The dancing plague of Strasbourg
In July 1518, Frau Troffea began dancing in a Strasbourg street; within weeks dozens, perhaps hundreds, were dancing for days, and some reportedly died.
1518 CE · 48.58, 7.75 · status: official
The account
City records show the council even hired musicians and built a stage, believing the dancers had to dance it out, before sending them to the shrine of Saint Vitus at Saverne.
The sceptical view
Historians favour mass psychogenic illness under famine and stress (John Waller); ergot poisoning is less likely, as it does not cause coordinated dancing. Death tolls are uncertain.
The researched reading
A real, documented outbreak in a starving city where people believed in a dancing curse. Mass psychogenic illness under extreme stress is the best explanation.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 40% | Historian John Waller shows the dancing started in a city crushed by famine, disease and fear, among people who believed Saint Vitus could curse them with dancing; trance and contagious behaviour under extreme stress fit, and the council’s musicians and stage made it worse. |
| Undetermined | 20% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| A cultural story | 18% | Dancing manias had a long Rhineland history, the Saint Vitus belief gave the outbreak its form, and chronicles written later may have inflated the numbers and deaths. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 14% | Ergot poisoning causes convulsions and hallucinations and was common in rye; but it cuts the blood supply to the limbs and does not produce days of coordinated dancing, so it is a minor contender. |
| Something in the surroundings | 3% | Summer heat and exhaustion would add to deaths but do not start a mania. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 3% | Contemporaries blamed a saint’s curse; nothing requires a supernatural cause. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 2% | City records (council minutes, physicians’ notes) confirm the event; it was not invented. |
Official position: City physicians called it a natural disease of "hot blood"; the council finally sent the dancers to the shrine of Saint Vitus.
Connections in the atlas
- The dancing mania of 1374
- St Vitus sends the dancing curse