Sacred trees
Trees were often regarded as sacred in the ancient world, throughout Europe and Asia.[7] Christianity and Islam treated the worship of trees as idolatry and this led to their destruction in Europe and most of West Asia. In the manuscript illumination (illustration) Saint Stephan of Perm cuts down a birch sacred to the Komi people as part of his proselytizing among them in the years after 1383. His profanation of their shrines and cult images incurred their hostility.[8] Sacred trees remain common in India. They are found in villages, in the countryside and the heart of some temples (e.g. Jain temples). Plants is the only medium which connects the living and nonliving things in the environment. Every religion accepts the importance of trees. Hence worship of trees was in existence from the ancient times. Eco Worship is the Worship of Environment through plants. Shripad Vaidya of Nagpur, Maharashtra was founded Eco-Worship Center (NAKSHATRAVAN). It is the First in the world and is known for Worship of Environment through plants. The Indian 'shastras' and 'panchang', too mention several ways of doing so, one of them being offering prayers to various trees. aint Stephen of Perm (Russian : Стефан Пермский / Stefan Perms, also spelled "Stephan") (1340–1396)[1] was a fourteenth century painter and missionary credited with the conversion of the Komi Permyaks to Christianity and the establishment of the Bishopric of Perm'. Stephen also created the Old Permic script, which makes him the founding-father of Permian written tradition. "The Enlightener of Perm" or the "Apostle of the Permians", as he is sometimes called, is commemorated by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches on April 26. Stephen was probably from the town of Ustiug.[2] According to a church tradition, his mother was a Komi woman. Stephen took his monastic vows in Rostov, where he learned Greek and learned his trade as a copyist.[3] In the year 1376, he voyaged to lands along the Vychegda a
d Vym rivers, and it was then that he engaged in the conversion of the Zyriane (Komi peoples).[3] Rather than imposing the Latin or Church Slavonic on the indigenous pagan populace, as all the contemporary missionaries did, Stephen learnt their language and traditions and worked out a distinct writing system for their use. Although his destruction of pagan idols (e.g., holy birches) earned him the wrath of some Permians, Pimen, the Metropolitan of All Rus', created him as the first bishop of Perm'.[3] Memorial table in Syktyvkar, capital of Komi republic The effect of the new bishopric and the conversion of the Vychegda Perm threatened the control that Novgorod had been enjoying over the region's tribute.[3] In 1385, the Archbishop of Novgorod Aleksei (r. 1359-1388) sent a Novgorodian army to oust the new establishment, but the new bishopric, with the help of the city of Ustiug, was able to defeat it.[3] In 1386, Stephan visited Novgorod the following year, and the city and its archbishop formally acknowledged the new situation.[3] Subsequently, the region's tribute became the luxury of Moscow. These events had immense repercussions for the future of northern Russia, and formed but one part of a larger trend which saw more and more of the Finnic North and its precious pelts passing from the control of Novgorod to Moscow.[3] The historian Serge Zenkovsky wrote that St. Stephen of Perm, along with Epiphanius the Wise, St. Sergius of Radonezh, and the great painter Andrei Rublev signified "the Russian spiritual and cultural revival of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century."[4] Indeed, Stephen's life encapsulates both the political and religious expansion of "Muscovite" Russia. Stephen's life was in fact commemorated in the writings of the aforementioned Epiphanius, who famously wrote the Panegyric to Saint Stephen of Perm, a text with praises Stephen for his evangelical activities, and styles him the "creator of Permian letters".