NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 3 



black death — was depopulating whole regions, reducing cities to 

 villages, and filling Europe with that strange mixture of devotion 

 and dissipation which we always note during the prevalence of 

 deadly epidemics on a large scale. 



It was in this ferment of religious, moral, and social disease 

 that there broke out in 1374, in the lower Rhine region, the great- 

 est perhaps of all manifestations of " possession " — an epidemic of 

 dancing, jumping, and wild raving. 



The cures resorted to seemed on the whole to intensify the 

 disease ; the afflicted continued dancing for hours, until they fell 

 in utter exhaustion. Some declared that they felt as if bathed in 

 blood, some saw visions, some prophesied. 



Into this mass of " possession " there was also clearly poured a 

 current of scoundrelism which increased the disorder. 



The immediate origin of these manifestations seems to have 

 been the wild revels of St. John's Day. In those revels sundry 

 old heathen ceremonies had been perpetuated, but under a nomi- 

 nally Christian form : wild Bacchanalian dances had thus become 

 a semi-religious ceremonial. The religious and social atmosphere 

 was propitious to the development of the germs of diabolic influ- 

 ence vitalized in these orgies, and they were scattered far and 

 wide through large tracts of the Netherlands and Germany, and 

 especially through the whole region of the Rhine. At Cologne 

 we hear of five hundred afflicted at once, at Metz of eleven hun- 

 dred dancers in the streets, at Strasburg of yet more painful mani- 

 festations ; and from the greater cities they spread through the 

 villages and rural districts. 



The great majority of the sufferers were women, but there 

 were many men, especially of those whose occupations were seden- 

 tary. Remedies were tried upon a great scale — exorcisms first, 

 but especially pilgrimages to the shrine of St. Vitus : the exor- 

 cisms accomplished so little that popular faith in them grew 

 small, and the main effect of the pilgrimages seemed to be to 

 increase the disorder by subjecting great crowds to the diabolic 

 contagion. Yet another curative means was seen in the great 

 flagellant processions — vast crowds of men, women, and children 

 who wandered through the country, screaming, praying, beating 

 themselves with whips, imploring the divine mercy and the 

 intervention of St. Vitus. Most fearful of all the great attempts 

 at cure were the persecutions of the Jews. A feeling had evi- 

 dently spread among the people at large that the Almighty was 

 filled with wrath at the toleration of his enemies, and might be 

 propitiated by their destruction : in the great cities and villages 

 of Germany, then, the Jews were plundered, tortured, and mur- 

 dered by tens of thousands. ISTo doubt that, in all this, greed was 

 united with fanaticism, but the argument of fanaticism was sim- 



