Painted wooden figure of a dancing woman in a headscarf, arms raised ecstatically, in front of a dark stone wall with burning candles

DESCRIPTION: In the summer of 1518, a woman and around fifty followers danced in Strasbourg until they were exhausted. What the sources say about the dancing mania, what was later added to the story, and what psychiatry recognises in it.

The Dancing Frenzy of Strasbourg in 1518

In July 1518, a woman began to dance in the Alsatian imperial city of Strasbourg, and around fifty people followed her lead. This is how the council minutes from that very summer record the event. Later chronicles inflate the figures to as many as 400 dancers and fifteen deaths a day. For five hundred years, people have been trying to explain what happened in the city, and every era has found its own medical explanation for it: Paracelsus attributed it to the imagination; Hecker to psychological distress following the plague; Backman to ergot; and Waller to a mass psychogenic illness. Anyone wishing to understand the dancing mania must first distinguish between what was recorded in 1518 and what was added later.

What the sources from 1518 report

Three texts date from the summer itself: the resolutions of the Strasbourg Council, the chronicle of Hieronymus Gebwiler, and the magistrate’s reply to the bishop, who had enquired about ‘the unusual illness’. According to Clementz, they mention an unnamed woman who began to dance. The doctors regarded the dancing as a natural ailment, caused by the alignment of the stars that year and the heat of the season.

The council resolutions have been preserved in the so-called Annals of Sebastian Brant. Brant, town clerk and author of The Ship of Fools, was in office in 1518. However, the manuscript bearing his name was an extract from the council minutes compiled by the archivist Jakob Wencker in the 18th century. It was destroyed by fire in 1870 and survives only in copies published by Léon Dacheux in 1892. The entry for 1518 reads:

‘When, around St Margaret’s Day this year, a severe and terrifying illness accompanied by St Vitus’s dance broke out, such that some fifty people afflicted with it danced day and night—a pitiful sight to behold—they were all confined at the town’s expense and taken to the shrine of St Vitus in Hohenstein near Zabern, where they were nearly killed.’

Around St Margaret’s Day in July, a severe illness broke out; around fifty people danced day and night; the city had them guarded at its own expense and taken to St Vitus at the H Hohlenstein near Zabern, where most of them recovered. In the margin is a note by Brant: detailed accounts of this dancing can be found in his chronicle. Unfortunately, this chronicle has been lost.

How did the Strasbourg Council react?

The minutes record a series of resolutions. No one was permitted to dance in the city or its surrounding area until St Michael’s Day – that is, until the end of September – on pain of a fine of 30 schillings and pfennigs, and no one was allowed to ‘build dance floors’. At weddings and first Masses, dancing accompanied by stringed instruments remained permitted, ‘according to each person’s conscience’. When ‘a number of women and boys danced the wicked dance’, the drums were to fall silent. The guilds were issued notices instructing everyone to supervise their children and household members, whilst the brotherhoods were to look after their sick brothers or send them to the saints.

Religious measures were also introduced. The Council had a High Mass celebrated in the Chapel of Our Lady, sent the dancers from the hospital to the saints, donated a candle made from a hundredweight of wax to St Veit, and had a Mass with three supplementary masses read for the Council and the town. ‘The frivolous folk of the town’ were banished for a time.

The minutes make no mention of a stage that the town might have built, of paid musicians, or of any deaths. The ban on erecting dance floors suggests that such floors did exist.

What later chronicles add

The well-known version of the story comes from chronicles written decades later. Johannes Wencker (1590–1659) writes, following Daniel Specklin, who compiled his account around 1580: the dancers were given the rooms of the carpenters and tanners, and ‘special people were appointed to dance with them sufficiently’. At the Rossmarkt, a scaffold was erected and they were made to dance to the sound of drums and pipes, “but none of it helped”. “Several died as a result.” At the sanctuary, a priest celebrated Mass and gave the sick small crosses and red shoes, anointed them with chrism at the top and bottom, and sprinkled them with holy water.

Specklin and Wencker also cite the figures that are repeated in every account today: up to 400 dancers and fifteen deaths a day. Waller adopts these figures. Clementz counters that the texts from the summer of 1518 contain nothing of the sort.

What is thus established is a summer in which a woman and some fifty imitators, including women and boys, danced involuntarily, and a city that treated this as a natural illness, banned dancing and drumming, and sent the afflicted to St Vitus. The stage, musicians, red shoes and deaths are part of the tradition of the late 16th and 17th centuries.

Even the most famous image does not depict Strasbourg. The copperplate engraving by Hendrik Hondius from 1642, which appears in almost every article about the Strasbourg dancing mania, is based on a drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1564. It depicts a pilgrimage of epileptics to the church at Molenbeek near Brussels.

A dance without a name

The late Middle Ages were familiar with dances that had names, steps and music. The sources for 1518 make no mention of any of this. The council minutes merely state that the sick people ‘danced day and night ’. Paracelsus describes Troffea in more detail: she ‘hopped and jumped up, sang, and babbled’. This is jumping and hopping without form or rhythm. At that time, the word ‘tanzen’ also referred to fidgeting and hopping about. Even in the writings of Walther von der Vogelweide, ‘tanzen’ and ‘springen’ appear side by side.

The music came from outside. The council silenced the drums, presumably because they feared they were keeping the movement going. Specklin and Wencker later report that the sick were made to dance to the sound of drums and pipes. It was only when music was added to the hopping that it became a dance.

For the year 1374, chroniclers describe groups dancing in a circle – in other words, a round dance with a fixed form. In Strasbourg, the sources describe an unstructured, spontaneous movement which observers came to call a dance.

The background: A dancing craze on the Rhine since 1374

Strasbourg was not an isolated case. The first major wave began in July 1374 in Aachen. By early September, groups were dancing in Cologne; from 11 to 14 September in Maastricht, Tongeren, Liège and Trier; on 22 and 23 October in Ghent; and subsequently in Metz. Chronicles describe men and women dancing in circles, then tying cloths tightly around their waists and recounting visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary. The waves of dancing became increasingly frequent along the Rhine and the Moselle. There, too, was widespread belief that Saint Vitus (Veit in German) could punish sinners with a ‘dancing curse’ and release them from it. The name ‘St Vitus’s dance’ stems from this belief, long before neurology adopted it to describe choreatic movement disorders, namely Sydenham’s chorea and Huntington’s chorea. Nineteenth-century medicine grouped these waves of dancing under the term ‘choreomania’.

Paracelsus and Mrs Troffea

The name now used in every account of the Strasbourg dancing mania comes from Paracelsus. In his treatise On Diseases That Deprive One of Reason, he distinguishes between three forms of St Vitus’s dance: chorea imaginativa, arising from the imagination; chorea lasciva, arising from sensual pleasure; and chorea naturalis, arising from a physical cause. For the first, he recounts the story of a woman named Troffea: Whenever her husband asked her to do something she did not like, she would feign illness and dance, for nothing annoyed her husband as much as dancing. She ‘hopped and jumped about, sang and babbled’ and then fell asleep. Other women learnt this from her; people came to regard the dancing as a form of penance, and eventually Saint Vitus became the patron saint of the illness.

Paracelsus says neither where nor when this woman lived. Clementz considers the name to be fictitious. It was only modern literature, including Waller, that placed Troffea in Strasbourg in July 1518 and endowed her with a house, a starving body and a deranged state of mind. The woman who began to dance in 1518 has no name in the sources.

What is remarkable about Paracelsus is his view on the cause. A supposed notion, which someone presents as true, generates ‘such a strong belief that it becomes true and is confirmed’. Thus, many illnesses arise, ‘not just the dancing’. The cause is ‘an estimation and a supposed imagination’. The physician’s view of women is typical of his time, whilst his ideas on belief and contagion are astonishingly modern.

Hecker: the anguish of the soul in the wake of the Black Death

In 1832, Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker published Die Tanzwuth, eine Volkskrankheit im Mittelalter (The Dancing Mania: A Widespread Disease in the Middle Ages). For him, the dancing mania was a consequence of the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. The wave of 1374 broke out around two decades after the plague, at a time when the memory of the mass deaths was still fresh and the plague had returned in isolated outbreaks. Hecker interpreted the dancing as a psychological reaction of a distraught population.

This interpretation can be applied to 1374. Contemporary sources make no mention of the plague in Strasbourg in 1518. Waller cites the return of leprosy, smallpox and the plague around 1518, though according to Clementz, this is unsubstantiated. Hecker’s plague theory is a 19th-century interpretation that has come to dominate popular literature on all waves of dancing mania.

Ergot: why poisoning is not a plausible explanation

In 1952, the Swedish pharmacologist and medical historian Eugène Louis Backman put forward the theory that ergot was to blame. In wet years, the fungus Claviceps purpurea infects rye; its alkaloids cause convulsions, hallucinations and delusions. One of the substances is related to LSD. The explanation sounds chemically precise, which is why it has endured.

However, it does not fit the clinical picture. The ‘burning’ form of ergotism restricts blood flow to the hands and feet until fingers and toes die off. No source on the dancing phenomenon reports this. The ‘convulsive’ form causes seizures and hallucinations, but not coordinated movement lasting for days. Someone who has been poisoned cannot dance for days on end. Furthermore, poisoning does not explain why the dances were concentrated along the Rhine and Moselle, why they coincided with the veneration of St Vitus, and why many people in a town did the same thing whilst their neighbours ate the same bread and remained healthy.

Bartholomew: Pilgrims mistaken for the sick

The sociologist Robert Bartholomew regards most of the dancing frenzies as rituals. According to his analysis of the chronicles, the majority of those who danced in 1374 did not come from the towns in which they danced. They were pilgrims from Bohemia, Poland, Hungary and other regions, travelling from shrine to shrine. Their songs, gestures and invocations were alien to the locals, and the chroniclers described as frenzy what might have been a form of devotion.

For 1374, this theory must be taken seriously. For Strasbourg in 1518, however, it does not hold true. The dancers were from Strasbourg; the city council described their condition as an unusual illness; the doctors sought a natural cause; and the afflicted were taken to St Vitus for healing. There is nothing in Strasbourg to suggest a ritual performed by participants of their own free will.

Waller: the curse of St Vitus

Waller interprets the events in Strasbourg in 1518 as a mass psychogenic illness. In his interpretation, three conditions converged: hardship following crop failures and inflation; the belief that Saint Vitus inflicted dancing curses; and a public reaction that made the dancing visible and spread it . The afflicted danced in a dissociative state, the nature of which was dictated by the beliefs of their time, and at the sanctuary a ritual lifted the curse in which they believed.

This model effectively brings together the established details: contagion through observation, the link to the belief in Saint Vitus, and the end brought about by a religious act. Waller’s book on Strasbourg, by contrast, should be read with caution. Clementz accuses him of relocating Troffea to Strasbourg, speculating on her thoughts, taking death tolls from later chronicles, and claiming epidemics for which there is no evidence for 1518. Her verdict: the book is closer to a historical novel than to a scholarly work. The interpretation as a mass psychogenic illness remains unaffected by this. For her, the fifty dancers mentioned in contemporary sources are sufficient.

What the dancing mania reveals from a psychiatric perspective

The clinical picture can be described from the sources. The dancers moved involuntarily for long periods, experienced the state as alien and tormenting, were in some cases detached from their surroundings, and reported having visions. The condition spread by observation, followed a culturally familiar pattern, and ended with an action which, according to the belief of those affected, resolved precisely this pattern.

This picture corresponds to what modern psychiatry describes as a functional or dissociative movement disorder, in its collective form as a mass psychogenic disorder, formerly known as mass hysteria. The symptoms are genuine and are not feigned. Their form stems from what a community holds to be possible. It is precisely the formless nature of the Strasbourg jumping that fits the functional movement disorder, to which the surrounding community only later gave a name and a musical accompaniment. This links the dancing frenzy with the ‘glass mania’ of the same era: in both cases, culture determines the form that the suffering takes.

From Strasbourg to YouTube

In 2021, Kirsten Müller-Vahl and colleagues from Hannover Medical School reported on adolescents who presented at the outpatient clinic with almost identical ‘Tourette-like’ movements and sounds. The symptoms differed clearly from genuine tics. None of them had Tourette’s syndrome. Tourette’s begins in childhood; its tics are brief and stereotyped, are preceded by a warning sensation and can be suppressed for a while. The adolescents’ movements began abruptly, were complex, occurred without warning and arose under stress, mimicking a model. Troffea’s dance, too, begins in Paracelsus with a trigger: in response to a conflict with her husband. The starting point was a hypothetical case study: one of Germany’s most successful YouTubers, who displayed his tics in public. The authors proposed the term ‘mass social media-induced illness’ to describe this phenomenon.

The mechanism is the same as that of 1518. Suffering seeks out whatever form is currently available. In Strasbourg, the cult of St Vitus provided that form. Paracelsus described the mechanism: whatever one demonstrates and presents as true is believed and thereby becomes true. Today, a video provides that form, and the platform takes centre stage. What is new is the reach. If Specklin is correct, the Strasbourg stage was on the Rossmarkt. Today’s stage is everywhere.

The key points in brief

• In July 1518, around fifty people, including women and boys, danced day and night in Strasbourg. This is recorded in the council minutes, handed down as the ‘Annalen Brants’.

• The doctors attributed the dancing to the alignment of the stars and the summer heat. The council banned dancing, dance floors and drums until St Michael’s Day and had the sick taken to St Veit am Hohlenstein near Zabern.

• The stage, paid musicians, red shoes, the figure of 400 and the deaths are taken from the chronicles of Specklin and Wencker, written decades after the event. The council minutes make no mention of any deaths.

• Mrs Troffea is a figure from Paracelsus, with no specific place or date. It was only modern literature that placed her in Strasbourg.

• Paracelsus explained the St Vitus’s dance as arising from imagination and belief, stating that ‘it is not only the dance’ that arises in this way.

• Hecker’s connection with the Black Death relates to the wave of 1374. Ergot does not explain the dancing that lasted for days.

• The sources for 1518 do not mention any dance by name, step or rhythm, only hopping and jumping. The music was only added later by the council and the later chronicles.

• Bartholomew’s pilgrimage theory fits 1374 better than it does Strasbourg.

• The interpretation as a mass psychogenic illness is the most plausible. Waller’s book contains many unsubstantiated details.

• The ‘mass social media-induced illness’ of 2021 follows the same pattern but on a larger scale.

Sources

· Waller, J. C. (2008): In a spin: the mysterious dancing epidemic of 1518. Endeavour 32 (3), 117–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2008.05.001

· Waller, J. (2008): A Time to Dance, a Time to Die. The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518. Cambridge: Icon Books.

· Waller, J. (2009): A forgotten plague: making sense of dancing mania. The Lancet 373 (9664), 624–625. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60386-X

· Pennant-Rea, N. (2018): The Dancing Plague of 1518. The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dancing-plague-of-1518/

· Hecker, J. F. C. (1832): The Dancing Mania, a widespread disease in the Middle Ages. Berlin: Enslin.

· Paracelsus: On the Diseases that Rob One of Reason. In: Books and Writings, ed. by J. Huser, Part 1, Basel 1589, p. 94. Quoted from H. A. Preu (1838): The System of Medicine of Theophrastus Paracelsus. Berlin, pp. 240 ff.

· Dacheux, L. (ed.) (1892): Fragments from the Old Chronicles of Alsace III. Bulletin of the Society for the Preservation of Historic Monuments in Alsace, 2nd series, vol. 15. Containing: Jean Wencker, Chronicle, no. 3007, p. 148, and Jac. Wencker, Extractus ex protocollis, commonly known as Sebastian Brant’s Annals, No. 3443, pp. 239 ff. https://archive.org/details/BulletinDeLaSocietePourLaConservationDesMonumentsHistoriquesDalsace

· German Dictionary by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, entry ‘tanzen’. https://www.dwds.de/wb/dwb/tanzen

· Hondius, H. (1642) after Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Pilgrimage of the Epileptics to the Church at Molenbeek. Copperplate engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 49.95.2249. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/415981

· Clementz, É. (2016): Review of J. Waller, Les danseurs fous de Strasbourg. Revue d’Alsace 142, 451–453. https://doi.org/10.4000/alsace.2457

· Backman, E. L. (1952): Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine. London: Allen & Unwin.

· Evans, H., Bartholomew, R. (2009): Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behaviour. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, entries ‘Dance Frenzies’ and ‘Dancing Mania’, 117–121.

· Müller-Vahl, K. R., Pisarenko, A., Jakubovski, E., Fremer, C. (2022): Stop that! It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness. Brain 145 (2), 476–480. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awab316