It Yes, ergot can cause convulsions and hallucinations, but it also restricts blood flow to the extremities. This post, about the Dancing Plague of 1518, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! Within a week or so the stream of suffering pilgrims had diminished to a trickle. Ned Pennant-Rea on one of history's most bizarre events. Detail from a 1642 engraving by Hendrik Hondius, based on Peter Breughel's 1564 drawing of a dance epidemic occurring in Molenbeek that year— Source. We rely on our annual donors to keep the project alive. The latest wonders from the site to your inbox. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. On the soles and tops of these shoes, they sprinkled holy water and painted crosses of consecrated oil.9 This ritual, carried out in an atmosphere thick with incense and Latin incantations, had the desired effect. After this look at the dancing mania of 1518, read about how the Black Death started and learn the secrets of medieval plague doctors. Reports at the time suggested that some members of the group danced until they died. Contemporary explanations for the dancing plague included demonic possession and overheated blood. Books link through to Amazon who will give us a small percentage of sale price (ca. Most things were going on as normal, and not many events of note took place. From an astrological chronicle for Strasbourg published in 1636 by Goldmeyer, quoted in Backman. Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. Drawing on fresh evidence, John Waller’s account of the bizarre events of 1518 explains why Strasbourg’s dancing plague took place. Perks include receiving twice-a-year our very special themed postcard packs and getting 10% off our prints. Share on Twitter. She has a B.A. Investigators in the 20th century suggested that the afflicted might have consumed bread made from rye flour contaminated with the fungal disease ergot, which is known to produce convulsions. However, the historian John Waller has debunked the ergot hypothesis in his brilliant book on the dancing plague, A Time to Dance, a Time to Die (2009). However, it is unlikely it could have led to so many deaths. This mostly affected young women. 1530 — Source. Five hundred years ago in July, a strange mania seized the city of Strasbourg. By the third day, people of a great and growing variety — hawkers, porters, beggars, pilgrims, priests, nuns — were drinking in the ungodly spectacle. Dancing Plague | Adaptation of 18th Century Painting. The civic and religious leaders theorized that more dancing was the solution, and so they arranged for guildhalls for the dancers to gather in, musicians to accompany the dancing, and professional dancers to help the afflicted to continue dancing. Blood seeps from swollen feet into leather boots and wooden clogs. 3 Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. One way to elucidate the dancing plague is to consider the trance states people reach today. Omissions? According to his Opus Paramirum, and various chronicles agree, it all started with one woman. Once entranced, their perception of pain and exhaustion is marginalised. Except, maybe, for the Dancing Plague of 1518. He opens his book with a quote from H. C. Erik Midelfort’s A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany (1999): According to Waller, the Strasbourg poor were primed for an epidemic of hysterical dancing. Strasbourg Municipal Archives, R3, fol. The dancing continued throughout the summer, with the death toll rising, until the remaining dancers were taken to a mountaintop shrine to pray. In 1518, a string of bad harvests, political instability, and the arrival of syphilis had induced anguish extreme even by early modern standards. Detail of painting based on Peter Breughel's 1564 drawing of a dance epidemic occurring in Molenbeek that year — Source. The Public Domain Review is registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company (#11386184), a category of company which exists primarily to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, with all profits having to be used for this purpose. Discover more recommended books in our dedicated PDR Recommends section of the site. They kept going long past the point of injury. Share on Facebook Share on Linkedin (Image credit: Alamy) What caused Strasbourg’s three-month dancing plague … The publicity around contemporary cases (the Leroy case was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show … In the view of Paracelsus, Fra Troffea’s marathon jig was a ploy to embarrass Herr Troffea: “In order to make the deception as perfect as possible, and really give the impression of illness, she hopped and sang, which was all most distasteful to her husband.”10 Upon seeing the success of the trick, other women began dancing to annoy their husbands too, powered on by “free, lewd and impertinent” thoughts. with a double major in Spanish and in theatre arts from Ripon College. If Waller’s theory of a mass psychological illness does indeed explain the dancing plague, it’s a prime and terrifying example of how the human mind and body can work together to create chaos. On each Collections post we’ve done our best to indicate which rights we think apply, so please do check and look into more detail where necessary, before reusing. By the time the great dancing plague of 1518 was done with Strasbourg in mid August, around 400 people had danced themselves to death. The first known occurrence of the dancing plague dates back to the tenth century, with the most famous case happening in 1518 in the city of Strasbourg (at that time a free city in the Holy Roman Empire, now a free city 2 in modern-day France). Source Public Domain. The Imlin family chronicle records that within a month the plague had seized four hundred citizens.6. Numerous accounts of the bizarre events that unfolded that summer can be found scattered across various contemporary documents and chronicles compiled in the subsequent decades and centuries. A number of them died from their exertions. The most widely accepted theory was that of American medical historian John Waller, who laid out in several papers his reasons for believing that the dancing plague was a form of mass psychogenic disorder. The town that nearly danced itself to death. A sixteenth-century chronicle composed by the architect Daniel Specklin records what the council did next.5 Carpenters and tanners were ordered to transform their guild halls into temporary dance floors, and “set up platforms in the horse market and in the grain market“ in full view of the public. Mass hysteria is the theory proposed by most. A book of images to celebrate 10 years of, 500+ images – 368 pages – Large-format – Cloth-bound hardcover. See Ulinka Rublack’s commentary in Hans Holbein. The July sun beats down upon them as they hop from leg to leg, spin in circles and whoop loudly. Of course, the dancing plagues have another parallel — modern rave culture. The majority of the digital copies featured are in the public domain or under an open license all over the world, however, some works may not be so in all jurisdictions. To keep the accursed in motion and so expedite their recovery, dozens of musicians were paid to play drums, fiddles, pipes, and horns, with healthy dancers brought in for further encouragement. He likes early modern literature and wrote his Master’s thesis on animals in Montaigne’s essays. But some of those who had witnessed her strange performance had begun to mimic her, and within days more than thirty choreomaniacs were in motion, some so monomaniacally that only death would have the power to intervene. When the plague died down, the people of Strasbourg went about their lives as best they could. City authorities were alarmed by the ever-increasing number of dancers. In July of 1518, in the town of Strasbourg, Alsace (then part of the Holy Roman Empire), a strange incident occurred. Should one such reveller — perhaps fuelled by a particularly potent dancefloor potion — be transplanted onto the horse market stage of early modern Strasbourg half a millennium ago, they might not feel entirely out of place. Inspired by the true story of a summer dance mania in 1518, a haunting new Artangel project directed by Jonathan Glazer films lone performers around the world dancing till they drop People can be extraordinarily suggestible and a firm conviction in the vengefulness of Saint Vitus was enough for it to be visited upon them. Every European dancing plague between 1374 and 1518 had occurred near Strasbourg, along the western edge of the Holy Roman Empire. But closer inspection reveals a more disquieting scene. Explore our selection of fine art prints, all custom made to the highest standards, framed or unframed, and shipped to your door. Waller describes the spread of the dancing plague as an example of psychic contagion, and he draws a parallel with the laughing epidemic that engulfed a region of Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania) in the fraught postcolonial year of 1963. They put small crosses in their hands and red shoes on their feet. Every European dancing plague between 1374 and 1518 had occurred near Strasbourg, along the western edge of the Holy Roman Empire. Mar 21, 2021 | Fun Historical Facts, Quora. Corrections? 72 recto, quoted in Midelfort. This suffering manifested as hysterical dancing because the citizens believed it could. Paracelsus, physician and alchemist, visited Strasbourg in 1526, just a few … The final toll is unknown but, if such a daily death rate was true, could have been into the hundreds. If not an angry saint or overheated blood then what did cause the dancing plague? 4.5%). In doing so it leads us into a largely vanished world, evoking the sights, sounds, aromas, diseases and hardships, the fervent supernaturalism, and the desperate hedonism of the late medieval world. Several modern historians have argued that the dancing plagues of mediaeval Europe were caused by ergot, a mind-altering mould found on the stalks of damp rye, which can cause twitching, jerking, and hallucinations — a condition known as St Anthony's Fire. The societies of the time offered explanations, ranging from demonic possession, wrath of God to bites of spiders. The definitive account of the events that unfolded in Strasbourg in the summer of 1518 — a gripping tale of one of history’s most bizarre events, and what it reveals about the strange possibilities of human nature. In July 1518, a woman whose name was given as Frau (Mrs.) Troffea (or Trauffea) stepped into the street and began dancing. Citizens by the hundred became compelled to dance, seemingly for no reason — jigging trance-like for days, until unconsciousness or, in some cases, death. In July of The next morning she was up again on her swollen feet and dancing before thirst and hunger could register. A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518. It just looked like one. Detail from a copy on blue paper of Peter Breughel's 1564 drawing depicting sufferers of a dance epidemic occurring in Molenbeek that year — Source. Dancing Plague of 1518. Dancing Plague of 1518 An outbreak of uncontrolled dancing involving between 50 and 400 people in Strasbourg in present day France. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. This website takes you through the story of the dancing plague of 1518, but also encourages you to think about the forms mass hysteria takes on today. In early September the mania began to abate. But, it is one of the dancing plagues that was fully recorded in the history books of the 16th century. First of all, there was precedent. She previously worked on the Britannica Book of... Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The Dancing Plague of 1518; A Plague That Made You Dance Till Death People could not stop dancing on the streets of the Holy Roman Empire and eventually died due to … At its height, as many as fifteen people were dying each day. This magisterial work explores how Renaissance Germans understood and experienced madness. It backfired horribly. Portrait of Paracelsus, after Quentin Matsys, ca. These are not revellers but “choreomaniacs”, entirely possessed by the mania of the dance. Therefore, the dancing plague of this year tends to take center stage as one of the more prominent and strange events. Though usually without the bloody feet and pleas for mercy of our sixteenth-century choreomaniacs, and often with a little chemical help, it is not uncommon for partygoers to dance for days with little break, forgoing sleep and food, sometimes shifting their feet with poise and balance, and sometimes leaping with none. The authorities hoped to create the optimal conditions for the dance to exhaust itself. As far as we can tell she had no musical accompaniment but simply “began to dance”.3 Ignoring her husband’s pleas to cease, she continued for hours, until the sky turned black and she collapsed in a twitching heap of exhaustion. Doctors recorded several hundred cases, lasting a week on average. A Copper engraving of Hendrik Hondius's based on a painting of Pieter Bruegels believed to be about the dancing plague. Then there were the prevailing conditions. Such outbreaks take place under circumstances of extreme stress and generally take form based on local fears. She seemed unable to stop, and she kept dancing until she collapsed from exhaustion. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). This plague started in the July month of 1518, when a woman named Troffea suddenly started dancing in the street one day and danced continuously for five or six days. The more citizens this unusual plague afflicted, the more desperate the privy council became to control it. After resting, she resumed the compulsive frenzied activity. They must dance themselves free of it. The 1518 event was the most thoroughly documented and probably the last of several such outbreaks in Europe, which took place largely between the 10th and 16th centuries. Frau Troffea had started dancing on July 14th on the narrow cobbled street outside her half-timbered home. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Specklin's chronicle, printed in Alfred Martin, "Geschichte der Tanzkrankheit in Deutschland", “Diseases that Deprive Men of their Reason”, in. Ragged clothes and pinched faces are saturated in sweat. German engraving of hysterical dancing in a churchyard, ca. Updates? Patricia Bauer is an Assistant Editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. When a couple of girls at a local mission school got the giggles, their friends followed suit until two-thirds of the pupils were laughing and crying uncontrollably and the whole school had to be shut down. Note the severed arm brandished by man on the left of the circle — Source. One seventeenth-century chronicle by the Strasbourg jurist Johann Schilter quotes a now lost manuscript poem: Another chronicle from 1636 relates a less happy ending: The physician and alchemist Paracelsus visited Strasbourg eight years after the plague and became fascinated by its causes. In full view of the public, this is the apogee of the choreomania that tormented Strasbourg for a midsummer month in 1518. He further maintained that there was a local belief that those who failed to propitiate St. Vitus, patron saint of epileptics and of dancers, would be cursed by being forced to dance. Detail from a 1642 engraving by Hendrik Hondius, based on Peter Breughel's 1564 drawing depicting sufferers of a dance epidemic occurring in Molenbeek that year — Source. In cultures around the world, including in Brazil, Madagascar, and Kenya, people enter trances deliberately during ceremonies or involuntarily during periods of extreme stress. On a hastily built stage before the busy horse market of Strasbourg, scores of people dance to pipes, drums, and horns. Image It seemed like any normal day in July 1518 for the people of Strasbourg France. No, it wasn’t a joke either. Their arms are flailing and their bodies are convulsing spasmodically. If the choreomaniacs must continue their disturbing movements then they now must do so out of sight. In 1237, something eerie happened in the German town of Erfurt. From a distance they might be carnival revellers. The Dancing Plague of Strasbourg which occurred during the summer of 1518 is definitely worthy of that title: if this is not the weirdest plague in our history, then everything is dull and ordinary. Quite a different culture existed 500 years ago when our story takes place. This was no small thing for a culture in which communal dancing was central — from upright burghers performing their restrained, delicate steps in the so-called bassadanza, to ale-laden peasants leaping with hearty abandon to let off steam.7 Sebastian Brant, a Strasbourg chancellor and author of The Ship of Fools (1494), detailed the exception to the ban: “if honourable persons wish to dance at weddings or celebrations of first Mass in their houses, they may do so using stringed instruments, but they are on their conscience not to use tambourines and drums.”8 Presumably strings were deemed less likely than percussion to bring on the mania. The Fascinating, Tragic Dancing Plague of 1518 That Killed 400 People. More on that soon. The incident remains a matter of conjecture to this day, though medical experts have a pretty clear idea what caused this plague. The dancing fever, however, had by then taken a heavy toll. Share using Email. Priests placed the choreomaniacs, who were, presumably, still thrashing about like landed fish, underneath a wooden carving of Vitus. Once home, the pupils “infected” their families and soon whole villages were consumed by hysterics. So, the whole thing may have been a case of urban legend. Unless otherwise stated, our essays are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. No formal death count was apparently recorded, but while the dancing plague was in full swing, several of the dancers were said to have dropped dead on a daily basis from over-exhaustion, heart failure or strokes. American sociologist Robert Bartholomew posited that the dancers were adherents of heretical sects, dancing to attract divine favour. The otherwise best known of these took place in 1374; that eruption spread to several towns along the Rhine River. In 1518, a string of bad harvests, political instability, and the arrival of syphilis had induced anguish extreme even by early modern standards. The clergy held it to be the work of a vengeful Saint Vitus, but the councillors listened instead to the guild of physicians, declaring the dance to be “a natural disease, which comes from overheated blood.”4 According to humoral theory, the afflicted must therefore be bled. The dancing plague that struck many in medieval Europe: In the 15th and 16th centuries, little was understood about the science behind the dancing plague. This only exacerbated the contagion, and as many as 400 people were eventually consumed by the dancing compulsion. It focuses on the insanity of the world in general but also on specific disorders; examines the thinking on madness of theologians, jurists, and physicians; and analyzes the vernacular ideas that propelled sufferers to seek help in pilgrimage or newly founded hospitals for the helplessly disordered. The Dancing Plague of 1518, however, continued to fascinate historians and scientists alike. Today, on the French side of the nation’s border with Germany, sits a city called Strasbourg. Also known as the “dancing plague”, it was the most fatal and best documented of the more than ten such contagions which had broken out along the Rhine and Moselle rivers since 1374. There she might be cured at the shrine of Vitus, the saint who it was believed had cursed her. The council went further, prohibiting almost all dance and music in the city until September. Their eyes are glassy, distant. Being more inclined to a supernatural than a medical explanation of the dance, most of the onlookers saw in the frenzied movements a demonstration of the magnitude of Saint Vitus’ fury. Paracelsus’s Opinion. None being free of sin, many were lured into the mania. Dancing plague of 1518, event in which hundreds of citizens of Strasbourg (then a free city within the Holy Roman Empire, now in France) danced uncontrollably and apparently unwillingly for days on end; the mania lasted for about two months before ending as mysteriously as it began.. This is disputed. In addition, the council ordered those worst afflicted to be bundled into wagons and taken the three-day ride to the shrine of Saint Vitus, where Frau Troffea had been cured. The mania possessed Frau Troffea for between four and six days, at which point the frightened authorities intervened by sending her in a wagon thirty miles away to Saverne. Our latest content, your inbox, every fortnight. Strasbourg’s Three-Month Dancing Plague Of 1518|Plague Cause Dance Of Death|Dancing Plague No Life#levelup4u||Dancing Plague Of 1518, Dancing Plague Of 1518 Article, Dancing Plague Of 1518 In Strasbourg Alsace, The Dancing Plague Of 1518 Answers Key Commonlit, Dancing Plague Of 1518 Causes, Dancing Plague Of 1518 Death Count, Dancing Plague Of 1518 Documentary In English, Dancing Plague … It’s home to about 250,000 people today but about five hundred years ago, probably played host to … For no apparent reason, she just started to dance. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 1518 was not a particularly interesting or groundbreaking year historically. The reports of death come all from a single book, which uses much later sources. “The minds of the choreomaniacs were drawn inwards,” writes Waller, “tossed about on the violent seas of their deepest fears.”13. 17th century. Someone poisoned by it simply could not dance for several days in a row. The 1518 Dancing Plague might appear to be a legend. Sadly, this website only works correctly in safari at the moment. Ned Pennant-Rea is an editor and writer from London. Then there were the prevailing conditions. Dancing plague of 1518, event in which hundreds of citizens of Strasbourg (then a free city within the Holy Roman Empire, now in France) danced uncontrollably and apparently unwillingly for days on end; the mania lasted for about two months before ending as mysteriously as it began. In the case of the dancing plague of 1518, Waller cited a series of famines and the presence of such diseases as smallpox and syphilis as the overwhelming stressors affecting residents of Strasbourg. According to an account written in the 1530s by the irascible but brilliant physician Paracelsus, the “dancing turn on the sound and scroll down to start . The dancing plague had lasted for over a month, from mid-July to late August or early September. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link in our emails. This type of dancing mania was classified by Paracelsus as Chorea lasciva (caused by voluptuous desires, "without fear or respect"), which sat alongside Chorea imaginativa (caused by the imagination, "from rage and swearing"), and Chrorea naturalis (a much milder form, caused by corporal causes) as the three main forms of the condition.11 While the famously iconoclastic Paracelsus does deserve credit for placing the cause of the disease in the minds of the choreomaniacs rather than in heaven, he was also a misogynist whose diagnosis looks somewhat ridiculous now. But the physicians instead recommended the treatment given to past victims of this bizarre disease. Actually, the incident we are talking about today is known as the Dancing plague of 1518, which took place in 1518 at Strasbourg, Alsace in the Holy Roman Empire. Word soon reached Strasbourg and more were sent to Saverne to be forgiven by Vitus. Strong Freedom in the Zone. The privy council ordered the stages to be pulled down. The Dancing Plague of 1518. She continued this way for days, and within a week more than 30 other people were similarly afflicted. https://www.britannica.com/event/dancing-plague-of-1518, Academia - The Dancing Plague in Strasbourgh. Waller’s explanation of the dancing plague emerges from his deep knowledge of the material, cultural, and spiritual environment of sixteenth-century Strasbourg. Pennant-Rea on one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last place under circumstances of stress... Whole thing may have been into the hundreds landed fish, underneath a wooden carving of Vitus, dancing... 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