The Medieval Dancing Plague of St. Vitus Dance – LOST IN HISTORY

Five hundred years ago, during a hot July summer in the French city of Strasbourg, a strange mania seized its people. Hundreds of citizens became compelled to dance uncontrollably in the streets – for no apparent reason.  This collective “dance fever” lasted for WEEKS.  That is, until they collapsed from exhaustion, unconsciousness or, in some cases, even death. Only carting the victims off to the nearby St. Vitus grotto shrine appears to have ultimately halted it.  This bizarre event came to be known as the Dancing Plague or St. Vitus Dance.  It remains a puzzling and mysterious episode in European history.  But what caused it? It all started on the 14^th of July in 1518.  Strasbourg, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire (today France), sits picturesquely on the River Rhine.  A woman named Frau Troffea left her home, went into the street, and suddenly began to dance.  This wasn’t a proper court dance or even an informal country dance.  She was spinning, twisting, and hopping, all without any music. Passersby thought it at first amusing or at least curious, with other shaking their heads in disapproval.  They summoned her husband, Herr Troffea, and even he cannot get her to stop. Neighbors slowly came to realize this is a woman will not, or cannot, stop. She continued to dance all day, until she collapsed from exhaustion. But then, after resting for a short while on the warm cobblestones, she got up again and resumed her frenzied dance.  When asked why she dances, Frau Troffea makes no eye contact and does not respond. By the third day a crowd of spectators had gathered — venders, porters, pilgrims, nuns, and children — were all watching the bizarre spectacle.  Her confused husband had to pour water down her dancing throat.  She dances for nearly a week on now swollen feet, pausing occasionally only due to exhaustion.  Six days later, Frau Troffea was still going strong! She hadn’t eaten and barely slept.

Day or night, rain or shine, she couldn’t seem to stop dancing.

At this point, the suspicious priests in Strasbourg were convinced she was cursed. They sent her and her husband in a wagon 30 miles away into the mountains to Saverne. There they hoped she might be cured at the grotto shrine of Saint Vitus.  They believed it was he who had cursed her as St. Vitus was the patron saint of dancers. But then … some of those who had watched her strange uncontrollable dance began to dance as well.  Like her, they cannot explain themselves. They dance as if compelled with limbs waving.  Within a week, 34 people in Strasbourg were afflicted and dancing in the streets.  The Dancing Plague had spread quickly throughout the city, affecting people from all walks of life. Men and women, young and old, rich and poor – all were seized by the uncontrollable urge to dance. The exact symptoms of the Dancing Plague varied from person to person. Some dancers drooled, others screamed, while still others laughed uncontrollably.   Some danced alone, while others formed groups and danced in clusters. The dancers’ feet eventually bled from overuse.  Their shoes were worn to shreds.  The dancing was not limited to daylight, but continued into the night.

This is when shock and alarm began to spread through Strasbourg.

The more citizens that became afflicted, the more desperate the privy council became. The clergy insisted it had to be the work of a vengeful Saint Vitus.  The guild of physicians declared the dance to be a disease, caused by “overheated blood.” In the hopes of wearing the dancers out, the city council had a stage built in the town square and grain market, and hired musicians to play. Their theory was that the dancers could only be cured by dancing it out. So soon, the rhythm of lutes, fiddles, pipes, horns and drums filled the streets. It backfired horribly.  The music only induced more citizens to uncontrollably join the crazed dancers! Some of the onlookers must have saw something compelling in the frenzied dancing, something that lured them into a similar mania. By the time August came, there were 400 dancers with no end in sight. As the hot summer sun beat down on their sweating faces, they continued to hop from leg to leg, spin in circles, flail their arms and whoop loudly. Their eyes are glassy and distant. Blood seeps from swollen feet into leather boots and shoes. Dozens now began to drop like flies, overwhelmed by exhaustion. The lucky ones merely lost consciousness. Many literally danced themselves to death, dying of heart attacks. At its height, some sources claim the dancing was killing up to 15 people a day. The privy council ordered the stages to be torn apart.  They then prohibited all dance and music in the city for the rest of the summer.  Finally, the council agreed with the clergy. They ordered those worst afflicted to be taken by wagons on the three-day ride to the grotto shrine of Saint Vitus. 

Frau Troffea was still at the shrine and had apparently been cured!

At the grotto, priests placed the trashing dancers before a wooden carving of St. Vitus. They put red shoes on their feet, sprinkled holy water on them, and painted their heads with crosses of consecrated oil.  The ritual, carried out in a darkened grotto, thick with incense and slow, droning Latin prayers, had the desired effect in stopping the dancing. When word reached Strasbourg, more and more were sent to Saverne to be “forgiven” by St. Vitus. Within a week, the stream of suffering pilgrims was complete. The Dancing Plague had lasted for over a month, from mid-July to late August. Once roused, some dancers claimed that they were cured by the chants, while others said it was St. Vitus curse. The Dancing Plague was not limited to Strasbourg, but spread to other cities, including Basel and Frankfurt. In some places, it lasted for several months, and in others, it died out quickly. Historians have estimated the total number of dancers to be in the thousands.  The final death toll was likely in the hundreds. Strasbourg was not the first “Dancing Plague” to hit medieval Europe. More than ten such events had broken out along the Rhine River. In 1237, a group of children from Erfurt danced 20 km (12 mi) to the neighboring town before collapsing in exhaustion.  In 1374, thousands of villagers along the Rhine fell into a dancing mania, screaming in agony as the pain increased. Up until the 15th century, nuns from different convents would climb trees and meow like cats! As they were smaller in number than Strasbourg, they were interpreted in their day as either demonic possession or divine punishment.   

In the 500 years since, many theories have been offered as an explanation.

Just 8 years later, the famous physician Paracelsus visited Strasbourg.  He investigated what he called the choreomania and wrote a treatise on ‘The Diseases That Deprive Man of His Reason.’ Best known for his pioneering work in medicinal chemistry, Paracelsus suggested that a person’s “laughing veins” could provoke an intense ticklish feeling. This would cloud judgment and provoke extreme motions, until the “frenzied blood” was finally calmed. The Strasbourg poor were perhaps primed for an epidemic of hysterical dancing. There had been a succession of poor harvests, resulting in high grain prices, political instability, not to mention epidemics of syphilis and leprosy. This stress could have manifested as hysterical dancing.  Why?  Because the citizens believed it could –  the power of compulsion. People were suggestible and a firm belief in the Saint Vitus Curse was enough to set them off. In the popular Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes. The cursed pair of beautiful, scarlet leather slippers condemn their owner into a dance as punishment for her vanity. It is so convoluted that she eventually finds an executioner to hack off her own feet! Dancing due to tarantism was also common theory at the time, as it was believed to be caused by the bite of a large tarantula wolf spider. Its symptoms included convulsions, sweating, and a frenzied desire to move. The cure for tarantism was said to be … you guessed it – music and dancing.

Some modern theories …

Modern historians argued that the dancing plagues could have been caused by ergot, a mind-altering mold found on damp rye.  When inadvertently baked into bread and eaten, it can cause twitching, jerking, AND hallucinations similar to LSD. Ergotism was common in Europe in the 16th century. However, while ergot can cause convulsions, it also restricts blood flow to the extremities. Someone poisoned by it would most likely die and NOT be able to dance for days on end. Some characterize choreomania as a “psychic epidemic” similar to others around the world involving involuntary laughing or fainting. Psychologists stated that it belongs to a class called mass psychogenic illnesses.  This mass hysteria is a condition in which a group of people share a common delusion or anxiety. It suggests that the dancers were caught up in a kind of trance.  And that their frenzied behavior was a result of their collective belief in the need to dance. It’s then a type of psychic contagion, similar to the laughing epidemic that engulfed Tanzania as recently as 1963. When a couple of girls at a local mission school began to giggle, their friends followed suit until two-thirds of the pupils were laughing and crying uncontrollably.  Once home, the pupils “infected” their families and soon whole villages were consumed by hysterics. Doctors recorded several hundred cases, lasting a week on average. The epidemic lasted 18 months. In ethnic cultures, people enter trances deliberately during various ceremonies. Once entranced, their perception of pain is known to be marginalized.  Of course, Dancing Plagues do have a modern parallel — Raves. Here, often with the help of alcohol and some colored pills, partygoers go on to dance for days with few breaks, food or sleep.

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The Dancing Plague remains one of the most enigmatic episodes in European history. It continues to fascinate scientists and artists alike. The tale makes us pause – a lone figure who sparks a mass movement, in this case a dance, that is so consuming, it transcends both one’s will and physical abilities. The trouble with mass psychogenic illness is that there’s no way to predict when it will happen. What causes them remains a mystery.  The Dancing Plague is a powerful example of how a people can become caught up in a shared delusion, anxiety or fear, and how such mass hysteria can lead to tragic consequences, even today. There’s something intrinsically unsettling when the fabric of society suddenly breaks down, replaced with inexplicable communal behavior, leading ultimately to chaos. St. Vitus Dance reminds us of the fragility of our own society, and of the strength of shared delusions. One only has to think back to Nazi Germany or the Jonestown Massacre to realize the power of mass hysteria.

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