mooney] SAINT JOHN DANCE FLAGELLANTS 935 



To another question she replied emphatically: "If I were at judg- 

 ment, if I saw the fire kindled and the fagots ablaze and the execu- 

 tioner ready to stir the lire, and if I were in the fire, I would say no 

 more, and to the death I would maintain what I have said in the trial." 



The end came at last in the market place of Rouen, when this young 

 girl, whose name for years had been a terror to the whole English army, 

 was dragged in her white shroud and bound to the stake, and saw the 

 wood heaped up around her and the cruel fire lighted under her feet. 

 "Brother Martin, standing almost in the draft of the flames, heard her 

 sob with a last sublime effort of faith, bearing her witness to God whom 

 she trusted: 'My voices have not deceived me !' And then came death." 

 {Parr, Jeanne cPArc.) 



DANCE OF SAINT JOHN 



Iii 1374 an epidemic of maniacal religious dancing broke out on the 

 lower Rhine and spread rapidly over Germany, the Netherlands, and 

 into France. The victims of the mania claimed to dance in honor of 

 Saint John. Men and women went about dancing hand in hand, in 

 pairs, or in a circle, on the streets, in the churches, at their homes, or 

 wherever they might be. hour after hour without rest until they fell 

 into convulsions. While dancing they sang doggerel verses in honor of 

 Saint John and uttered unintelligible cries. Of course they saw visions. 

 At last whole companies of these crazy fanatics, men, women, and 

 children, went dancing through the country, along the public roads, 

 and into the cities, until the clergy felt compelled to interfere, and cured 

 the dancers by exorcising the evil spirits that moved them. In the 

 fifteenth century the epidemic broke out again. The dancers were now 

 formed into divisions by the clergy and sent to the church of Saint 

 Vitus at Rotestein, where prayers were said for them, and they were 

 led in procession around the altar and dismissed cured. Hence the 

 name of Saint Vitus' dance given to one variety of abnormal muscular 

 tremor. (Schaff, Religious Encyclopedia.) 



THE FLAGELLANTS 



About the same time another strange religious extravagance spread 

 over western Europe. Under the name of Flagellants, thousands of 

 enthusiasts banded together with crosses, banners, hymns, and all the 

 paraphernalia of religion, and went about in procession, publicly 

 scourging one another as an atonement for their sins and the sins of 

 mankind in general. They received their first impetus from the preach- 

 ing of Saint Anthony of Padua in the thirteenth century. About the 

 year 1200 the movement broke out nearly simultaneously in Italy, 

 France, Germany, Austria, aud Poland, aud afterward spread into 

 Denmark and England. It was at its height in the fourteenth century. 

 In Germany in 1201 the devotees, preceded by banner and crosses, 

 marched with faces veiled aud bodies bared above the waist, and 

 scourged themselves twice a day for thirty-three successive days in 



