of the hamlet derives from the Latin term lucus, meaning Sacred Woods, confirming the religious importance of this place since ancient times.

Here was found the marble tablet bearing the so-called lex spoletina (3rd century BC), a series of rules written in archaic Latin, concerning the penalties inflicted on those who desecrate the Sacred Woods dedicated to Jupiter.

Around the 5th century AD, Monteluco became the seat of one of the largest eremitic movements of the time, led by Saint Isaac of Antioch and strictly forbidden to women.

The divinities of Nature transform into demons and evil spirits while the woods become the dwelling of witches, heretical women endowed with supernatural powers, dangerous to the community.

Then came the Inquisition with its pyres, and silence and darkness descended upon the sacred forests.

Until the Middle Ages, therefore, the earth is considered not only on a physical and material plane, but also a spiritual one.

The symbolism of the tree is in itself very simple and widespread in all civilizations.

The roots plunge into the underground level, the trunk and the lower branches represent the earthly level, the crown and the higher branches are in communication with the sky: the tree was the metaphor for the relationship between earth and sky, between earthly and divine.

The Vikings' Tree of Life, Yggdrasil, for example, supports all three levels of the World. It is a giant ash tree, the most sacred among trees, center of the Universe, around which the gods were seated.

The Kabbalah's Tree of Life constitutes the synthesis of the most important teachings and is the program according to which the creation of the worlds took place:

Meanwhile, the Church insists on raging against the worshippers of the woods by cutting down or burning entire forests. Yet, even in the Catholic religion we find many references to trees and plants. For good and for ill.

Eden, the Paradise of Christians, is a wonderful garden. A tree is the seat of knowledge; the fig tree is one of the seven plants of the Promised Land, often cited in the Old and New Testament, as is the cedar of Lebanon:

“The trees of the Lord are well watered, / the cedars of Lebanon that he planted,” Psalm 104, 16.

In the Old Testament, God first manifests himself to Moses through a “burning bush” and after the Universal Flood, a dove brings Noah an olive branch, to announce that Earth and sky were reconciled.

In the New Testament, Jesus spends his last hours in the Garden of Olives where he prays and sweats blood (Luke, 22,39-44). On Palm Sunday, celebrated before Easter, the olive tree represents Jesus, instrument of reconciliation and peace for humanity.
Christ means Anointed One of the Lord, and olive oil is widely used in Christian liturgies, from baptism to extreme unction.

Around the year One Thousand, the vision of Nature for Christians changes. No longer the seat and hiding place of pagan gods but a manifestation of God's work.
One of the Fathers of the Church, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Bernard de Clairvaux 1090-1153), patron saint of farmers and, together with Hugh of Payns, founder of the Order of the Knights Templar, declares that:

You will find more in the woods than in books; trees and rocks will teach you things that no teacher will tell you. (Epistle 106 n.2)

Animals and plants are also the work of God, and Saint Francis is the most committed promoter of this pantheistic vision of the Universe. All Creation sings the praises of God, expresses His wisdom, greatness, and goodness. Man must join the chorus of other creatures to praise the Lord.

Leading up to the present day, with Pope Francis's Encyclical in which he asks to safeguard the common home of all living beings. Finally, a welcome dose of humility towards our planet.