The Pope’s Nose
Benedict XIV was also a snuff-taker. He is said
to have once offered his snuffbox to the head of
some religious order, who declined to take a
pinch of snuff, saying, “Your Holiness, I do not
have that vice,” to which the pope replied, “It is
not a vice. If it were a vice you would have it.”
Pius IX was an inveterate snuff-taker, and was
so effusive and constant in it that he often had
to change his long white soutane a few times a
day—it was white, after all, and the snuff dust
would settle on it. He offered snuff, and snuff-
boxes to visitors. The Church had established a
monopoly on the tobacco trade in the Papal
States and, in 1863, during his pontificate,
consolidated its tobacco processing operations
under the Pontifical Director of Salt and Tobacco
in a newly erected building on the Piazza Mastai
in the Trastevere district in Rome.
When the
representative of
Victor Emmanuel
came to him to
submit conditions
that the pontiff
believed were
unacceptable, the
pope “beat on the
table with a snuff
box, which then
broke.” The
representative “left
so confused he appeared dizzy.” In 1871, the
pope also, during the time he was the “prisoner
of the Vatican,” offered up his “gold snuff-box,
exquisitely carved with two symbolic lambs in the
midst of flowers and foliage,” to be offered as
the prize in a worldwide lottery to raise money
for the Church. (Right: Audience with Pope Pius
IX—Library of Congress)
Leo XIII favored snuff. Before he became pope,
he had served for a time as papal nuncio in
Brussels and enjoyed the conversation and
company of the cultured and easy-going
aristocrats there. One evening at dinner, a
certain Count, who was a Freethinker, thought he
would have a little fun at the nuncio’s expense,
and he handed him a snuff box to examine,
which had on its cover a miniature painting of a
beautiful nude Venus. “The men of the party
watched the progress of the joke, and as for the
Count he was choking with laughter, until the
Nuncio deferentially returned the box with the
remark: ‘Very pretty, indeed, Count. I presume it
is the portrait of the Countess?’” Toward the end
of the pope’s life, he suffered when he had to
give up tobacco on the advice of his physicians.
How about other modern popes? Pius X took
snuff and smoked cigars. Benedict XV did not
smoke and did not like others’ smoke. Pius XI
smoked an occasional cigar. Pius XII did not
smoke. And John XXIII smoked cigarettes.
Paul VI was a non-smoker. So was John Paul I,
though Vatican officials appeared to hint—just
after his sudden, perplexing death—that his final
ill health might be due to heavy smoking.
John Paul II did not smoke, but Pope Benedict
XVI reportedly does (or once did), apparently
favoring Marlboros.
Holy Smokers
Venerable Marie Thérèse de Lamourous, having
been shown the mantle of St. Teresa of Avila in
the Carmelite convent in Paris, was allowed to
put it on: “I kissed it; I pressed it upon me,” she
wrote, “I remarked everything, even the little
stains, which seemed to be of Spanish snuff.”
Tobacco use became an issue during the
beatification investigations of Joseph of
Cupertino, John Bosco, and Philip Neri. With the
first two, the devil’s advocates argued that
heroic virtue did not apply because they used
tobacco. Joseph’s advocate argued, based on
interviews with Joseph during his life, that his
smoking was an aid to his holiness, helping him
stay up at night for his devotions and extend his
fasting. In the case of Philip Neri, the
examination of his corpse during the
investigation showed that the soft tissues of his
nose had gone and so his body was not
incorruptible. It was suggested that this was due
to his heavy use of snuff. But these were weak
arguments against their saintliness.
Bernadette
Soubirous
had
childhood
asthma and
her
physician
prescribed
snuff for it
(her snuff
box is on display at Lourdes, right). When she
was sixteen, in school, she later remembered,
“One Sister was shocked when I started
everybody sneezing by passing snuff around
while she droned away in French.” After she had
entered the convent later in life, “She produced
her snuff box at recreation one day, to the great
scandal of a Sister. She cried out: ‘Oh, Sister
Marie-Bernard, you will never be canonized.’ ‘Why
not?’ asked the ‘snuffer.’ ‘Because you snuff.
That bad habit almost disqualified St. Vincent de
Paul.’ ‘And you, Sister Chantal,’ twinkled Sister
Marie-Bernard in reply, ‘you are going to be
canonized because you don’t indulge.’”
St. John Vianney took snuff, often during his
hours-long sessions hearing confessions. Padre
Pio kept his snuff in a little pocket of his habit,
and passed snuff around to his visitors. A
biographer wrote that, “One evening, during a
conference with oncologists, in the midst of a
report on cancer research, Padre Pio turned to
one of the men and asked, ‘Do you smoke?’
When the man replied in the affirmative, Pio,
pointing his finger censoriously, chided, ‘That’s
very bad,’ then, with almost the same breath,
turned to another doctor and asked, ‘Have you
got any snuff?’”
Jesuit Snuff[/b]
A Jesuit was asked whether it was licit to smoke a
cigar while praying, and his answer was an
unequivocal “no.” However, the subtle Jesuit
quickly added that, while it was not licit to smoke
a cigar while praying, it was perfectly licit to pray
while smoking a cigar. —St. Holger’s Cigar Club
In the 16th and 17th centuries the Jesuits
developed large tobacco plantations in Central
and South America and held financial interests in
retaining revenues from them. Dominicans,
Franciscans, and Augustinians had similar
arrangements in Central America.
During this time, the Jesuits, fond of their snuff,
were accused by their Protestant and secular
opponents, without any evidence that I have
found, of carrying poisoned snuff about their
persons and offering it to those they attempted
to assassinate. “Jesuit snuff,” this imaginary
stuff came to be called. The fear surrounding it
appears to have been most intense after tens of
thousands of barrels holding fifty tons of Spanish
snuff were captured from Spanish ships in Vigo
Bay in 1702 by English admiral Thomas Hopsonn
and found their way into the British market.
At the same time, Jesuit missionaries introduced
the snuff they loved to China’s capitol during the
Manchu dynasty, about 1715. For some time,
Chinese converts to Catholicism were called
“snuff-takers” by their countrymen and handled
the manufacture and selling of snuff in Beijing.
Many Tibetan Buddhist monks are still quite fond
of snuff.
The Jesuits were not alone among the
mendicant orders in their love of snuff. Laurence
Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy , also wrote A
Sentimental Journey through France and Italy in
1768, in which he described an incident—edifying
and humbling to him—of exchanging snuff boxes
with a poor friar. But during the 19th century, the
fashion of using nasal snuff faded away, and
cigar, pipe, and then cigarette smoking replaced
it. Literary sources show that taking snuff was
more and more left to the old and the poor, and
to certain conservative clergy who persisted with
their snuff rather than switch to smoking.
In an 1846 letter, Fr. William Faber, Priest of the
Oratory of St. Philip Neri, wrote, “At Florence,
the Superior of the Camaldolese expressed a
great desire to see me; he was ill in bed, and his
bed full of snuff; he seized my head, buried it in
the snuffy-clothes, and kissed me most
unmercifully.”
“Ten Years in Rome,” an unsigned article
published in 1870 in The Galaxy magazine, tells
us, regarding Capuchin friars, “You see the
specimen going about Rome in his dark-brown
habit (from which keep clear), his black horn
snuff-box, and his filthy blue cotton handkerchief
stuffed in his sleeve, and his wallet hanging on
his arm.”
And Maud Howe, in an article published in The
Outlook, entitled “Roman Codgers and Solitaries,”
commented, in 1898, upon a begging friar
offering her a pinch of snuff from a shabby horn
snuff-box. “Snuff is still taken in Italy by the old
and the old-fashioned,” she wrote, “and it has the
sanction of the clergy. In Rome it is thought
hardly seemly for a priest to smoke; they nearly
all use snuff; indeed, I have seen a priest take a
sly pinch while officiating at the altar.”
An editorial writer in the Dublin Review of 1847
lamented that those making initial inquiries into
the Faith often discovered “that the Catholic
priests are generally only a poor, ill-instructed,
snuff-taking, common sort of persons.” Ironically,
the author wished for a different sort of priest, a
“wise and winning” one—and gave as an example
St. Philip Neri.
Into the 20 th century, the dusting of clerical
snuff signified being old-fashioned and out of
touch, for James Joyce added the detail to his
description of the decrepit priest, Fr. Flynn, in
Dubliners .
In September 1957, Pius XII addressed the
General Congregation of the Society of Jesus in
Rome. He used the occasion to urge the Jesuits
—as well as other religious orders—to tighten
their discipline, and embrace austerity, partly by
eliminating “superficial articles” from their lives,
including “not a few comforts that laymen may
legitimately demand.” “Among these,” he said,
“must be included the use of tobacco, today so
widespread and indulged in.” In the same spirit
of abstinence, they “should not indulge in
vacations outside their order houses without
extraordinary reason nor undertake in the name
of rest, long and costly pleasure trips.”
By 1964, the Jesuit magazine America was
commending the U.S. Surgeon General’s report
on smoking soon after it was released.
And in 2002, John Paul II signed a law making it
“forbidden to smoke in closed public places,
places frequented by the public, and workplaces,
situated in the territories of The Vatican, the
areas beyond the borders of this State [that is,
Vatican offices in other countries], and in public
transportation means.” A fine of 30 Euros was
set for violators.
A private pleasure, indulgence, and comfort, a
means of social intercourse, a civic violation, a
health hazard, an addiction, a nuisance, and a
“vice.” But is using tobacco per se a sin? That
question, dear reader, is, as they say, above my
pay grade. http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1762/in_the_habit_a_history_of_catholicism_and_tobacco.aspx |
