Why is Pipe Smoking Associated With Medieval Themed Books/Movies/Events?

[seldom]

I wonder if anyone has insight into this. Why is pipe smoking associated with medieval and renaissance stuff? Lots of medieval fantasy books and movies ( for example wizards smoking pipes) and renaissance fair folks seem to think that smoking a pipe fits right into the time period. It seems to me that smoking a tobacco pipe would be out of place given that tobacco is a New World plant. I suppose tobacco use might have occurred in Europe during the late renaissance but certainly not earlier than the 16th century.

 

[alaskanpiper]

Good observation. Maybe they were smoking something else........Eye of Newt? Or maybe oriental tobaccos were around? IDK....

 

[haparnold]

I believe there are at least three causes for this:

Firstly, in TH White's The Once and Future King (based on Arthurian legends), Merlin is going through time backwards, and one of the things he knows about which the other people in the age do not is tobacco smoking. I think he's pictured smoking a meerschaum in the Disney animated version.

Secondly, JRR Tolkien wrote pipe smoking into his works, likely because he liked to smoke pipes.

Both of these works have been influential to fantasy literature in general, and esp. to renaissance fair-types (for lack of a better term).

Lastly, pipe smoking just seems old. It seems like something we've been doing forever, so I think people have a general association between pipes and the olden times, whether historically accurate or not.

 

[tg51]

Indeed a good observation. I couldnt find anything from the brief research I just conducted

 

[bnichols23]

Agree with Hap; it just sort of seems to fit with antiquarian stuff.

 

[tg51]

A lesser known fact is that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a historically accurate account of a pipe club trying to get to the last stock of McLelland Tobacco. The Frenchmen is a metaphor for the gougers getting there just before the pipe club and the police as the ATF ruining all the fun.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Yeh, they host a huge RenFair at the college near me, and I see people dressed up in Star Trek junk, anime, dragons, anything nerdy.
These aren't first class, genius level historians at these things.

 

[alaskanpiper]

A lesser known fact is that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a historically accurate account of a pipe club trying to get to the last stock of McLelland Tobacco. The Frenchmen is a metaphor for the gougers getting there just before the pipe club and the police as the ATF ruining all the fun.

It's all about that shrubbery, folks.

 

[tg51]

It's all about that shrubbery, folks.

Not too expensive!

 

[anotherbob]

interestingly people smoked pipes in europe back then just not tobacco. Not totally sure what they smoked though.

 

[crashthegrey]

This has always amused me. If you ever see me doing it in garb, it is simply because I want a pipe. I actually try to hide if combining the two.

 

[Chasing Embers]

A lesser known fact is that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a historically accurate account of a pipe club trying to get to the last stock of McLelland Tobacco. The Frenchmen is a metaphor for the gougers getting there just before the pipe club and the police as the ATF ruining all the fun.

He's not kidding.

 

[greeneyes]

You're absolutely right about that. But there's the futility of arguing with an adult wearing a costume that factors into it. I just sort of shrug and continue on my way.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Too many folks have no idea of historical context. (?).

 

[milehighpiper]

I asked this same question to a History professor (college) in a cigar shop I was visiting. His answer was pretty simple, most of the men who wrote these stories were pipe or cigar smokers themselves and wrote it into their stories because it was an every day thing to them. Whether this is true or not I leave to the historians.

 

[peregrinus]

Found this article on a French pipe retailer site, Furmer Chic.

“The first tobacco pipes found in Europe, from around 500 BC, were made of wooden stems or reed. Nomadic Indo-Europeans, the Scythians, used them to inhale the smoke from campfires. In turn, Greeks and Romans adopted the tobacco pipe, as well as Germanic peoples and Celtic tribes, who used them to smoke all sorts of herbs, and particularly the leaves from linden trees.”

For the entire article see:
The origins of the tobacco pipe

 

[seldom]

Found this article on a French pipe retailer site, Furmer Chic.

“The first tobacco pipes found in Europe, from around 500 BC, were made of wooden stems or reed. Nomadic Indo-Europeans, the Scythians, used them to inhale the smoke from campfires. In turn, Greeks and Romans adopted the tobacco pipe, as well as Germanic peoples and Celtic tribes, who used them to smoke all sorts of herbs, and particularly the leaves from linden trees.”

For the entire article see:
The origins of the tobacco pipe

I would be interested in finding a more scholarly source for this. If this is true I am genuinely curious about it and about how common it was. I'll point out that a device used to inhale campfire smoke is inaccurately called a "tobacco pipe" twice here. I'd love to see a photo of such an artifact.
I've read that Europeans were bewildered by the concept of purposely inhaling smoke when tobacco first came to the continent. If true that would indicate that any kind of smoking was novel to most European people.

 

[haparnold]

I read Tobacco: A Cultural History of how an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization a couple of years ago, and I believe it also mentioned that Europeans would use smoking of various herbs in a medicinal context.

I can’t swear to this, but I believe the book said it was rare, and also that many or most “smoked” by throwing leaves on a fire, and not through a pipe.

 

[judcole]

Yeh, they host a huge RenFair at the college near me, and I see people dressed up in Star Trek junk, anime, dragons, anything nerdy.
These aren't first class, genius level historians at these things.

I had never really gotten the impression that Ren Fairs were really seriously trying to be historically accurate; more that it is just one great big cosplay. SCA is the same way, as far as I know. They have fun, and that's what counts.
AFAIK, there are very few places in the US where there are non-professional re-enactments of anything prior to the 18th Century that are really attempting to be historically accurate.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Ha ha, it is interesting to see Jedi fighting Norman invaders with light sabers.