Jean Nicot on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Jean Nicot de Villemain (; 1530 – May 4, 1604)
was a French diplomat and scholar. He is famous for being the first to bring tobacco to France, including snuff tobacco.
Nicotine
Nicotine is a natural product, naturally produced alkaloid in the nightshade family of plants (most predominantly in tobacco and ''Duboisia hopwoodii'') and is widely used recreational drug use, recreationally as a stimulant and anxiolytic. As ...
is named after the tobacco plant ''
Nicotiana tabacum
''Nicotiana tabacum'', or cultivated tobacco, is an annually grown herbaceous plant of the ''Nicotiana'' genus. The plant is tropical in origin, is commonly grown throughout the world, and is often found in cultivation. It grows to heights bet ...
,'' which in turn is named after Jean Nicot de Villemain, who sent tobacco and seeds to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
in 1560, presented it to the French King,
and who promoted their medicinal use. Smoking was believed to protect against illness, particularly the plague.
Early life
Jean Nicot was born in 1530 in
Nîmes
Nîmes ( , ; oc, Nimes ; Latin: ''Nemausus'') is the prefecture of the Gard department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. Located between the Mediterranean Sea and Cévennes, the commune of Nîmes has an estimated population of 148,5 ...
, in the south of France. His father was a
notary
A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems.
A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...
. He was educated in
Toulouse
Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...
and Paris.
[Kara Rogers]
Jean Nicot: French diplomat and scholar
Encyclopedia Britannia
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article ( ...
Career
Nicot served as the French
ambassador
An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident representative of their own government or sov ...
in
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
,
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
from 1547 to 1559 under
Henry II, under king
Francis II from 1559 to 1560, and from 1560 to 1574 under
Charles IX. As a 29-year-old in 1559, he was sent from France to Portugal to negotiate the marriage of six-year-old princess
Margaret of Valois
Margaret of Valois (french: Marguerite, 14 May 1553 – 27 March 1615), popularly known as La Reine Margot, was a French princess of the Valois dynasty who became Queen of Navarre by marriage to Henry III of Navarre and then also Queen of France a ...
to five-year-old King
Sebastian of Portugal
Sebastian ( pt, Sebastião I ; 20 January 1554 – 4 August 1578) was King of Portugal from 11 June 1557 to 4 August 1578 and the penultimate Portuguese monarch of the House of Aviz.
He was the son of João Manuel, Prince of Portugal, and hi ...
.
Introduction of tobacco
When Nicot returned, he brought
tobacco
Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
plants. He introduced
snuff
Snuff may refer to:
Tobacco
* Snuff (tobacco), fine-ground tobacco, sniffed into the nose
** Moist snuff or dipping tobacco
** Creamy snuff, an Indian tobacco paste
Media and entertainment
* Snuff film, a type of film that shows a murder
Literat ...
tobacco to the French royal court.
[Catherine de' Medici
Catherine de' Medici ( it, Caterina de' Medici, ; french: Catherine de Médicis, ; 13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589) was an Florentine noblewoman born into the Medici family. She was Queen of France from 1547 to 1559 by marriage to King ...]
, with tobacco leaves to cure her of her migraines.
[Steve Luck, ''The Complete Guide to Cigars: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Finest Cigars'', Bath, UK: Parragon, p. 13] The plant was also an instant success with the Father Superior of Malta, who shared tobacco with all of his monks. More and more of the fashionable people of Paris began to use the plant, making Nicot a celebrity.
Although
André Thevet
André Thevet (; ; 1516 – 23 November 1590) was a French Franciscan priest, explorer, cosmographer and writer who travelled to the Near East and to South America in the 16th century. His most significant book was ''The New Found World, or A ...
argued that he had introduced tobacco to France,
the plant was called Nicotina. But
nicotine
Nicotine is a natural product, naturally produced alkaloid in the nightshade family of plants (most predominantly in tobacco and ''Duboisia hopwoodii'') and is widely used recreational drug use, recreationally as a stimulant and anxiolytic. As ...
later came to refer specifically to the particular chemical in the plant. The tobacco plant, ''
Nicotiana
''Nicotiana'' () is a genus of herbaceous plants and shrubs in the Family (biology), family Solanaceae, that is Native plant, indigenous to the Americas, Australia, Southwestern Africa and the South Pacific. Various ''Nicotiana'' species, common ...
'', also a flowering garden plant, was named after him by
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
,
as was
nicotine
Nicotine is a natural product, naturally produced alkaloid in the nightshade family of plants (most predominantly in tobacco and ''Duboisia hopwoodii'') and is widely used recreational drug use, recreationally as a stimulant and anxiolytic. As ...
. Nicot described its believed medicinal properties (1559) and sent it as a medicine to the French court.
French dictionary
For his service to the French royal court, Nicot was given the name 'de Villemain' and land near
Brie-Comte-Robert
Brie-Comte-Robert () is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France.
Brie-Comte-Robert is on the edge of the plain of Brie and was formerly the capital of the ''Brie française''.
"Brie" com ...
. There, he compiled one of the first French
dictionaries
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, p ...
, (published in 1606).
His dictionary, according to
Ibram X. Kendi
Ibram Xolani Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers, August 13, 1982) is an American author, professor, Anti-racism, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America. In July 2020, he assumed the position of director of th ...
, was the first that included an entry for the concept of
race
Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to:
* Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species
* Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
.
Ibram X. Kendi
Ibram Xolani Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers, August 13, 1982) is an American author, professor, Anti-racism, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America. In July 2020, he assumed the position of director of th ...
, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, 2016, 3rd chapter
The
IETF language tag
An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code or tag that is used to identify human languages in the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the su ...
s have registered for "16th century French as in Jean Nicot, 'Thresor de la langue francoyse', 1606, but also including some French similar to that of
Rabelais".
Death
He died on May 4, 1604,
in Paris, France.
References
External links
Website dedicated to Nicot's ''Thresor'' (in French)
-Search the ''Thresor'' online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicot, Jean
1530 births
1604 deaths
Tobacco in France
16th-century French diplomats
Ambassadors of France to Portugal
French lexicographers
People from Nîmes
French male non-fiction writers