Overview

One of the first major outbreaks of St. John's Dance was in Aachen, Germany, on June 24, 1374; the populace danced wildly through the streets, screaming of visions and hallucinations, and even continued to writhe and twist after they were too exhausted to stand. The dancing mania quickly spread throughout Europe.

St. John's Dance was the medieval name for a phenomenon which emerged during the time of the Black Death. It is considered a form of nervous system disorder (apraxia) expressing itself as "dancing rage," as uncontrolled ecstatic body movements. In the eyes of the church, those suffering from St. John's Dance were possessed by the devil.

Dancing mania was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 18th centuries; it involved groups of people, sometimes thousands at a time, who danced uncontrollably and bizarrely. Men, women, and children would dance through the streets of towns or cities, sometimes foaming at the mouth until they collapsed from fatigue.

Although no real consensus exists as to what caused the mania, some cases, especially the one in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), may have had an explicable physical cause. Some of the symptoms of the sufferers can be attributed to ergot poisoning, or ergotism, known in the Middle Ages as "St. Anthony's Fire". It is caused by eating rye infected with Claviceps purpurea, a small fungus that contains toxic and psychoactive chemicals (alkaloids), including lysergic acid and ergotamine (used in modern times as a precursor in the synthesis of LSD). Symptoms of ergot poisoning include nervous spasms, psychotic delusions, spontaneous abortion and convulsions and gangrene caused by severe vasoconstriction; some dancers claimed to have experienced visions of a religious nature.

References

• St. John's Dance - wikipedia
• St. John's Dance - LSU Law Center's