It was a time of oppression, famine, and pestilence: the
crusading spirit, having run its course, had been succeeded by a
wild, mystical fanaticism; the most frightful plague in human
history--the 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 greatest, 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.
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