Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 138 - The History of the Dancing Plague of 1518
Abby and Alan discuss the horrifying and very real dancing plague of 1518. In the French Town of Strasbourg, in the summer of 1518, a bizarre and horrifying plague took as many as 400 lives. The plague started with a single woman, who could not stop dancing. Almost for an entire week she danced alone until others slowly joined her. Dancing until their bodies gave out.
Watch our film The Witching Hour here.
Sources
- A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of The Dancing Plague of 1518. A book by John Waller.
- A book from 1888 - The Black Death and The Dancing Mania by Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker.
- History.com article by Evan Andrews - What Was The Dancing Plague of 1518?
- The People Who Danced Themselves to Death by Rosalind Jana on BBC.com
- https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dancing-plagues-and-mass-hysteria
A Smithsonian Magazine Article - A Strange Case of Dancing Mania Struck Germany Six Centuries Ago Today by Marias Fessenden
- Research help from April Brenker.
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Abby and Alan discuss the horrifying and very real dancing plague of 1518. In the French Town of Strasbourg, in the summer of 1518, a bizarre and horrifying plague took as many as 400 lives. The plague started with a single woman, who could not stop dancing. Almost for an entire week she danced alone until others slowly joined her. Dancing until their bodies gave out.
Watch our film The Witching Hour here.
Sources
- A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of The Dancing Plague of 1518. A book by John Waller.
- A book from 1888 - The Black Death and The Dancing Mania by Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker.
- History.com article by Evan Andrews - What Was The Dancing Plague of 1518?
- The People Who Danced Themselves to Death by Rosalind Jana on BBC.com
- https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dancing-plagues-and-mass-hysteria
A Smithsonian Magazine Article - A Strange Case of Dancing Mania Struck Germany Six Centuries Ago Today by Marias Fessenden
- Research help from April Brenker.
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Hello everyone, Welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics radio hour podcast. I am abby branker sitting here with alan kudan hello and today we are talking about the dancing plague of 1518 abby can be honest with you. I don't know much about this topic yeah, this is a real topic for me. I'll admit that this is an abby topic. This is really my revenge for the god series. What you had, yours, now it's time for mine.
Speaker 2:I got to introduce you to so many wonderful kaiju movies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now I'm going to introduce you to a wonderful little piece of history.
Speaker 2:Are there any monsters in this? Whatsoever.
Speaker 1:Depends on what you believe.
Speaker 2:What does that?
Speaker 1:mean Do you believe in demons? Well then, there may not be for you.
Speaker 2:Speaking of Godzilla, though, I had a wonderful godzilla experience over the weekend.
Speaker 1:You mean the vr game that you sat in for five minutes at the at six flags that that is correct.
Speaker 2:Okay, and it was, hands down, the best vr experience I've ever had how many vr experiences have you had? Uh dozens okay I feel like that's a fair sample set. You know it's it's not like a ubiquitous thing that people do every day, unless you're like super into it. But you know we have a VR headset. Played a bunch of games. I've gone to a few like VR experience places.
Speaker 1:I always think about. It was one of our first dates. We went to a VR experience place with your friend and I was supposed to like walk off of a plank wearing the VR headset and I just couldn't do it. Like off of a plank wearing the VR headset and I just couldn't do it Like I knew it was fake but mentally it was so real that I couldn't bring myself to do it. Do you remember that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you remember the name of the game?
Speaker 1:Plank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was called Plank. Yeah, yeah, it's like you have to overcome that mental hurdle in your brain that says it's okay, I'm going to kill myself but I'm not actually going to die. But anyways, this Godzilla VR experience holy cow, you just sit in a chair and you have this, like you hold this actual giant minigun and you just fight against well, this was against Manda the big Chinese like serpent dragon. He's so freaking cool and you just shoot him a bunch. And then to see Godzilla in VR and get the true appreciation of scale of just how big he is and you're underneath him.
Speaker 1:I'm are and get the true appreciation of scale, of just how big he is and you're underneath him. I'm glad that you had such a great time. It was great, it cost you like 24 tokens.
Speaker 2:It did, which is like a thousand dollars, yeah, in token money six flags money.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, before we get into the medieval dancing plague, we also have some exciting news, which is that we have a winner from last episode's bite-sized horror we. The people have voted.
Speaker 2:Wow, that was real.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course it was real, that's cool. Yeah, we got a ton of votes and I will say it was quite close. There was a lot of fan favorites.
Speaker 2:Who won Best Costumes?
Speaker 1:Best Costumes, oddly, was not a category in the audio story podcast challenge that we presented.
Speaker 2:That seems like a missed opportunity.
Speaker 1:But I am very, very, very excited to announce that Alex Gray's story the Hands You're Dealt swept the board, and all of the stories were so good. It was such a fun little experiment. So, Alex, we're going to get in touch and we'll see if we can send you a little lunatics prize pack wait.
Speaker 2:One story won every single category, and including best dressed there were three categories.
Speaker 1:One was best overall story, scariest story, best twist or reveal. Again it was. It was quite close, but alex is going to take home the, the ultimate prize congratulations, alex.
Speaker 1:Congratulations, very proud of you yes, and if you have no idea what we were talking about last episode, we featured five one-page horror stories that were submitted by listeners and writers and we loved them all very much. They're all incredibly well written. And then we put it to a vote and we wanted to give a little interactive element to the episode. So a bunch of listeners voted on their favorite story and that's what we're talking about. But definitely go back and listen to it. I talked about this last time. But the element of like making something in a constraint right, like those folks who write like one sentence horror, you have to be so much smarter and snappier and scarier than if you have like an unlimited length. I was so impressed with all five stories. They all all felt really different, really scary in different ways, tapped into different kind of human and inhuman fears, so really really thrilled with how that went. Go back and listen to that if you're interested. Okay, but that's not why we're here today.
Speaker 2:Why Really?
Speaker 1:We are here today to talk about people in the 1500s who just couldn't stop dancing.
Speaker 2:Honestly, this one just seems wacky.
Speaker 1:In what is now the French town of Strasbourg, in the summer of 1518, a bizarre and horrifying plague took as many as 400 lives. The plague started when a single woman simply could not stop dancing, and though at first she danced alone, soon others started to join her dancing until their bodies literally gave out. Today we are talking about not only the dancing plague of 1518, but many other dancing plagues that swept across a very specific region in Europe. Let's talk about today's sources. I have to give credit where credit is due. I read a book called the Time to Dance, a Time to Die the Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 by John Waller, and much of the research here is certainly based on this book. So thank you, john Waller, and if you're interested in this, please go read that book. It's a very complete, well-written, accessible history on the subject matter. Also a book from 1888, the Black Death and the Dancing Mania, by Justice Friedrich Karl Hecker.
Speaker 2:That's a name.
Speaker 1:A Historycom article by Evan Andrews what Was the Dancing Plague of 1518? The People who Danced Themselves to Death. By Rosalind Jonna on bbccom. A pbsorguk article Dancing Plagues and Mass Hysteria. A Smithsonian Magazine article A Strange Case of Dancing Mania Struck Germany Six Centuries Ago Today by Marius Fessenden. And thank you so much to the research help from April Brinker. Okay, so we are going to start this journey off a few years before the dancing plague, because I think it's actually quite key and important to understand the mindset and some of the history of the townspeople and perhaps what they were going through and thinking and what the vibes were, if you will. So 1942, the world was ready for the apocalypse on many levels and we're going to get into this, but they're ready for the apocalypse because they feel that God is angry with them.
Speaker 1:Because, the clergy and the leadership of their town is incredibly corrupt. There's all this hypocrisy. There's been plagues and famines and the Black Death, and so they're like we are being punished by God. We're going to get into that in more detail.
Speaker 2:All of society was being punished because God sent Columbus.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:He's a jackass. That was the. He's a jackass.
Speaker 1:That was the real punishment. But in 1942, this is one of the most interesting things I feel like I have a new concept to wrap my brain around, if you will, which is that imagine the reaction of somebody from the 1400s in medieval Europe, looking up at the sky and seeing a meteor crashing into earth. What do they think? I mean, obviously, they think that God is punishing them, but what a surreal sort of juxtaposition of topics, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they really quickly pull out their canvases and sketch a picture in 9x16 for social. There you go their canvases and sketch a picture in 9x16 for social.
Speaker 1:There you go. The Ensishime meteor is still actually on display in the local museum if you want to visit it. But back in the late 1400s again, this felt like a message from an angry god.
Speaker 2:Wait, wait, wait. The meteor not just crossed the sky, but crashed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it crashed right outside of a village, a nearby village.
Speaker 2:And they collected it and put it in a museum.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool, you can still go see it today.
Speaker 2:What's it look like?
Speaker 1:it looks like a little meteor. It's like quite small. Actually it looks like the size of maybe three or four basketballs three or four basketballs. Okay, yeah, I got you and it's like kind of a rock someone would have at like the end of their driveway. You know something like that. It's not huge at all, but you can go to the museum and look at it.
Speaker 2:Well, in fairness, it was probably much bigger at one point. You know, atmosphere burn and everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I understand.
Speaker 2:Did you know actually what causes the meteor trails?
Speaker 1:Tell us Alan.
Speaker 2:Well, if they see a meteor trail at all, it's just because the meteor is like burning off like little bits of dust, just like small pieces of debris, and dust just ignite and just create this like the big cascade across the sky.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Is it the same as comet trails?
Speaker 2:What is the difference between a meteor and a comet?
Speaker 1:Doesn't a comet orbit?
Speaker 2:This is a great question. Okay, so I just googled. Meteors enter Earth's atmosphere. That is the definition of a meteor.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then you just have things outside the atmosphere which are comets and asteroids. Comets are little balls of like dirt held together by ice, okay, and asteroids are just big hunks of rock.
Speaker 1:I think this is the first time I've really thought about the difference between an asteroid, a meteor and a comet. So a meteor could be a comet or an asteroid that enters the Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 2:I don't know if this is correct, but I feel like either a comet or an asteroid can become a meteor if it enters atmosphere and falls and burns up or crashes.
Speaker 1:Sure Fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you know, then you just dance. When do we get to the dancing?
Speaker 1:So, like the villagers' response to the meteor, the interpretation of the dancing plague that followed was also supernatural. Right? That's the whole point of the meteor story is that everything that is happening to them and around them, whether it's a plague or a meteor or this bizarre dancing affliction they are going to attribute it to something that's supernatural or something that's religious or something that's you know? That's their explanation. They don't have science, really, yet a little.
Speaker 2:And we'll talk about the physicians in town and how they get involved, but yeah, but we, we have science now and people still do that shit all the time.
Speaker 1:Dancing plagues.
Speaker 2:No. Attribute a very proven scientific phenomena to divine intervention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but less frequently they do so. In addition to the meteor, tensions were very high in Strasbourg leading up to the dancing plague. The clergy at the time, who were really the town leaders in many ways, were living incredibly corrupt lives, at least by the standards of the townspeople. To me it sounds like they were having a pretty good time, but while locals were expected to live very pious lives, monks, bishops and nuns alike would eat, drink, fornicate, cheat on their spouses.
Speaker 2:Like whoa, whoa, whoa, the nuns would fornicate.
Speaker 1:Have you seen, benedetta? Hello, a lot goes on in those monasteries.
Speaker 2:I forgot about that movie.
Speaker 1:I never forget about that movie. Essentially right, it's this town where the religious leadership is living large. They're living lives of luxury and pleasure, while the townspeople who are trying to farm in this very kind of turbulent climate area are starving and getting poorer every year.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile the nuns are farming the townsfolk.
Speaker 1:That's right. Not only that, but during times of hardship, the clergy would actually hoard grains and food and then sell them for profit, instead of releasing them to the starving and dying villagers.
Speaker 2:What was that book where the family or maybe it was a movie where they like hoard sugar during the Great Depression?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:And then they like sell it at market value, which was crazy because it was the Great Depression.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Does it sound familiar at all? No, it's not the Grapes of Wrath, but it's like one of those types of books and you know like they were just smart. Obviously the whole town like revolted against them. Yeah, of course it's like it's fucking sugar. You know like they're not withholding things that people need or they'll die. It's so they can make their coffee taste better.
Speaker 1:Many villagers were also indentured servants to the wealthy, and the only way that they could access food during times of crisis or even small loans would be to re-up with their captors Right. So during this time, the crops were really struggling. Year to year it was up, it was down, year it was up, it was down. And so when there were periods of starvation, the only option that these people felt like they had would be to go back to the rich people in the town who they were working for essentially, and kind of re-up their servitude. And this happened often. Crops continued to fail, they turned up rotten, there was heavy storms, unstable weather. It was just a very, very difficult time.
Speaker 1:Over the years, diseases like syphilis, leprosy and smallpox spread across this area. So, again, people interpreted these as warnings from God or, in some cases, punishments from the devil, sanctioned by God himself. Syphilis especially felt like a fitting punishment for those who are living in piously right, Because, for example, you have a man who is known to be cheating on his wife everybody knows it, say or a woman cheating on her husband or whatever, and suddenly that person gets syphilis. Right, and they get syphilis because they are cheating. But everybody locally interprets that as God is specifically punishing you for adultery because you have this disease that's specific to only people who were known to be adulterers, right?
Speaker 1:Also interestingly and John Waller goes into this a lot more in his book than I will, of course but there were many failed attempts at mutiny. There were many, many times when folks thought that they could sort of start a rebellion, violently, sort of take back over the town, whether from the clergy or the wealthy or whatever it was, the magistrates, and they could enforce this new way of life that would be more equal and you know and spread out. And every single time that this happened, literally throughout, like hundreds of years, every time they were caught ahead of time because somebody ratted them out and they were hunted down and killed.
Speaker 2:Okay, clarifying question.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Can you mutiny outside of a ship?
Speaker 1:Mutiny typically is associated with a shipboard, but many countries' laws make no such distinction.
Speaker 2:Hmm, I guess you just have to be A little bad boy, no working for somebody, or just like Right A direct subordinate. Subordinate yeah or just like right, a direct subordinate. Yeah, because you know, I guess typically you'd think of it as like a rebellion or an uprising or something like that. But yeah, I guess you're just kind of like overthrowing, like well, they're the ruling class at the time, the church 100 yeah.
Speaker 1:So when the meteor hit nearby, similar to when the black death spread to strasbourg, the people saw it again as an angry sign from God.
Speaker 2:Don't they always?
Speaker 1:But it wasn't their fault. Right Again, they thought that it was the fault of the corrupt clergy and the elite. So, going into the dancing plague, there was this incredible unrest like, this distrust, this anger, this rage, death, suffering like, and this is spread across. I'm really condensing all this history, but it's spread across hundreds of years leading up to this moment right so civil unhappiness is a very tame way to describe it.
Speaker 1:It is pure, really rage, like people are fucking mad effing mad there's also this whole sort of side story where locals had also started to claim that they could see the devil and ghostly figures. It's just like there's signs of mass unease right leading up to what is going to be essentially mass hysteria, and you can kind of psychologically understand, maybe, why this happens. And it's a little less surprising if you know the mindset. People are hungry. They have been wronged for generations, right. That people are hungry. They have been wronged for generations, right. There's this extreme fear that God is going to kill them because their monks and their bishops are so corrupt and they're getting drunk and they are hoarding grains and they're having sex and there's sex workers that they keep in the monasteries and they're making wine and bourbon and whatever in the monasteries. It's so extreme for them, because they are still so pious that it creates this real whirlwind effect. It's the perfect storm for the dancing plague.
Speaker 2:You have the have and the have-nots, and of course there's going to be unrest, especially when that exact dynamic continues for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1:And then but the haves are people who are meant to be the most pious, so it's the hypocrisy that's causing the anger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean that's, that's politics, one on one for you.
Speaker 1:I know, but I'm just. You know, it's not just that they are rich and we're not, it's that they are meant to be the moral compass of this town and they're spreading syphilis everywhere and again. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that, but there's nothing wrong with spreading syphilis. There's. No, there's nothing wrong with.
Speaker 2:Abby.
Speaker 1:We are sex positive, we are sex worker positive. These things do happen, obviously, everyone should practice safe sex. Everyone should be.
Speaker 2:Abby, there's nothing good about spreading syphilis.
Speaker 1:As expected, the women at this time had very little power and they were often sexually assaulted, including by their husbands. They were overworked, abused, cheated on, uh, and really one of the few acts of control that they had was to opt to be buried separately from their husbands after death. So, in addition right to just the general war of the classes, if you will, of course there's also like tensions between women and men and sort of the way women are being treated in this society at the time.
Speaker 2:That's because it wasn't until many years later that the T-shirt that says happy wife, happy life was invented.
Speaker 1:That's right. The other thing is so there's tons of dancing plagues. Actually, We'll circle back to them a bit at the end. Why? The reason why this one is so talked about is because it's very, very well documented.
Speaker 2:It's the most well documented so we have the most first-hand sources from it I mean, yeah, this, this dancing plague is definitely a hot button issue is that meant to be some kind of joke? Is no.
Speaker 1:Clearly it's very serious it is 400 people die you know how else 400 people die? Yeah good in the summer of 1518, the town of Strasbourg, located in modern-day France, was part of the Holy Roman Empire. The incident started in July when one woman, Frau Trofia, started to dance and move in a public street.
Speaker 2:How was she dancing?
Speaker 1:You know what, alan? We don't quite have videos, but she was dancing wildly, she was flailing about, rhythmically moving.
Speaker 2:I was just told that this was incredibly well documented. Are you saying not one person gave notes on her dance technique?
Speaker 1:Not that I read.
Speaker 2:That's insane. There's a lot of different types of dancing.
Speaker 1:Frau Trophy had danced alone for about a week before she was joined by a few dozen others who, inexplicably, suddenly also started to dance in the street and could not stop. Not only did they not stop, but they could not be compelled to stop by others. About a month later, the pandemic had allegedly killed up to 400 people. What killed them? Strokes, heart attacks and exhaustion, and, I'm also, sure, dehydration. The local doctors could not figure out what was going on. They attributed it to what they called hot blood, which they thought was a fever, and dancing was the only cure.
Speaker 2:So when blood is running too hot, you just got to dance it away. I I feel like dancing makes people warmer. Why? Why was this the theory?
Speaker 1:I think this is my interpretation. This is not validated, but I think they sort of have this opinion that, okay, their blood is boiling, they're filled with this like frenetic energy.
Speaker 1:They just need to dance it out, like they just need to get it out, and that's the way to transfer the energy out huh, okay so it's interesting to note that while other dancing plagues were immediately associated with demons or possession, the plague of 1518 was first inspected by physicians trying to understand the physical and scientific reason for the affliction. So just to slow that down a little bit, the other plagues right immediately were like boom, it's the devil and we get there with this one as well. But this was kind of the one where the first pass, like the the magistrates on the first kind of inspection of this gave it to the quote-unquote local physicians, even though, again, science at the time was not obviously close to where it is now I wonder why that was like why, why this?
Speaker 2:Why are people acting in a way that emulates possession? Other people just get like boils and they're like, oh, sinning. But when you just start acting like a man or woman possessed, they're like you know what. Let's do some research before we jump to any conclusions here.
Speaker 1:Again, this is my unvalidated hypothesis, but I sort of think it has something to do with the turning of the religious tides at the time. I think there was some like shifts, especially because the clergy had let down these folks for so long. There was some shifting perhaps. Maybe you know Catholicism and all these things were kind of shifting and so and and physicians were becoming a thing for the first time, right, and so there was something there. I think that's probably it as well, that right, physicians, probably in the same way, were not as separated from from the religious factor for that long really 1492 though 1518 15.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I still feel like we're really early. For all that, I don't know, I just associate any kind of like shift to be like the Enlightenment and that started in what Somewhere in the 1600s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's a paradigm shift, Like to get to the paradigm shift. There's little mini shifts that are happening and going on all over Europe and all over everywhere.
Speaker 2:Right, like the fucking France border. Who knew about that?
Speaker 1:But the interesting thing is is that the town really sort of leaned into the doctor's orders. They really believed, for the first go of this plague, that the only solution was for these folks to keep dancing Right. So there's some speculation as to why this was the suspected cure dancing right. So there's some speculation as to why this was the suspected cure. The first is that perhaps the doctors thought the blood of those inflicted had become stagnant and needed to move so this is an answer to your question earlier or that the only way to release the fever would be to sweat it out, though it's likely, according to Waller, that the cure was chosen because of the history of other dancing plagues in the nearby regions. So I'll take back some of what I just said, which is that, even though demons and the devil were thought to be the cause behind other dancing plagues, it sounds like there were also some cures perhaps that were found or thought of through means of quote unquote science at these other plagues.
Speaker 2:Boiled raccoon tail.
Speaker 1:Exactly, have you seen Footloose? Of course I've seen Footloose, alan.
Speaker 2:I have not you've never seen footloose, no but my my understanding is that there's a town where dancing has become illegal correct and kevin bacon has to show everyone the error of their ways. That's right, okay yep, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:He has an incredible opening dance sequence. I love the music. He's quite handsome. Oh, he's dreamy. I had a childhood crush on Kevin Bacon.
Speaker 2:Really yeah, in Footloose or later.
Speaker 1:Just in general, strasberg even built a stage and hired musicians and paid dancers to try and help facilitate this medicine. So that's how much they were like we're fucking dancing, right. They built a stage, they got musicians there to keep everybody dancing, to keep rhythms high. They also brought on paid dancers to kind of accompany those who were like manically dancing, just to keep everyone going.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, it's like one of those like pop-up concerts that happens in the middle of the street. They just bring a bunch of hired dancers to just get out there and start dancing.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So that it encourages other people to join.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. But they thought that that was the only way to save their lives. Some of the more locally pious viewed dancing as inherently sinful and they associated it with hedonism and assumed that those inflicted must be suffering a fitting punishment from God due to their unholy lives lived. So there were some at the town, the more religious, that thought okay, these people who are dancing must, like similar to syphilis, be getting some kind of fitting punishment for their wrongdoings.
Speaker 2:Is that the same reason why it's outlawed in Footloose? Exactly, I've never seen it.
Speaker 1:No, someone dies, dies, I think after a town dance in like a car accident, like drunk, drunk driving, and so the preacher, who's also the mayor, or whatever, is like dancing and partying as a teenager is too dangerous, and at least to drunk driving, at least to sex and blah, blah, blah, blah. So we've got I think it was like his daughter that died, you know. So we've got to ban it and no one can have any fun wow yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the parents are like, let's move there. That town sounds good to raise kevin bacon in little do they know.
Speaker 1:They brought the, the skeleton key to unlock the catalyst yeah, the dancing shoes but these poor people in strasburg right, they cannot stop dancing. No matter how many dancers they bring in, no matter how many times kevin bacon comes to town, they just can't stop dancing. Not only that, but more and more people are kind of joy, it's snowballing I thought he encourages dancing right, they bring him in to try to get everyone to dance. Yes, keep, keep up the rhythm.
Speaker 2:They keep dancing though, yeah, so what's the problem?
Speaker 1:but nobody's cured, nobody's able to kind of stop right that.
Speaker 2:That was never in his contract.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:They never said get the dancing out of people.
Speaker 1:So fast forward, right, the town kind of decides okay, these quote unquote physicians, these men of science, have not cured this issue. So we are going to turn our prayers to St Vitus. And before I talk about St Vitus and all the saints and all this shit they were about to talk about, I want to say there's a metal bar in Greenpoint, brooklyn, that I deeply love. There is an upside down cross as the handle to get into this metal venue. Right, this small metal bar, and it's called St Vitus, and you will understand by the end of this episode why their doorknob is an upside down cross. I just thought it was because metals rock and roll, but it's not. There's a specific reason Interesting. It's also very, very St Vitus is incredibly associated with choreomania and it makes sense to have a music venue there.
Speaker 2:Is choreomania a fancy name for the dancing plague?
Speaker 1:It's a mania, right. So it just means are in dancing mania, you cannot stop dancing.
Speaker 2:I will also say that I was looking for some inspiration, so I just grabbed a random book that you had left on the couch, which was based on the dancing plague, and just I put my finger down on a page and it was the word that I found was St Vitus, which I found so interesting. This book that you have, that is on something that is like what, just past the middle ages yeah is talking about one of the best metal bars in the city I'm like interesting what a coincidence yeah, well, I love the connection to this.
Speaker 1:Just wait, you're gonna, you're gonna. Next time you go to talk to the bartender, you'll have so much to say we were rocking out there, and that's that's where a good friend got covid that's too bad yeah that's not the fault of saint vitus, though I mean a little bit so some of the dancers right the afflicted, I will say, including frau trophia are kind of patient zero.
Speaker 1:They're taken to a mountaintop shrine and the shrine is a local sort of shrine to St Vitus in the town of Severn to pray for absolution. That's a quote. But as the dancing raged on, some people started to die. The method of getting the dance out of their system did not seem to be working. According to a local named Lucas Rem, about 15 people died a day, at least in July, though again we estimate that all in about 400 people died over the course of the summer and into early fall. So that pacing might not be totally accurate for the whole kind of course of the summer, but at least at the peak 15 people a day were dying from this dancing plague. Like, how crazy is that? How wild? Does that? Trap your head around?
Speaker 2:I mean way more. People died every day from COVID.
Speaker 1:I know I'm not trying to say that.
Speaker 2:Even more people die every day from drunk driving. I agree, even more people die every day from old age.
Speaker 1:But that's not. None of that is relevant because none of that is dancing Like dancing is such a strange. The point of this is not that this is the worst thing that's ever happened to humanity, which I think is the point you're trying to fight me on. The point of this is that dancing is a bizarre way to die. The inability to stop dancing is a very weird way to die. That's the point of the episode.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's fair.
Speaker 1:I don't think these people are the most tortured people that have ever lived.
Speaker 2:We don't need to start a charity.
Speaker 1:No, certainly not.
Speaker 2:We definitely don't need to start one for shark attack victims. There's very few. They really become scapegoated. Do you want to start a charity for them? For sharks, yeah, there's plenty already.
Speaker 1:So leadership of Strasburg soon realized that the aided musicians and hired dancers were not doing the inflicted any favors, and it did not take long for music to be banned, totally Precursor of Footloose here and outside of the secrecy of private homes, right. So again kind of dwelling on the hypocrisy here for a second. The elite would still have weddings with dancing and with music, but the everyday people were not allowed to dance or listen to music, because now the prescription, if you will, has sort of flipped, and so instead of everyone dancing all the time to try to run these people tired, the new prescription was no dancing, no music, unless you're wealthy, and then you can do whatever the fuck you want to do.
Speaker 2:OK, so that's par for the course. Yeah, speaking of sharks, though, did you know that Greenland sharks live so long that some of them were some of the ones that are still alive today experienced the dancing plague?
Speaker 1:Well, I want to clarify a few things. Yes, I did know that, but two none of the Greenland sharks experienced the dancing plague. They might have been alive at the same time, but none of them were there. This was a pretty landlocked, not seafaring town. I just want to make that super clear.
Speaker 2:Having not interviewed all of the Greenland Sharks, personally I feel like you're making quite the bias.
Speaker 1:So this move away, right? Only reaffirmed that the episode was indeed being caused by St Vitus and not some medical reason. Right, the? The hired dancers were not working and so everyone was like okay, then it is, it is a curse, right, it's a curse from a saint. This religious interpretation was also validated because of the view that many in strasbourg were living morally corrupt and sinful lives. In turn, leadership sanctioned new laws meant to clean up the town. This included and this is very sad and poor practice driving hundreds of the city's poorest sex workers outside of the walls of the town, leaving them to seek shelter in the surrounding villages.
Speaker 2:Perhaps in the oceans.
Speaker 1:Are you trying to say that the sex workers that were excommunicated from Strasbourg in an effort to quote unquote clean up the town were actually Greenland sharks? Is that the point that you're making?
Speaker 2:Your words, not mine, okay, Two things happen.
Speaker 1:Next One the city made it illegal to dance. They realized that there was a bit of a contagious element at work here. No music, no dancing. Two some of the originally inflicted seemed to recover and stop dancing. So, ah, a method that works. Get rid of the poor and the people that are taken advantage of and treated like shit in this town, and oh huh.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm not saying that they are Greenland sharks. That's crazy. But anytime there's a diaspora, people generally gravitate towards coastal towns because those are port cities and from there they go to other places. They definitely had interaction with any kind of oceanic body.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I want to say about the elite having secret weddings that included dancing and singing and all that music at this time of like weddings that included dancing and singing and all that music at this time that the magistrate added a sub-sentence to the ruling where they kind of said that the elite could do that, stating that stringed instruments at weddings were okay, but if anyone used tambourines or drums, they would have to carry that on their own conscious.
Speaker 2:That's called the no scrubs clause.
Speaker 1:The inflicted were also rounded up inside to keep the dancing from spreading. The next move was to build a new chapel at the Shrine to St Vitus at Severn and to send more dancers there to make good with the angered saint. It was a very difficult journey, right? So the dancers needed a lot of assistance, obviously, to make it there, because they're just dancing wildly and they continue to dance on the entire journey. It also was a bit over a day, so get from strasbourg to the saint vitus shrine was like a day journey and on top of that you have hundreds of dancers you're trying to shepherd there that won't stop dancing and like, just think of this.
Speaker 1:Like, obviously, in medieval europe, everything smelled like shit, but this, the sweat and the blood and these people's feet are bleeding right there no sneakers, tragic situation. Yeah, so at the end, right, you got all these people all the way to the base of this you know shrine. They still need to climb a hundred feet or so to get to the top of the mountain where this, this shrine, which is kind of in this hollowed out cave, actually exists. So it was quite annoying, I imagine, and treacherous and violent that you have all these people flailing manically wildly, that you need to kind of not only shepherd a day's walk away, but then get them up a hike, you know, to the top of this mountain wait.
Speaker 2:So this shrine to saint vitus yeah is built into the side of a mountain.
Speaker 1:There's like a chapel at the base and there's other things, but there's like a literal, it's almost like a pagan shrine. They're leaving a lot of wax sculptures and candles and things, but it's kind of at this cave at the top.
Speaker 2:I was going to say this feels really heathenistic.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of saints I learned when I sat down with Marie Carter and we talked about St Walpurgis Night A lot of the saints have shrines and you know, chapels or whatever kind of monuments that are within stone. Because and I learned this because a lot of saints have what they call quote unquote saint oil. But it's like, okay, if you're say same, just say hypothetically, I don't think this is the case, but saint vitus is trying in this mountaintop, say there was like a spring right that came down the edge of it or something. Sure they might collect that water. And they said, okay, this is saint vitus's oil. And like the idea would be like, oh, if you had a blind kid, you could put the oil on his eyes and it would cure him which is different from holy water yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's like the oil of a saint yeah, is it oily water?
Speaker 1:it's just no, it's just water okay that's just what they call it, or like in some. There's a there you can bless oil. You know there's other ways, but there's some where it became out of. And again you have to think about the blending of cultures here. Right, you have like this is the holy Empire, but you have paganism clashing with Christianity melding for many, many, many hundreds of years, thousands of years, before they sort of become even still right, chris, we've talked about this on this podcast many times. A lot of the customs that have become Christian quote unquote were really re-skinned pagan rituals. So many of the holidays that we even celebrate today are re-skinned or re-skinned pagan festivals and rituals Valentine's Day, christmas, halloween.
Speaker 2:Easter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, samhain, easter, may Day, Like there's, it's just St.
Speaker 2:Patrick's Day.
Speaker 1:It's quite pervasive, I would say Is St Patrick's Day. Perhaps I have not looked into it that much, but probably right.
Speaker 1:Maybe, but it's quite pervasive and Perhaps I have not looked into it that much, but Probably right. Maybe, but it's quite pervasive and it's more of a thing that people think right the blending of that so I'll actually talk about in a little bit. At the end of this kind of after everything has happened and a new ruling, you know, christian leader comes to the shrine of St Vitus and he's like get all this whack shit out of here. Like this is superstitious, this is pagan, this isn't like what we stand for here a bit hypocritical for a for a uh religion that demonizes idol worship exactly so.
Speaker 1:As the situation continued to worsen, the city went as far as to order a mass in honor of the victims at notre dame right. So they were like please can you pray for those impacted by this plague in Strasbourg, because nothing that we're doing is helping.
Speaker 2:This was when, before, notre Dame burned down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hoping that the power of this cathedral and the number of parishioners could help.
Speaker 2:I see.
Speaker 1:Next, it was demanded that the entire city of Strasbourg make an offering to St Vitus in the form of a wax carving, like this candle made of wax, but it was a carving of the saint. So then, the candle was taken to the shrine in Saverne along with wagons filled with cursed dancers. Here, the inflicted were given small crosses and red shoes. Crosses were also drawn onto the shoes with holy water.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, why the red shoes?
Speaker 1:Well, red dye was the most expensive at the time, really, and it's very hard for historians to understand why the priests gave the inflicted red-dyed shoes and where they could have sourced them from, because red dye was incredibly difficult to procure. So that's a mystery.
Speaker 2:That is interesting, I know that, know that, I guess, at least during biblical, biblical times. So you know, at least 1500 years earlier. Yeah, the most rare dye color was purple and that's why in antiquity purple was associated with royalty.
Speaker 1:Interesting, simply because it was the rarest dye yeah, in the book I remember waller talks a bit about like it could have been like blood from insects, like that's how they're sourcing red dye, right like it's gonna say just like you gotta gut an animal, yeah, it's red.
Speaker 2:It's red now yeah.
Speaker 1:So after this kind of big mass right, each dancer was also requested to donate a penny for the poor, which obviously someone helped them do. So a few weeks after the field trip to the shrine the plague did actually subside. So not all at once, it happened over time. Things kind of just slowly returned to normal, right, they took this big pilgrimage to the shrine a day away. They came back and things kind of petered back into place. So after kind of this return to normalcy, strasbourg quickly forgot its pious pledge and the brothels and the casinos reopened.
Speaker 1:So very quickly yeah, very quickly things kind of came back. I mean, to whatever extent they don't have indoor plumbing, but they have casinos I think when they say casino, they mean like gambling halls, right, like where people are gambling. And you, I think when they say casino, they mean like gambling halls, right, like where people are gambling, and you know, like when they do it on the knight's tale, you know, and jeffrey chaucer's character owes uh the guys all this money for like dice and cards and shit.
Speaker 2:It's that kind of a thing I mean, that's just like a tavern, people playing dice yeah, I think they had dedicated kind of places for that because it wasn't accepted. I prefer slot machines that are run by like small dinosaurs, like in the Flintstones.
Speaker 1:Don't we all? But after this right, the shrine itself to St Vitus at the top of the hill became quite popular for people for a period of time who were looking for a miracle. So it became kind of this touristy destination and people heard of its healing powers because, oh my God, it healed all the people in Strasbourg. So we'll go there now if somebody is suffering from something, because there's power there. Another interesting quirk that sprang up after this event was the voluntary dancing in honor of St Vitus and St John. The idea was that if one chose to dance like a maniac for a day, they would be relieved of dancing mania for the rest of the year.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:So there would be like a fun day of like, okay, we're going to all dance and like get it kind of out of our systems and then we'll be okay.
Speaker 2:I wish that's how all sickness worked. One day I'm going to go fucking hard with tuberculosis and then after that fine.
Speaker 1:You'll be safe and then after that, fine, you'll be safe. So this soon morphed within the region to a belief that taking part in this ritualistic dance could be healing of other maladies and woes as well. Before we kind of come back and we talk about the saints and we talk about this in more detail, I think it's helpful to spend a moment talking about the other dancing plagues, so that we can kind of all tie them up together.
Speaker 1:The dancing plague of Strasbourg is perhaps the most well-known and the most well-documented. This is the one of 1492. 1518. What happened in 1492? The meteor hit, but it's not the earliest known of its kind. The earliest known event dates back to the 1020s in Bernburg, a small town in modern-day Germany. This incident involved 18 inflicted, singing and dancing uncontrollably disturbing a Christmas Eve church service.
Speaker 2:I just remember like two people like going crazy with the dancing plague and one person's like, yeah, it's not as bad as the 1020s, what a crazy year.
Speaker 1:Another in 1237 involved a group of children who had traveled around 12 miles and sang and danced the entire way. There are some obvious similarities here to the legend of the Pied Piper so set in medieval Germany. I took this as an excuse to look up the Pied Piper Set in medieval Germany. The story of the Pied Piper goes a piper dressed in pied or a colorful clothing was hired to lure away the rats from the town when the town refused to pay him for his services. So he would use his pipe to lure away the rats and rid the town of rats and pests right.
Speaker 2:A key detail is he did it.
Speaker 1:Right, he did it, and then the town refused to pay him for it, and so he used his musical pipe to lure away all of the children of the town, just as he had done for the rats.
Speaker 2:Honestly, just why not bring the rats back? He clearly could have. He's got the skills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but he wanted to teach them a lesson, yeah you bring the damn rats back. No, he wanted to get you know. He wanted to take something that was important to them. Listen, I don't fault him for that.
Speaker 2:What does he do with it? Why would you need so many kids? What are you gonna do with them?
Speaker 1:He's not gonna do anything with them.
Speaker 2:So he gave. What did he do with them?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think he puts them in a mountain or something.
Speaker 2:He puts, he brings them up to the St Vitus cave.
Speaker 1:That's right, and they're just still there. So another early example In 1374, a similar dancing plague struck In Germany. There was a dancing plague outbreak that is commonly referred to as St John's Dance. Participants in this dancing outbreak were described, according to Waller, as hallucinating and seeing visions. They yelled out that they were drowning in a sea of blood and seemed to be afraid of both the color red and pointed shoes, kind of a callback or a precursor to 1518. This plague, different from in Strausberg, left the impression that those impacted were possessed by the devil or demons, which is how it was explained locally. It was clear that those impacted were suffering against their will, right? So even though we kind of land on St Vitus and in Strausberg like, the root cause is not as clearly defined as in this 1300s plague where they're like okay, this is the devil, right, this is demons.
Speaker 2:I did just Google. The Pied Piper grabbed the kids and led them off into the mountains with the promise of he's going to bring them to a better country, and that's the end of the story. There's no redeeming arc at the end.
Speaker 1:That's how it goes.
Speaker 2:I guess so.
Speaker 1:It's a tough break. We have pretty cushy lives now compared to that.
Speaker 2:Compared to that yes. Compared to being herded like rats yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this plague again the plague in the 1300s occurred in the city of Aachen, so this plague was considered the first major dancing plague in Europe, Major meaning enough people were impacted, right more than these smaller plagues that we just mentioned. Still predating the incident in Strasbourg, quoting from the 1888 book the Black Death and the Dancing Mania by Justice Hecker, quote they formed circles in hand and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together, in wild delirium, until, at length, they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in clothes bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered and remained free from complaint until the next attack. End quote. In 1463, the town of Trier, a more modest dancing plague took hold here. It was understood that those inflicted saw the head of St John the Baptist swimming in blood.
Speaker 2:How does a head swim?
Speaker 1:Well, I think they just mean like floating along in blood. So bobbing, bobbing in blood, yeah. Just the head Bobbing in blood, just the head.
Speaker 2:Was John the Baptist decapitated?
Speaker 1:No, so he's just like-. I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 2:Maybe treading water.
Speaker 1:Well, no, he's decapitated in the vision, it's just his head.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know, blood's hard to see through.
Speaker 1:Similar to the plague in Aachen. These folks were hallucinating, obviously, and the blood theme is similar. Dancing plagues of medieval Europe have come to be associated with two different saints, so here we're going to get into the saints a little bit. One, St John, who we just talked about.
Speaker 2:John the Baptist.
Speaker 1:Yes, and sometimes they use. So one thing that happens after this is both St John and St Vitus become kind of like shorthand for these dancing plagues. So sometimes they'll say like St John's dance or St John's curse or St Vitus's dance, right To refer to these plagues.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I feel like John the Baptist is one of the few saints that are well known.
Speaker 1:He was a prophet. So John the Baptist was a Jewish, I'm reading from Wikipedia was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. The interesting thing and this is the thing about religion that gets me thinking a little bit he's revered as a major religious figure in about five major faiths, which I just find to be quite interesting.
Speaker 2:That is interesting.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk a little bit about St John and St Vitus and why we have these two different saints that both kind of oddly become associated with dancing plagues, right, and they kind of have different associations with different outbreaks. One early theory on why St Vitus came into the mix at all dates back toa plague from 1237, which happened to take place on St Vitus Day in Erfurt. So another theory that Waller lays out is that there were rumors that St Vitus had cast a demon out of the convulsing son of Emperor Diocletian. St Vitus was a martyr who, according to to legend, was sent into a cauldron of boiling tar and lead and somehow escaped unscathed okay, I was gonna ask because, like we've been talking a lot about saint vitus, who the heck is this guy?
Speaker 1:so saint vitus was born in 290, the year 290 a good year and, according to wikipedia, he died in the year 303, meaning that he was only 12 or 13, which honestly like. Why, why, why is he so famous?
Speaker 2:Why are they boiling?
Speaker 1:10 year olds and June 15th is the day of his feast, so upcoming June 15th St Vitus feast. So in the Middle Ages he was counted as one of the 14 holy helpers.
Speaker 2:So in the Middle Ages, he was counted as one of the 14 holy helpers. Okay, so this guy who we're talking so much about, who is the namesake of both a metal bar and a metal band, was only 12 years old at the time of his death.
Speaker 1:I mean, if these Wikipedia dates are to be trusted, how?
Speaker 2:do you?
Speaker 1:get sainthood even before your bar mitzvah. He also looks really old in these drawings. So I don't maybe in these drawings. So I don't. Maybe this is misinformation, I don't know he looked old for his age. All his friends made him buy their beer so he is actually considered the patron saint of dancers and entertainment in general. There is a record from 1509 in which an abbot writes about a dancing plague from the 1300s and likens it to St Vitus' dance Right. So there's this association that's kind of growing across Europe.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I'm just on the Wikipedia article now too, and St Vitus is often depicted in a cauldron with a rooster or a lion. Yeah, religion is so weird. Why the fuck are they boiling a child with both a rooster and a lion?
Speaker 1:So, weird.
Speaker 2:Why do they think that's I don't know impactful?
Speaker 1:Or anything Like. What does it symbolize? Even what does it mean? So this association with the saints is twofold right? Some thought that they were in fact the driving force behind the plague. Right that Saint Vitus or Saint John were causing this plague as punishment.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, he's mad because he got boiled as a large cat.
Speaker 1:A reprimand for those inflicted right For their impurity or their immodest lives. And again, many prayed to these saints for relief. When choreomania came to their doorstep, they turned to St Vitus or St John Sure. In the 1400s, st Vitus's name became so associated with this punishment that many used it as a curse. They believed that the words this is all from John Waller, but they agreed that the words quote God give you St Vitus, like from an angry enemy, like someone down the hall pisses you off or whatever, would result in a fever and the inability to stop dancing.
Speaker 2:Little did they know God didn't give St Vitus, he gave rock and roll.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Kiss.
Speaker 1:Thank you, kiss. I also think it's incredibly important to note that during the 1300s, dancing had become a typical response, in some ways, to the approach of the Black Death. So I want to dwell on this for one second, because not a dancing plague, but very, very similar and I think again helps to set the stage for what's going on mentally in medieval Europe. So this was an attempt to cheer each other up, sort of like an extravagant last party. They would hold weddings and parties as often as they could, doing anything possible to create cheer and happiness before this inevitable, tortured, gruesome death.
Speaker 2:Sounds like the pandemic. Yeah, everyone. Just I mean you couldn't do anything except hang out and watch Netflix. Go on Zoom.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to quote here from the BBC article. Quote Though it is now the most famous example, strasbourg was not the only dance plague to hit Europe during the medieval and early modern era. Many instances of uncontrolled or threatening dancing were recorded in Germany, france and other parts of the Holy Roman Empire. In earlier centuries these events were interpreted as divine punishment or demonic possession. A lot of what we've talked about Remedied with religious solutions like processions, masses or direct intervention from priests. Two decades before the summer of 1518, a cleric in Strasbourg named Sebastian Brandt wrote in his satirical allegory the Ship of Fools quote that dance and sin are one in kind, blaming Satan for all of this. Giddy dancing, gaily done. End quote. So again, just to set the stage, that this was decades before the dancing plague in Strasbourg that it was considered by some, like you know, this devilish kind of thing to do. So you can see how it. In some ways is this act of rebellion right?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:A subconscious act of rebellion. Local records also point to a monk in 1442 who danced himself to death in his monastery located in Switzerland. It sort of like a gentler version of like a monk lighting himself on fire, perhaps.
Speaker 2:I, I'm sorry I'm just picturing a monk all by himself playing ddr and just getting way too into it of course you are.
Speaker 1:Between the years of 1200 and 1600. In europe, as many as 18 dancing plagues were recorded geographically. While they were not on top of each other, they were also not so spread out Generally. They also happened along the Rhine and the Moselle rivers, spanning from Germany to France to Switzerland. So when you look at a map of this, you can actually see they're kind of like concentrated to some extent and they're along the Rhine and the Moselle rivers, which are connected to each other. So we're going to, when we talk about causes and potential theories, one of them obviously is like something in the water supply yeah, I mean word travels fast, and so many times it's just some young gal and her dad excuse me catches her at the hop at the hop.
Speaker 2:And he says how dare you, that's the devil. And she says no, no, I just got, I just got, I just got St Vitus plague.
Speaker 1:In Italy, spiders got involved, Spiders. So around Sicily for hundreds of years, people who thought that they had been bitten by tarantulas which were really wolf spiders with called tarantulas there would dance, which they thought would be the only cure for the poison. Locals thought that the spider bite evoked tarantism or hysterical behavior. They believed that a specific rhythm had to be kept to properly cure the bite. The tarantella has become a known Italian folk dance. It's quite fast and typically is accompanied by tambourines. Right, so they took the word tarantella, and the tarantella, which is a very famous Italian folk dance that most people have heard of, is really because of what they thought were tarantula bites would kill them if they didn't dance themselves to a cure.
Speaker 2:Speaking of spiders, have you heard about the Joro spider?
Speaker 1:No, and I don't really want to talk about spiders that much.
Speaker 2:Well, we're going to briefly.
Speaker 1:Okay, because it's topical. Okay.
Speaker 2:It's coming this summer. What the spider is. The spider is. What does that mean? It's an invasive species.
Speaker 1:No, it's coming here.
Speaker 2:That's in the south and it's coming to New York this summer.
Speaker 1:How big is it?
Speaker 2:Eight inches.
Speaker 1:No. Alan this is a joke. And no travels. We're moving wind currents. No, it can travel up to 100 miles in a day. Alan, I really don't understand what you're saying and I'm gonna black out it's a huge, huge spider.
Speaker 2:But here's the good news you ready?
Speaker 1:no, their main diet is mosquitoes and lanternflies no, I don't give a shit about that, I don't care.
Speaker 2:care they're completely harmless to humans.
Speaker 1:It's not that they're harmless, it's that they exist.
Speaker 2:And they spin webs that look golden.
Speaker 1:I don't care. Isn't that cool? No, it's not cool. I hate spiders. I have such a fear of spiders. It is my weakness. And an eight-inch spider. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and an eight inch spider. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1:Yeah they're big and scary. No, alan, no.
Speaker 2:They're going to take care of the other invasive species.
Speaker 1:They're coming to New York City.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on wind currents they fly.
Speaker 1:Alan, we really are going to have to go. When are they coming?
Speaker 2:Coming soon to a city near you.
Speaker 1:Do you know the date?
Speaker 2:They did not announce themselves. You said, this summer yeah, because they are based off how they've been spreading where did you read this?
Speaker 1:was it reddit?
Speaker 2:no, these articles are getting are all over the place right now, because it's recognizable news sources.
Speaker 1:Are you on truth social again?
Speaker 2:no, I'm, I'm on newsweek. No, it's. I keep getting served these articles this makes me really upset.
Speaker 1:If that's not clear, I really wish we hadn't talked about this. Or are they going to be in the subway?
Speaker 2:no, they're probably going to be. Uh, they, they dwell exclusively in pillows. That's not true I know it's not true uh no, they, they probably just hang out all places I'm really upset, but let's finish this up.
Speaker 1:Golden webs and they eat mosquitoes. I don't care, lantern flies I don't care, we fucking hate lantern flies. I don't know why we do, because they're killing the trees, I think, are they? I thought that was the beetles.
Speaker 1:In 1863, madagascar also suffered its own dancing plague. And why I'm talking about this? Because, again, it's quite different. Right, it's not in medieval Europe, but it came at a very stressful time for those living in the region. So it kind of speaks to the fact that this stress and rage and turmoil could be a catalyst Two years after the queen had passed away, a queen who was kind of notoriously tough and brutal and had protected the nation, and so the country was now living in constant fear of an invasion from another country.
Speaker 2:Apparently they spin their own parachutes in order to travel on wind currents.
Speaker 1:I don't want to hear anything else about them.
Speaker 2:Their number one hobby is stand-up comedy.
Speaker 1:So what caused the dancing plague of 1518? There are, of course, many theories out there from historians and different schools of thought. The truth is that we may never know the exact reason, but I do tend to agree with John Waller's thoughts to some degree on this, so let's talk about it. Generally, waller points to a collective state of unconsciousness driven by the extreme stress and poverty of the area, coupled with the belief that God was angry and Strasburg collectively was living in sin, a subconscious act of rebellion rooted in a trance state that took over the town. Quoting from a Historycom article by Evan Andrews, quote According to historian John Waller, the explanation most likely concerns St Vitus, a Catholic saint who pious 16th century Europeans believed had the power to cure people with a dancing plague.
Speaker 1:When combined with the horrors of disease and famine, both of which were tearing through Strasbourg in 1518, the St Vitus superstition may have triggered a stress-induced hysteria that took hold of much of the city. Other theories have suggested the dancers were members of a religious cult, or even that they accidentally ingested ergot, a toxic mold that grows on a damp rye and produces spasms and hallucinations. End quote.
Speaker 2:So there's a mold that grows on a grain.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's got to be a nasty one. Yeah Well sorry I say that, but like cybicillin is a mold.
Speaker 1:Right right, it's a similar sort of, but you just don't know that you're getting it, which is quite traumatic.
Speaker 2:I'm just you know normally you associate sickness from mold as being real, real, bad.
Speaker 1:Some theorize about epilepsy and other physical conditions, but I do believe that it would be hard to sort of mass produce something like epilepsy, right? Some also point to something in the water, which could be possible, considering the many events took place on these two connected rivers.
Speaker 2:Oh, by a water source, huh.
Speaker 1:But again it seems interesting that it only impacted the inflicted right, the dancers who are inflicted for a seemingly arbitrary period of time, and only a selection of those living in the area right. There was many people living in Strasbourg that were not impacted. Waller points to other religions and cultures that play with subconsciousness and rituals as an expression of their beliefs Haitian voodoo rituals, Southern Baptist Sunday Masses, for example. He likens this to conversion disorder. So conversion disorder is when a person experiences physical symptoms like blindness, deafness, numbness, seizures or paralysis with no known medical causes.
Speaker 2:Conversion disorder.
Speaker 1:It's just sort of like this generic term that's like oh man, something really bad is happening, Like we know that you're blind now, but we don't know why.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting. So it has nothing to do with religious beliefs.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:A bit of a misnomer.
Speaker 1:Quoting from the BBC article, again quote several years after the incident in Strasbourg, the physician Paracelsus embarked on a series of treatises on choreomania, including the diseases that deprive man of his reason, such as St Vitus's dance, falling sickness, melancholy and insanity, and their correct treatment. Paracelsus, who is now best known for his pioneering work on chemistry and medicine, argued that this phenomenon was probably more earthly than divine. He suggested that a person's laughing veins could provoke a ticklish feeling that rose from their limbs to their head, clouding judgment and provoking extreme motion until the frenzied blood was calmed. Paracelsus believed that those who fell victim to the dancing plague were partially to blame. He wrote that quote horrors and scoundrels who take pleasure in guitar and loop playing, satisfying all voluptuousness, bodily pleasure, imagination and fancy. End quote. But generally he believed that imagination was to blame, meaning mass hysteria.
Speaker 2:This guy sounds like a prude.
Speaker 1:Well, I also want to know that he's quite anti-woman. He talks quite a bit in his writings about how openly opposed to women in general that he is, so and obviously when he talks about whores he's quite he's talking about all women. Yeah, well, in either way, like we don't talk about sex workers that way.
Speaker 2:We have respect for everybody, and that's you know not how he lives his life or lived his life. He's talking about any woman that shows her elbows in public Scoundrels.
Speaker 1:So dancing mania and choreomania are defined as the inability to stop dancing. In ancient Greece, kouros meant dance and mania means madness. The term the dancing plague was first crafted by paracelsus himself. And just because this is really interesting and obnoxious paracelsus first name at birth, alan do you want to guess what it was?
Speaker 2:okay, so this is what I was about to ask, because paracelsus sounds like an ancient greek name, but we are in a very different time period, so this is his last name so his, that's his last name.
Speaker 1:So what's his full name? Or that's like his like.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's going to be something super lame.
Speaker 1:It's like his pen name.
Speaker 2:It's going to be Liam.
Speaker 1:Philippus Aurelius.
Speaker 2:OK, so it's Latin.
Speaker 1:Theopratus Bomastus von Himoheim.
Speaker 2:I mean, bomastus is a fucking badass name, but he doesn't deserve such a cool name. What's wrong with this guy?
Speaker 1:I know it sucks. So he was born in 1493. He was a Swiss physician, an amateur theologian, a philosopher and an alchemist.
Speaker 2:An alchemist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is just like a loose term they used a lot back then. But he is known for being the first to suggest that mental health and a moral conscious have a direct relationship with physical health. Okay, he called for the humanization and treatment of the mentally ill, essentially convinced that they were not possessed by evil spirits, but rather suffering a medical condition just like a physical health condition. But he contradicts himself right, because he's both advocating for the fact that, like people who are experiencing mental health, you know that's something to be treated like a disease, but he's also saying like oh, if you're a whore, then you deserve the dancing plague I've never just sent by a saint vitus I mean, this is so interesting.
Speaker 2:Very rarely do you find someone that suffers from two like life-al condition simultaneously both wokeness and head up assness.
Speaker 1:There you go. I mean, I suppose, like to some extent he's, I think what he the point he's swirling about here, or I'm swirling about that he's making is like, if you feel so shamed of your own life, this might be an outcome that happens because you are living in sin life. This might be an outcome that happens because you are living in sin right and that and your lack of morality is going to cause you to have this kind of like self-punishment response.
Speaker 2:Living in sin. Why not dance?
Speaker 1:In one of his pieces of work, which I'm not going to try to pronounce, he writes, quote no no, no try Von den.
Speaker 2:Krakentien, kronkentien, try von den crack crack crankantine, clunkentine, quote.
Speaker 1:Thus, the cause of the disease, chorea lasciva, also known as seidenham's choreo or saint vitus's dance, is a mere opinion and idea assumed by imagination affecting those who believe in such a thing. This opinion and idea are the origin of the disease, both in children and adults. In children, the case is also imagination, based not on thinking but on perceiving, because they have heard or seen something. The reason is this their sight and hearing are so strong that, unconsciously, they have fantasies about what they have seen or heard. End quote. Obviously, these principles seem quite basic to us now, but I mean, that's children in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, that's also a perfect template for childhood trauma, right? You know they see mom and dad fighting. They don't understand why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And they just construct this whole narrative.
Speaker 1:So Sendenheim's chorea is a diagnosis named in a way for St Vitus's dance right, so it's sort of named after this. But the interesting thing is that it's still a condition and a diagnosis that's used and talked about today. It involves fast, random body jerks and movements, partially in children. Again, the word chorea, coming from choreomania, has been upcycled to refer to this diagnosis is this dancing, or is this like parkinson's? Right, it's closer to that huh yeah to the latter.
Speaker 1:Leading up to the dancing plague of 1518, frau trophia would have lived through many rounds of failed crops. According to john waller. It is safe to assume that she was at least undernourished, if not starving. Waller also believed that those inflicted with the plague were in a deep state of trance. This is and again he takes a lot of this from paracelsus right, but this is the only way he claims that those dancing would be able to do so without stopping, despite the extreme pain and exhaustion that they should have felt wait, I'm confused.
Speaker 2:He's saying that they're doing this because they're now malnourished.
Speaker 1:No, he's saying that there's this civil unrest, from years of starvation and famine and living in extreme poverty, while the clergy kind of do as they will and live these lives of luxury, will and live these lives of luxury. And so because of this civil unrest, there becomes this need for some kind of subconscious escapism and rebellion.
Speaker 2:And that's what this is. I see, it's the dance, the oppression away technique.
Speaker 1:Right, it's almost like they blacked out and they just needed to move, you know.
Speaker 2:Sure, they've been there.
Speaker 1:I do want to say that some of these plagues I don't think we talked about this too much, but some of the plagues also noted, like the, the first-hand sources, especially the ones with kids that the kids would like pause at night, like they would. They would dance until they literally passed out from exhaustion, like on the street or wherever they were. Then they would sleep for a few hours and they would wake up and keep dancing. So there there was like this cycle of you know if it goes on for months and months in Strasbourg, across the entire summer, people were sleeping, they would like pass out, their bodies would give out, and then they would wake up and keep dancing.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Hundreds of years after the plague in the 1700s, cardinal Louis de Roan came to town right. So he comes to Severn, where the shrine of St de rohan came to town right. So he comes to savern where the shrine of saint vitus is located. He finds the cave with the shrine and he is appalled by the local superstitious belief and he had all of those wax offerings and candles removed.
Speaker 1:He thought it was, like you know, just disgusting, un-catholic sort of way to look at saints another prude so this piece of history feels to me, both as an example of how quickly beliefs and customs can change, but also how long we can look back and remember the strange events that create the fabric of human history. I want to talk also a little bit about the dance macabre, which is not entirely related but is kind of adjacent and interesting to me.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. What is the dance macabre?
Speaker 1:So the term dance macabre, meaning the dance of death, refers to a visually represented allegory from the late Middle Ages. It comes a little bit before Strasbourg. Essentially, At its core, dance macabre reminds us that death will come from everyone, right? So what it is? Let me take a step back. It's a visual trope that we see in art and paintings and carvings at the time. Typically it shows like kings and paupers and skeletons dancing together, Meaning it doesn't matter if you are King, Henry VIII or someone living on the street, we will all die. It's kind of like this Puritan reminder in some ways, right, that death will come to all of us. No one is above death.
Speaker 2:Oh God, save you Puritans.
Speaker 1:The earliest visual example that we know dates back to 1424 and is referred to as the Lost Mural on the south wall of the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris. Notably, the mural shows a deceased crowned king and interesting, this was at a time when France did not have a crowned king. But some also claim that these paintings, called the Triumph of Death paintings, are an earlier example, which show animated skeletal-like figures cleaning up dead human bodies. But regardless of the earliest example, it doesn't really matter. Dance macabre often depicts people of all walks of life again dancing with skeletons. Some also claim that the dance macabre was acted out kind of in 3D if you will at village festivals, meaning that locals would dress up like corpses or skeletons and dance at festivals as kind of this sobering reminder right that death will come for us all.
Speaker 2:It's like a Dia de los Muertos.
Speaker 1:But less sort of nice yeah, less nice.
Speaker 1:The Black Death had a lot to do with Dance Macabre, of course, right. So I'm going to quote here from Ana Luiz de Ormo's thesis titled the Black Death and its Effect on 14th and 15th Century Art. Quote Some plague art contains gruesome imagery that was directly influenced by the mortality of the plague or by the medieval fascination with the macabre and awareness of death that were augmented by the plague. Some plague art documents psychosocial responses to the fear that the plague aroused in its victims. Other plague art is of a subject that directly responds to people's reliance on religion to give them hope. End quote. While Dance Macabre is not directly connected to the dancing plague, it's thematically strikingly similar and calls upon some of the social fears that were prevalent during the medieval period in Europe. But one of these dance of death works of art was actually on display in Strasbourg, a painting in the Dominican's New Temple which was painted in 1474, right, so in the lead up to 1518.
Speaker 2:That's right, because the Middle Ages ended in like 1500 or something.
Speaker 1:It did that's right 500 to 1500.
Speaker 2:We googled.
Speaker 1:So let's just confess this right. Obviously, obviously, what we do on this podcast typically is the history of horror. There's not a ton of dancing plague films yeah, what the heck?
Speaker 2:why did we do this episode? I'm sorry, don't get me wrong. This has been one of the most fascinating ones we've done in a while yay, I'm glad that you enjoyed it but there's very little horror involved it's just kind of weird.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take a few swings. One swing a small swing is that there are some films that are sort of directly tied to dancing mania, the best being Climax.
Speaker 2:Footloose.
Speaker 1:The best being Climax from 2018, which is one of a very top theater experience for me. I highly recommend Climax climax I actually snuck out of work to go see it. It was playing in new york and like only at one small theater and I was like, oh man, I'm sick, I have to go. And I had tickets to see climax and it was like me and two other people in the audience and at the end of it, the other two people in the theater and I talked about it because we were all so like shaken up that we just like stood in the theater and discussed it.
Speaker 2:There was only three of you in the theater.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like 3 pm. It's this French film that nobody wanted to see but us. Wow, yeah, so that's one, right. There's also Mass Hysteria from 2018, right, there's Mass Hysteria films. There's the Red Shoes. You can kind of make some leaps here. We should also mention some directly inspired films the Dancing Plague from 2016 and Strasberg 1518 from 2020.
Speaker 2:Have you seen either of these?
Speaker 1:No. But that all being said, the bigger point I think that I want to make is the connection between dance and horror, which is one of my favorite sub genres of horror film and that one that I've talked about on online in different facets quite often, and there's kind of two different things happening here.
Speaker 2:right, there are both dance horror films like witching hour like suspiria and and the remake no, come on, plug the best one we did.
Speaker 1:We have made a few dance horror films. Our kind of pride and joy is something called witching hour, which we can link in the episode, please do. There's also horror films that feature dance. Right, so they might not be inherently dance films like Suspiria, but they feature dance Pulp fiction. There you go. If you call pulp fiction horror, it's got some scary bits In 2024, so this year a film called Abigail came out, which does involve dance. It's quite fun and I think that's something that you know. Go check it out. It's timely, it's new.
Speaker 1:There's also one of my favorite random dance scenes in what I would consider a horror film is from Ex Machina 2014. When the spoilers for Ex Machina, but when the kind of creator you know tech guy starts dancing with the woman and it's just this bizarre, kind of weird interaction and then we understand later why it is that way, but it's this jarring moment that I think works so well. We also have to talk about our friend Jen Wexler's film, the Sacrifice Game, which has an amazing scene with dancing in it and it kind of also acts as this demonic ritual moment. I don't want to give away too much, but definitely watch the Sacrifice Game. And then you have films like Black Swan right, which again I would put in a similar category to Suspiria, where they are horror dance films at their core Right, they're wholly about dance.
Speaker 1:Even Megan right Megan and Pearl, both feature dance scenes and Midsommar right. So I think it's not anything new to say that horror dance have overlap, and there's lots of film examples of these. And these are just some of my favorite, and I certainly am not claiming that the dancing plague of Strasberg is the reason why. But I wanted to kind of tie in a little bit of horror here, and I think the dancing piece in this choreomania tie in is a really good way to think about it. There's also mass hysteria, right, and that's another subcategory of horror that you could pull out when you're thinking of a dancing plague or something that's, you know, impossible for a human to shake out of.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, alan, I don't know if you can think of any, but like films where people are being ritualistically forced, or you know, to do something that they they can't stop doing, I think that's quite a terrifying concept. Also even in in frankenstein, right, the angry mob that has a lot of similarities, I think, to strasburg and kind of this trope of this, the angry townspeople that are rebelling against the. You know, in this case, in Frankenstein's case, the poor, you know, misunderstood doctor and the monster, but conversely, at Strasberg it was the elite.
Speaker 2:The only thing that comes to mind is from the Walking Dead.
Speaker 1:Oh, tell me.
Speaker 2:It's actually pretty. I'm pulling this from the comic because I haven't seen much of the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But before they understand how the zombie virus is actually spread, they're either chopping off limbs or executing people. You know to not spread the zombie virus, but that's. We learned that that was completely unnecessary. But, it's just, it stems from fear.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that makes sense, right, and that's like also a basic trope, right, that you could boil down. It's like the oppressed people, the living in fear, the living in suppression, like you know, fear of religion and God, like these are all. Certainly, benedetta is a film we could talk about more than we have. Like there's a lot of medieval horror, right, we could go on and on, but a knight's tale oh, a knight's tale also.
Speaker 2:Just a fun little call out here that heath ledger is very handsome he is.
Speaker 1:But that wasn't what I was gonna say. What I was gonna say was this is a quote from a from the bbc article. Quote pop star florence and the machines album dance fever, and best-selling author Kieran Millwood Hargraves the Dance Tree. Both have used the idea of choreomania, as the phenomenon was later dubbed, to create highly immersive works that meditate on constraint and rapture. End quote. And I like that wording of constraint and rapture right, it feels correct.
Speaker 2:It's all about self-restraint and then reward.
Speaker 1:What do you mean?
Speaker 2:Self-constraint, being like you just got to keep yourself in check, and then rapture being like okay, you did your tasks, so now you're rewarded. Is that not what you mean by that?
Speaker 1:I guess I don't know really what isn't rapture like when they come down from the sky and everybody gets fucked up.
Speaker 2:Not exactly. Rapture is when it's during the, effectively the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then the select few that lived appropriately are chosen and immediately go to heaven, and the rest are just left.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:I see yeah, so you, you know, they just poof right.
Speaker 1:So anyway, that's all I have to say about the dancing plague of 1518, and I appreciate, alan. You've been very well behaved. I appreciate that you've been on this journey. I know it's not your favorite type of episode you didn't get to watch a bunch of movies no, I I did zero research.
Speaker 2:I had no idea what this is about. This is me just chiming in my showed up to the ramblings uh, but no, I thought this was pretty fun yay, awesome.
Speaker 1:We are so thrilled that we have writers in this world as friends who have written stories. I think both of them were written for this series specifically. So episode we have custom dancing plague stories and they are both incredibly dark and incredibly scary. So I'm super, super excited to share those with you guys, as always. Thank you guys so much for being here. One more shout out to John Waller's book, because I really read that book to death. I read it so much and a lot, of, a lot of this has come from that. So I want to, you know, give again credit where credit is due. This was a very abbreviated, boiled down, messy, meandering version of that very well written book. But stay tuned, the series is not quite over yet. We have more to come and I'm just really excited for some of the themes that we have coming out this summer that feel very seasonally thematic, which is something that I'm very excited about for some reason this year. But anyway, thank you guys for being here. Stay spooky, stay safe. We will talk to you very soon. Goodbye.