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Engraving of Hendrik Hondius portrays three women affected by the plague. Work based on original drawing by Peter Brueghel, who supposedly witnessed a subsequent outbreak in 1564 in Flanders
Dancing death
By John Waller
Author of A Time To Dance: A Time To Die
Strasbourg's poor were suffering disease and hunger
Sometime in mid-July 1518, in the city of Strasbourg, a woman stepped into the street and started to dance.
She was still dancing several days later. Within a week about 100 people had been consumed by the same irresistible urge to dance. The authorities were convinced that the afflicted would only recover if they danced day and night.
So guildhalls were set aside for them to dance in, musicians were hired to play pipes and drums to keep them moving, and professional dancers were paid to keep them on their feet. Within days those with weak hearts started to die.
A popular idea has been that the dancers had ingested ergot, a psychotropic mould that grows on stalks of rye. But this is highly unlikely
By the end of August 1518 about 400 people had experienced the madness. Finally they were loaded aboard wagons and taken to a healing shrine. Not until early September did the epidemic recede.
This was not the first outbreak of compulsive dancing in Europe. In fact, there had been as many as ten dancing epidemics before 1518, one in 1374 engulfing many of the towns of modern day Belgium, north-eastern France and Luxembourg.
The 1518 case is simply the best documented and by a richer variety of sources than its predecessors. It was not the first, though it was almost certainly the last to occur in Europe.
The wooden carving (including St. Vitus) around which the afflicted danced in 1518
The wooden carving (including St. Vitus) around which the afflicted danced in 1518
How do we explain this bizarre phenomenon? A popular idea has been that the dancers had ingested ergot, a psychotropic mould that grows on stalks of rye. But this is highly unlikely. Ergotism can trigger delusions and spasms, but it also typically cuts off blood supply to the extremities making coordinated movement very difficult.
It's also been suggested that the dancers were members of a heretical cult. This is also improbable because contemporaries were certain that the afflicted did not want to dance and the dancers themselves, when they could, expressed their misery and need for help. What's more, there was no suggestion of treating these people as heretics.
The other main contender is that this was an outbreak of mass hysteria. This is far more plausible, especially because in 1518 the poor of Strasbourg were experiencing famine, disease and spiritual despair on a scale unknown for generations.
But in itself this theory doesn't explain why the people danced in their misery.
Trance state
My explanation rests on the fact that the dancers were in a trance state; otherwise they would have been unable to dance for such lengths of time.
We know that the trance state is more likely to occur in people who under extreme psychological distress, and who believe in the possibility of spirit possession. All of these conditions were satisfied in Strasbourg in 1518.
The city's poor were suffering from severe famine and disease. And, crucially, we also know they believed in a saint called St. Vitus who had the power to take over their minds and inflict a terrible, compulsive dance.
Once these highly vulnerable people began to anticipate the St. Vitus curse they increased the likelihood that they'd enter the trance state. And once in it, they acted out the part of the accursed: dancing wildly for days at a time. So the epidemic, I argue, was a result of both desperation and pious fear.
The grotto devoted to St. Vitus beneath the summit of a mountain beyond Saverne
The dancers were taken to a shrine to beg for mercy
The dancing plague died out because the supernaturalist beliefs that fed it gradually disappeared. In the short run, cities like Strasbourg were no longer susceptible because they became Protestant during the Reformation and spurned the saint worship on which the dancing plague depended.
In the long run, the fervent supernaturalism of the medieval world had to make way for the rise of modern science and rationality. The dancing madness was effectively starved out of existence. Even so, half a millennium later it still serves as a reminder of the ineffable strangeness of the human brain.
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) - The Danse Macabre Scene
Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) walks through the main square of Wismar among the plague-afflicted. Some dance while other dine outside, resigned to their fate.
Very interesting journal entry...I thought that many who had the strange illness with the dancing were those who ate contaminated bread...?
In any case, I guess a mental disturbance could trigger dancing, among other activities as well.
I love the clip from the 1979 version of 'Nosferatu' (I have it on DVD). Those people were feasting and dancing one last time, as they knew that they'd die soon...seems like a good way to go!
Maybe there is no single explanation fr the phenomenon, maybe there are more then one... in any case, the lack of hope and the closeness of a sudden invisible death, gave those people a strange mental state that made that possible.
I do not crush the corolla of wonders of the world
00:17 Aug 27 2011 Times Read: 896
Attempt to translate from Lucian Blaga "Eu nu strivesc corola de minuni a lumii" a great poem who recommends us the so called "Luciferian path", opposed to the "Heavenly path" of knowledge.
There are a few words almost impossible to translate, like : taina(mistery, charm, magic, arcanum), ne-nteles (un-comprehensible, which can not be understood rationally), zare(horizon, sheen, sky line).Many of these words are in fact philosophical concepts disguised as metaphors.
This is a pleading for mystery and I hope you will like it.
I Don`t Crush The Corolla Of The Wonders Of The World
by Lucian Blaga
"I do not crush the corolla of wonders of the world
Before all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him, what living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light -- with its colors, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? The giant-world of the unresting constellations inhales it as the innermost soul of life, and floats dancing in its blue flood -- the sparkling, ever-tranquil stone, the thoughtful, imbibing plant, and the wild, burning multiform beast inhales it -- but more than all, the lordly stranger with the sense-filled eyes, the swaying walk, and the sweetly closed, melodious lips. Like a king over earthly nature, it rouses every force to countless transformations, binds and unbinds innumerable alliances, hangs its heavenly form around every earthly substance. -- Its presence alone reveals the marvelous splendor of the kingdoms of the world.
Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world -- sunk in a deep grave -- waste and lonely is its place. In the chords of the bosom blows a deep sadness. I am ready to sink away in drops of dew, and mingle with the ashes. -- The distances of memory, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a whole long life, arise in gray garments, like an evening vapor after the sunset. In other regions the light has pitched its joyous tents. What if it should never return to its children, who wait for it with the faith of innocence?
What springs up all at once so sweetly boding in my heart, and stills the soft air of sadness? Dost thou also take a pleasure in us, dark Night? What holdest thou under thy mantle, that with hidden power affects my soul? Precious balm drips from thy hand out of its bundle of poppies. Thou upliftest the heavy-laden wings of the soul. Darkly and inexpressibly are we moved -- joy-startled, I see a grave face that, tender and worshipful, inclines toward me, and, amid manifold entangled locks, reveals the youthful loveliness of the Mother. How poor and childish a thing seems to me now the Light -- how joyous and welcome the departure of the day -- because the Night turns away from thee thy servants, you now strew in the gulfs of space those flashing globes, to proclaim thy omnipotence -- thy return -- in seasons of thy absence. More heavenly than those glittering stars we hold the eternal eyes which the Night hath opened within us. Farther they see than the palest of those countless hosts -- needing no aid from the light, they penetrate the depths of a loving soul -- that fills a loftier region with bliss ineffable. Glory to the queen of the world, to the great prophet of the holier worlds, to the guardian of blissful love -- she sends thee to me -- thou tenderly beloved -- the gracious sun of the Night, -- now am I awake -- for now am I thine and mine -- thou hast made me know the Night -- made of me a man -- consume with spirit-fire my body, that I, turned to finer air, may mingle more closely with thee, and then our bridal night endure forever.
Teanslated from German by George MacDonald himself
COMMENTS
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Isis101
14:49 Aug 29 2011
Very interesting journal entry...I thought that many who had the strange illness with the dancing were those who ate contaminated bread...?
In any case, I guess a mental disturbance could trigger dancing, among other activities as well.
I love the clip from the 1979 version of 'Nosferatu' (I have it on DVD). Those people were feasting and dancing one last time, as they knew that they'd die soon...seems like a good way to go!
Dragonrouge
09:37 Sep 09 2011
So true!
Maybe there is no single explanation fr the phenomenon, maybe there are more then one... in any case, the lack of hope and the closeness of a sudden invisible death, gave those people a strange mental state that made that possible.