Everyone knows about the Renaissance: most people think of high art, the grand sculptures, paintings, literature, and a period of learning and cultural development for the human race. Most historians attribute the start of the Renaissance to Italy because of the wealth of the papal states. At some point, folks started rediscovering old Greek and Roman writings and ideals and began translating those, collecting old works, refining philosophies, and re-visiting those old ideas and applying them to their current landscape; it led to a remodeling of our view of our place in the world, the re-configuring of what we knew about the universe and solar system, and also the unseen world of microbes. For some reason, humanity seemed to grow a lot during this time period (scholars argue when exactly the Renaissance actually started, but most put it about 1500). Did the Black Death create this period of learning and development? Was it the discovery of the New World? Was it something else? Was it a combination of things? There is one theory I like which, although not attributed to the start of the Renaissance, certainly involves facilitating it: the introduction of certain substances. What substances? Caffeine, nicotine, and chocolate.
Okay, it may be a little odd, but those chemicals are mood altering. Coffee was introduced into Italy in the 1500s from Africa – nomadic tribes had been familiar with the coffee bean for a long time. But, it took the Italians to roast it and refine it and make a drink out of it (that may have already been happening elsewhere, but it was not necessarily known to the Italians). Chocolate and tobacco are New World imports: again, it took the Italians to tinker with the very ancient cocoa bean, dry it, add sugar to it, and – presto – Dove chocolate. Okay, not Dove chocolate, but the beginning of it in a way (most likely the Spanish court introduced it to other high court officials of Italy). But, what about tobacco? Well, I’d say the Italians put their stamp on that as well: briar pipes, considered the finest pipe material, is still an Italian art form, and pipe-making shops can still be found in rustic Italian villages. They, of course, got their tobacco from good old Virginia back in the early colonial period and mixed it, blended it, and aged it and sold it with their pipes. Let us think about this: coffee presses, chocolate recipes, and (although out of fashion now) smoking pipes spread across Europe at an alarming rate. And, those substances tend to make things more vibrant for the consumer of them. I am not saying they started the Renaissance, but it is possible they contributed to it in some way. Although it is unlikely some of those early artists smoked a pipe, they may have had coffee, and probably knew about chocolate. It did not take long for musicians to discover it and one hundred years later Bach was writing arias about his smoking pipe. Beethoven, too, liked his pipe, and the Italian clergy were promoting medicinal uses of chocolate. By 1647 the first coffee houses had opened in Venice.
So, did those substances affect the Renaissance? Probably so. At the very least it makes you think a little differently about that period of history.
