The Dancing Plague of 1518

Strasbourg’s relentless jig

It’s a blistering July day in Strasbourg, 1518. Fields lay flooded, and hunger gnawed at the population like a persistent ghost. One woman, Frau Troffea, stepped into the street and started to dance. She had no audience in mind, no music in earshot. Just her, the sweltering cobbled street, and an unshakable compulsion to move. Nobody thought it was anything more than an odd outburst—until she kept going. And going. And going. Until a week passed, and dozens joined her. Thus began one of history’s weirdest phenomena: the Dancing Plague of 1518.

No rational endgame, no inherent rhythm—just people, dozens of them at first, eventually hundreds, driven by an uncontrollable urge to dance. Not the fun, festival kind of dancing—but flailing limbs, bloodied feet, expressions vacant with exhaustion. It wasn’t some lighthearted revelry. It was a full-on possession of the body, a relentless, insatiable jig. By September, the fever finally broke, leaving behind bruised bodies, shattered minds, and perhaps a few corpses. Was it the work of the devil? Poison? Madness? We’ll explore the whys and hows of Strasbourg’s dancing nightmare—though don’t expect simple answers.

Frau Troffea's Compulsion

It all started with one person. Frau Troffea—perhaps seeking relief, perhaps an unwilling puppet of forces unknown—began to dance on a July day, refusing to stop even when exhaustion felled her. When she collapsed, it was only to rise and dance again. Within days, her solo performance became a duet, then a cacophonous dance troupe of 30 or more. Ordinary citizens, overcome by a manic urge, joined her in the town square, where they spun, jumped, and kicked as though bewitched.

The accounts of the time speak of people dancing until their feet were raw, bleeding, and covered in sores. They danced past the point of pain, beyond the limits of exhaustion—until they collapsed. For Troffea, her initial mania lasted days until she was forcibly taken to a shrine dedicated to Saint Vitus. But even as she was hauled away, others began to follow in her unsteady, fevered footsteps.

Dance Mania Spreads

As Troffea’s dance escalated into a full-blown phenomenon, authorities scrambled to respond. Strasbourg’s leadership—in one of history’s greatest ironic miscalculations—decided that the afflicted must dance themselves free of their condition. Guild halls were turned into makeshift dance halls, platforms were erected in public spaces, and musicians were hired to keep the rhythm going. Imagine it: a makeshift rave fueled by fear, exhaustion, and a hint of superstition. Crowds watched as the dancers jerked uncontrollably, some falling dead from sheer exhaustion, dehydration, or heart failure. All the while, the city authorities tried to curate this chaos with music and accommodations, thinking, somehow, the dancers would collapse their way back into sanity.

By August, the mania had spread—some estimates suggest up to 400 people were dancing. The dancers weren’t unified by joy; they moved with a grotesque energy, their expressions pained and hollow. Foot injuries, convulsions, even foaming at the mouth—this was not a coordinated display but an epidemic that utterly hijacked the bodies of those affected. A contemporary chronicle described them hopping and skipping day and night in the public market and alleys—a frantic, macabre festival without music.

Authorities began to panic. Their attempts to beat this plague with more dancing only spurred it on. Onlookers—fearful of being cursed or of angering Saint Vitus—joined in, believing this was the only path to safety. This dance was both a ritual and a punishment, something that couldn’t be avoided without divine intervention. Eventually, the civic leaders realized they had made things worse. Music was banned; instead, the afflicted were carted to the shrine of Saint Vitus, given red shoes, small crosses, and holy water. The plague seemed to abate in September, but not before exacting its toll in broken bodies and unhinged minds.

Ergot, Psychosis, and the Dance of Saint Vitus

This bizarre episode did not happen in isolation. Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, Europe experienced waves of “dancing mania,” each as strange and terrifying as the last. In 1374, an outbreak took hold along the Rhine, spreading to numerous towns. Common theories include religious explanations, mass hysteria, and, of course, ergot poisoning.

Ergot—a hallucinogenic mold that grows on damp rye—has been suggested as a culprit. Consuming it can cause convulsions, hallucinations, and even gangrene, which, admittedly, sounds eerily similar to what took place in Strasbourg. However, experts like John Waller argue against ergot poisoning. If ergot were to blame, how could these people have danced for days, even weeks? This theory doesn’t quite align with what we know of ergotism, which usually weakens rather than energizes.

Instead, Waller and others have suggested mass psychogenic illness—a form of stress-induced psychosis. Strasbourg in 1518 wasn’t exactly paradise. The city was reeling from repeated outbreaks of disease, famine, and political instability. People were desperate, starved, and deeply superstitious. It was believed that Saint Vitus, the patron saint of dancers and epileptics, could curse those who displeased him to dance uncontrollably. This belief in divine retribution, coupled with extreme hardship, may have manifested in a mass hysterical episode, where the afflicted were not merely dancing but were entrapped by their own overwhelming fears.

Paracelsus, the physician and alchemist, arrived in Strasbourg eight years after the outbreak and offered his own assessment. He saw it as a sickness brought about by overheated blood and a disturbed imagination. He described the mania as rooted in sin, focusing on “whores and scoundrels” who indulged in bodily pleasures. To him, the plague had a supernatural quality, a divine punishment but filtered through natural impulses and human frailty.

Strange Rhythms, Unanswered Questions

The Dancing Plague of 1518 remains one of the most mysterious, bizarre, and haunting phenomena in history. It resists easy answers, as any good mystery should. Was it stress-induced mass hysteria? A communal hallucination? Divine punishment? Perhaps, in some way, it was all these things at once—a horrifying manifestation of the fears, stressors, and desperate beliefs of a people at the edge.

We love stories like this, don’t we? They force us to confront the strangeness that history offers, a reminder that humans—then as now—can fall victim to inexplicable forces. The Dancing Plague of 1518 was not simply a historical curiosity; it was a grim reflection of an era beset by pressures so intense that dancing to the point of death seemed, somehow, a fitting outlet. And that’s exactly why it’s remembered today—an uncanny episode when life’s pressures turned into a danse macabre that still echoes, unanswered, through the pages of history.