Europeans can thank the “devil” for smoking. Rodrigo de Jerez, was one of the crewmen on Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the New World in 1492.
Jerez is often credited as the first European smoker. After learning to smoke from the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, he brought back tobacco to his hometown in Spain. However, the sight of him inhaling and exhaling clouds of smoke was unfamiliar and frightening to people who had never seen it before.
According to some accounts, when Jerez’s wife saw him smoking, she was terrified and believed he was either possessed by the devil or had gained the ability to breathe fire and smoke. She reported him to the local Spanish Inquisition.
The Inquisition, also unfamiliar with tobacco smoking, reportedly imprisoned Jerez for his “sinful and infernal” habits. After seven years, he was released, but the ban on smoking remained in place for a while.
By the time Jerez was released, smoking had become more common in Spain and throughout Europe, and his “demonic” habit was no longer seen as unusual.
Didn’t people smoke in the Middle East or Asia before Columbus? I imagine Europeans would have got it from them first. Though if not tobacco, maybe marijuana or opium?
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