As early as the year 1374, strange episodes of dancing mania were reported across Europe. No obvious pattern or triggers to the outbreaks, just large gatherings of men and women of all ages, forming circles and dancing for hours at a time, often until they collapsed with exhaustion. According to Justus Hecker, a 19th-century German physician who studied the dancing mania:
While dancing, they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.
Priests, town councils, and local rulers were all alarmed by the dancing mania. The Church blamed the dancing mania on demonic possession and fought it with all the tools at their disposal. Along with frequent sermons directed at the dancers, churches conducted long religious festivals designed to stop the dancers. Although a few priests even resorted to exorcisms, nothing seemed to keep the dancers down for long. While the priests did what they could, local governments resorted to more direct approaches including having the dancers beaten with sticks and even banning the wearing of round-toed shoes in some places (which made dancing harder).
Although the dancers often burned themselves out after a few months, the relative calm afterward rarely lasted long. As the dancing stopped in one part of Europe, new outbreaks would happen in other parts. What alarmed local governments and the Church most was the extreme social disruption that often occurred with the dancers. Not only did serfs and free workers stop working fields, but housewives often deserted their domestic duties as well. The dancers were primarily found in the poorest classes of society but authorities worried that the mania would eventually spread to the nobility and the priests in time.
By the 15th century, the dancing mania became known as "St. Vitus' Dance" based on the legend that Saint Vitus had been formally entrusted by God to protect his followers from being affected. Although there was no evidence of this legend existing before the 15th century, the previously neglected saint suddenly had shrines dedicated to him across Europe. Medical doctors preferred not to treat the dancing mania themselves (the Church regarded it as their mandate exclusively and the doctors weren't inclined to fight them on the issue) and relatives of mania victims often had no choice but to turn to the Church for help. The first medical doctor with the courage to question Church doctrine about the demonic nature of the dancing mania was likely Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, a.k.a Paracelsus. Having made a name for himself as a bold medical reformer, Paracelsus embraced the motto "Let no man belong to another that can belong to himself" and scandalized church authorities by rejecting magical explanations for disease and suggesting that diseases could be cured by learning about the body and the toxic effects of the environment. Of course, being an astrologer and an alchemist as well made him very much a man of his time.
In studying St. Vitus' Dance, Parcelsus suggested that there were different types of dancing mania which he termed Chorea imaginativa (dancing mania caused by imagination), Chorea lasciva (resulting from "sensual desires"), and Chorea naturalis (dancing mania resulting from bodily imbalances, i.e., disruptions of the various chemical elements of the body). He also suggested that dancing mania could be passed on through sympathic arousal of the animal passions. For treating dancing mania resulting from imagination, he suggested having the affected patient create a wax image and then "projecting all [the patient's] blasphemies and sins on it". Burning the image would then relieve the patient of the need to dance. For the other type of dancing manias, especially involving women leaving home to dance, he recommended forcible restraint and harsh treatment to "bring them to their senses". This included depriving the dancer of food and immersion in cold water as needed.
For whatever reason, episodes of St. Vitus' Dance began declining throughout the 16th century. While mild outbreaks still occurred, the most severe cases became relatively unknown. Still, pilgrimages still continued each year to the various shrines dedicated to St. Vitus until well into the 17th century across many European countries. By then however, southern Italy had become the centre of the dancing mania epidemic even after the St. Vitus' Dance episodes faded into memory elsewhere. While not entirely identical to St. Vitus' Dance, the strange disorder known locally as "tarantism" had been recorded in southern Italy for centuries (primarily in the Apulia region). The disease received its name from the belief that symptoms were caused by tarantula bites and that dancing was essential to prevent death. Historians still dispute which spiders native to Apulia were considered responsible for the disease. The most likely candidate was the common wolf-spider (Lycos tarantula) or
poisonous lizards may have been blamed as well (according to Hecker, the Italian words for tarantula and lizard, terrantola, were very similar). The actual evidence that spider or lizard bites were involved in the disease seems limited at best and most of the tarantism episodes were almost certainly caused by mass hysteria alone.
According to Niccolo Perotti, symptoms of tarantism included deep melancholy (depression), sensitivitity to certain colours (such as red or green), and a strange catatonic state. While some tarantism victims were extremely sensitive to music and would often dance to the point of exhaustion, other victims simply wasted away and refused to respond to any attempts to make them eat or care for themselves. As the epidemic spread out of Apulia, musicians were often hired to perform for tarantism victims and make them dance as much as possible. The prevailing medical opinion at the time was that forcing the victims to dance caused the tarantula venom to be spread throughout the body and given them relief. Since the hot summer months often provoked a relapse, many tarantism sufferers had to go through the same dancing cure each year and the number of dancers grew to enormous numbers. Native Italians weren't the only ones affected and many immigrant groups living in the region were struck by dancing mania. Eyewitness accounts described musicians being forced to play non-stop until the dancers dropped from exhaustion. If the music paused for even a moment, the dancers sank to the ground and only got up again if the music started playing. Although folk dancing was popular in Italy long before the first cases of tarantism were reported, one particular folk dance became known as the tarantella because of the association with tarantula bites.
Cases of tarantism gradually faded over the 17th century although individual cases continued to be reported into the 1800s. While the original link to spider bites has been throroughly debunked, the actual cause of dancing mania, whether in Italy or other places, remains a matter of dispute. Since no known physical cause has ever been identified, the various dancing manias are likely to be a classic example of mass psychogenic illness spread by word of mouth descriptions of episodes in different parts of Europe. The dancing mania epidemic strongly resembles later episodes of mass hysteria most likely to affect relatively powerless members of society otherwise expected to live by strong social conventions preventing any form of free expression (including women and peasant). Cases of mass psychogenic illness are still reported today but it continues to be a poorly understood condition and diagnosis is still controversial.
As for the dancing manias of Europe, the most lasting legacy seems to be the lively tarantellas that are still popular in Italy and Argentina. Visitors watching the folk dancers perform should spare a thought to the strange epidemic that gave the dance its name.
And keep an eye out for spiders.
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