The phallus tree: a medieval and renaissance phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION

In the year 2000, an exceptional mural was discovered at a fountain in Massa Marittima, Italy. It depicts a tree with phalluses, which are distributed across all the branches, are disproportionately large and in an aroused state, and include a scrotum.

METHODS

Other examples were identified by systematic literature research.

RESULTS

Several other depictions of a phallus tree from the medieval and Renaissance periods exist, for example in manuscripts, as wood carvings, on pilgrimage badges, or frescoes, and were retrieved in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, and France.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The phallus tree was a well-known phenomenon in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, and mostly find their roots in the link between infertility and impotence on the one hand, and sorcery and witchcraft on the other.