Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 14:

The use of tobacco in churches forms a curious if short chapter in the social history of smoking. The earliest reference to such a practice occurs in 1590, when Pope Innocent XII excommunicated all such persons as were found taking snuff or using tobacco in any form in the church of St. Peter, at Rome; and again in 1624, Pope Urban VIII issued a bull against the use of tobacco in churches.

In England it would seem as if some of the early smokers, in the fulness of their enthusiasm for the new indulgence, went so far as to smoke in church. When King James I was about to visit Cambridge, the Vice-Chancellor of the University put forth sundry regulations in connexion with the royal visit, in which may be found the following passage: "That noe Graduate, Scholler, or Student of this Universitie presume to resort to any Inn, Taverne, Alehowse, or Tobacco-Shop at any tyme dureing the aboade of his Majestie here; nor doe presume to take tobacco in St. Marie's Church, or in Trinity Colledge Hall, uppon payne of finall expellinge the Universitie."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

At si
Mundungus desit: tum non funcare recusant
Brown-Paper tostâ, vel quod fit arundine bed-mat.

Tobacco, in Queen Anne's time, still maintained its hold over large classes of the people, and was still dominant in most places of public resort; but there were signs of change in various directions as we have seen, and smoking had to a large extent ceased to be fashionable. Pepys has very few allusions to tobacco; Evelyn fewer still. There is little evidence as to whether or not the gallants of the Restoration Court smoked; but considering the foppery of their attire and manners, it seems almost certain that tobacco was not in favour among them. The beaux with their full wigs—they carried combs of ivory or tortoiseshell in their pockets with which they publicly combed their flowing locks—their dandy canes and scented, laced handkerchiefs, were not the men to enjoy the flavour of tobacco in a pipe. They were still tobacco-worshippers; but they did not smoke. The Indian weed retained its empire over the men (and women) of fashion by changing its form. The beaux were the devotees of snuff. The deftly handled pinch pleasantly titillated their nerves, and the dexterous use of the snuff-box, moreover, could also serve the purposes of vanity by displaying the beautiful whiteness of the hand, and the splendour of the rings upon the fingers. The curled darlings of the late seventeenth century and the "pretty fellows" of Queen Anne's time did not forswear tobacco, but they abjured smoking. Snuff-taking was universal in the fashionable world among both men and women; and the development of this habit made smoking unfashionable.

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