Chapter 3: The So-Called “Dancing Plague” of 1518

July, 1518 ~ Strasbourg, Holy Roman Empire

To take a slightly less serious, albeit still bizarre and admittedly quite entertaining, approach, I thought it appropriate to discuss what’s been dubbed as the “dancing plague” that struck the city of Strasbourg (a city in what was the Holy Roman Empire), in the summer of 1518. The events that took place throughout the summer are still relatively unexplained.

It sounds funny on paper: a woman starts dancing silently on the street one day with no explanation. A week or so later, others have joined her. Soon, hundreds of people dance, twirl, and spin on the streets without any rhyme or reason – seemingly just the unexplainable and intense urge to flail their bodies around aimlessly to the point of exhaustion. And such a fate awaited many of the participants: some collapsed due to exhaustion and overexertion(understandable) while others actually suffered more serious, fatal consequences like strokes or heart attacks.

So, people are wiggling and bopping around town, then dropping dead like flies. It’s madness, right? Imagine being, by modern standards, an extremely uneducated devout Catholic in the 16th century. As discussed before, unexplainable and bizarre behavior really only had a few potential causes: witchcraft, demonic influence, divine punishment, or some combination of the three. Naturally, this phenomenon was quite alarming to those not afflicted by the extreme urge to shake what their mothers gave them.

The cause was chalked up to “hot blood,” and, surprise, victims were whisked away to pray the dance fever away. Eventually, the hysteria died down, and life went on. Most modern explanations of this bizarre event is just that: hysteria. It really is, at least by definition, a case of hundreds of people entering some sort of strange hysterical fit, but what caused the hysteria? No one really knows. Some theorize that moldy bread was the culprit; others claim the dancers might have been part of a religious cult, or otherwise involved themselves with religious motivation while they shook their groove things. It’s not really clear, and it probably never will be until a town of people decides to start dancing in the streets sometime in the modern era so that we can study it better.

As far as analysis goes, I’d like to consider how a community reacts to some sort of conflict or issue, and what that can say about the rest of society around them. Obviously, things were much different in the 16th century than they are today; the lack of technology, medical knowledge, and seemingly overall common sense led people to very different conclusions than what we would experience in the modern world. But, regardless, the desire to stamp out the unknown – via prayers, or whatever the case may be – rather than trying to fully understand it is interesting to me. It seems that, as a society, as time has gone on we’ve become more eager to truthfully and genuinely be able to wrap our minds around the things that confuse us rather than dismiss or attempt to eradicate them. After all, isn’t that what 99.9% of social issues are really about: people not understanding one another?

Additionally, regardless of what truly caused the hysteria, the fact that it happened is, itself, quite a thinker. It’s bizarre, especially when you look at other instances of people being weirdos throughout history, that the first woman to start dancing wasn’t apprehended. People just let her dance on for a week. Why? Such behavior would have certainly stuck out, even by today’s standards (and people are really wack now, truly). And when dozens more joined her, they too danced their hearts out. Does this comment on earlier societies’ tendency to isolate and ignore those who stuck out rather than trying to understand their condition or actions? Am I reading way, way, WAY too much into what’s generally just a kind of weird thing that happened one summer in Europe? Potentially. But we’ll never know if no one asks.