Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures

Norton, Marcy Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.

                Marcy Norton is an established historian of Atlantic History and Spanish History in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World is the culmination of her studies and won the best book award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures seeks to clarify a history of tobacco and chocolate and reveals the repercussions the two New World commodities had in the European world. Norton discusses what it meant for Europeans to consume tobacco and chocolate when knowledge abounded that the two were enmeshed in nearly every aspect of pagan savages in the New World. Finally, Norton sheds light on how Europeans adapted tobacco and chocolate into their economy and lives. Europeans developed their own unique cultural meanings of tobacco and chocolate and would, with time, embrace the two goods.

            Norton begins by explaining the use and significance of tobacco and chocolate to the Native Americans in the New World. Aztec, Mayan, and other Mesoamerican groups were bound together in their common usage of tobacco and chocolate. Chocolate beans were used as a common form of currency throughout Central Mexico. Tobacco and chocolate were woven into rites that conveyed social differentiation based on bloodlines and battlefield skill. Also, tobacco and chocolate expressed ties that Mesoamerican peoples considered binding to divinity. In consuming tobacco and chocolate, humans could achieve corporeal states similar to those experienced by their gods. Tobacco and chocolate anchored, enriched, and defined many social and religious rituals. The two quintessentially American goods could be found involved in betrothals, homecomings, intermission after meals, as tributes to gods, childbirth, and many more Mesoamerican activities.

            The next step in the evolution of tobacco and chocolate as world commodities was the encounters Spanish conquistadors had with Mesoamericans who consumed the substances. While the initial encounters had no special significance, Norton contends that many conquistadors, such as Hernán Cortéz, wizened to the social importance placed in and around tobacco and chocolate. Another example is Galetto Cey, an Italian trader who had to rely on Native American guides who insisted on conducting a tobacco ceremony before beginning an expedition. In the context of diplomacy and need, Cortéz and Cey participated in chocolate rituals in order to get the assistance of Native Americans that was relied upon for Imperial purposes.

            Norton explains the stereotypes tobacco and chocolate would be known by, several lasting for centuries. Tobacco was associated with simple savagery and native depravity. There was a close association of tobacco and its smoke with the devil and sorcery. On the other hand, chocolate was associated with the highly evolved civilizations of Mexico. The beverage was considered a decadence. The recipes and the methods of preparation were looked at as art forms, with precise steps and ingredients. Even Spanish historian and writer Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés saw chocolate as acceptable for consumption because of its medicinal qualities.  

            The process of how tobacco and chocolate impacted and imprinted imperial Europe began as the Spanish overlaid colonial institutions onto existing social, political, and economic structures. Religious tributes involving tobacco and chocolate continued, political and ecclesiastical jurisdictions were built upon standing indigenous political units, and Catholic churches were constructed on top of demolished pagan temples. Norton asserts that tobacco and chocolate survived because the new Spanish regime was erected on top of the substratum of native society. Tobacco and chocolate became the link to past traditions and allowed their adaptation to new settings. Pre-colonial traditions could be remade to serve new rulers and new divinities.  

            Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures explains how European acculturation to native ways, especially the acquired tastes for tobacco and chocolate, led to the suffusion of tobacco and chocolate into mestizo society. Many who became aficionados of tobacco and chocolate in the New World maintained the habit when upon their return to Europe. Norton contends that very early on in Spanish Imperialization conquistadores recognized cacao as a valuable commodity. Cacao was an immediate colonial commodity because of its value as a long-distance trade good before Spanish conquest. Tobacco was not seen as a valuable colonial commodity until later.  

            Once tobacco and chocolate leapt across the Atlantic Ocean, Europeans struggled with how to reconcile the use of the two commodities. Could a European consume tobacco and chocolate without implicating themselves in native idolatry? Nicolás Monardes was the first university-trained doctor to systematically consider American materia medica. With respect to tobacco, his drawings and writings offer clear insight into the European debate over the beneficial uses of the herb, and the impressions that its use was linked to idolatry. For Monardes, tobacco used medically was properly European, and tobacco used for other purposes was not acceptably European. However, chocolate was received in Europe differently than tobacco. At times, chocolate was juxtaposed to other regional beverages and considered acceptable for consumption. Many writers attempted to excuse the use of chocolate.

            Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures documents the time period that tobacco and chocolate began to have a firm social and commercial foothold on the Iberian Peninsula. Norton argues that commodification of tobacco and chocolate was the result of the growing European demand for the goods. Tobacco entered through the wealthy and well-connected merchant class, along with the lower-class mariner community. Elite Spaniards were the earliest and most frequent buyers of chocolate. Clergy members, titled aristocrats, families of officials, and professionals all imported tobacco and chocolate. Similar to the cultural roles tobacco played in the New World, Europeans easily created social situations for people to consume tobacco. In the same way that tobacco was once sacred to the Indians, it also became sacred to Old World consumers. Sensory sensations, such as the practices, habits, and tastes of tobacco were maintained even across the Atlantic Ocean.   

            In no other place are the enduring legacies of tobacco and chocolate more pronounced than seventeenth-century art. Norton points to the Barcelona tile painting as evidence of the powerful rite of sociability surrounding the manufacture of chocolate and its consumption. In the painting, chocolate conveys sumptuous refinement and the nobility and high status of chocolate consumers. Also conveyed in the painting, chocolate portrays intimacy of an erotic nature. David Teniers the Younger’s painting, Peasants Smoking in an Inn (1640), illustrates the shared change in mood and consciousness that unifies the smokers depicted. An onlooker is seen on the periphery eagerly looking on to joining the other smokers’ altered states.   

            Tobacco and chocolate soon became fundamental staples of the Atlantic trade network. Spanish royal officials worked to monopolize tobacco, which mandated the procurement, processing, and sale of tobacco to be the exclusive right of the Spanish government. Through the use of leases within the royal tobacco monopoly, the commodities brought in substantial revenues and increased the importance and power of the Spanish state. Spain used its new trade leverage to expand its domain domestically. Norton argues that the fiscalization of tobacco and chocolate affected their cultural meanings. Instead of the medicine Monardes had envisioned, tobacco and chocolate became the first mass luxuries.

            Finally, Catholic Spain had to contend with the problems of tobacco and chocolate consumption during Catholic rituals. Would tobacco consumption interfere with communion? If used by holy people or in holy places, would chocolate be considered sacrilege? Through the Catholic Church’s reform program, tobacco was made to be seen as the same as all sins, no better and no worse. This validated the sacrament and reduced the threat of tobacco. Next, Catholics considered chocolate and its potential to violate an ecclesiastical fast. This particular issue was heavily debated among Spaniards of many professions. With no papal bull to direct Catholics, the pope laughed chocolate off as a strange Indian drink.

            Eventually, smoking tobacco became the dominant form of ingestion. Norton argues that tobacco smoking led to opium smoking. While Europeans connoted smoking tobacco with diabolically inspired idolators, Asian countries eschewed a friendliness towards smoking. Norton is also quick to point out that the social rites surrounding chocolate drinking inspired the use of tea and coffee. Mesoamerican tobacco and chocolate consumers would not recognize the world commodities that today we know as cigarettes and Hershey’s kisses.