Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the Town Council benevolently took an interest in the afflicted: they divided them into separate parties, to each of which they appointed responsible superintendents, to protect them from harm, and perhaps also to restrain their turbulence. They were thus conducted on foot and in carriages to the chapels of St. Vitus, near Zabern, and Rotestein, where priests were in attendance to influence their misguided minds by masses and other religious ceremonies. After divine worship was completed, they were led in solemn procession to the altar, where they made some small offering of alms, and where, it is probable, many, through the influence of devotion and the sanctity of the place, were cured of this lamentable aberration.
It is worthy of observation, at all events, that the dancing mania did not recommence at the altars of the saint, that from him alone assistance was implored, and that through his miraculous interposition a cure was expected, which was beyond the reach of human skill. The personal history of St. Vitus is by no means unimportant in this matter. He was a Sicilian youth, who, together with Modestus and Crescentia, suffered martyrdom at the time of the persecution of the Christians under Diocletian, in A.D. 303. The legends respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been passed over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of the earliest centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St. Denys, and thence in the year 836 to Corvey, raised him to a higher rank. From this time forth it may be supposed that many miracles were performed at his new sepulchre, which were of essential service in confirming the Roman Catholic faith among the Germans, and St. Vitus was soon ranked among the fourteen saintly helpers (Nothelfer or Apotheker). His altars were multiplied, and the people had recourse to them in all kinds of distresses; they revered him as a powerful intercessor. As the worship of these saints was, however, at that time stripped of all historical connexions, which were purposely obliterated by the priesthood, a legend was invented at the beginning of the fifteenth century, or perhaps even so early as the fourteenth, that St. Vitus had, just before he bent his neck to the sword, prayed to God that he might protect from the dancing mania all those who should solemnize the day of his commemoration and fast upon its eve, and that thereupon a voice from heaven was heard, saying, “Vitus, thy prayer is accepted.” Thus St. Vitus became the patron saint of those affected with the dancing plague, as St. Martin of Tours was at one time the succourer of persons in small-pox; St. Anthony, of those suffering under the ‘hellish fire;’ and as St. Margaret was the Juno Lucina of pregnant women.
A.D. 1426, the Baltic was frozen over, and on the 28th of September a severe earthquake was felt in England. Dantzic was visited by pestilence and famine; and the year following, England suffered from epidemic pestilence, and a severe earthquake, which occurred on the 14th of July.
A.D. 1429, epidemic pestilence prevailed at Barcelona, as is proved by the donation of £8 and 16 sueldos, which were paid to a chaplain for his labour in removing for burial the dead bodies found in the churches and elsewhere.
A.D. 1434, there was a severe frost in England, which lasted from the 24th of November to the 10th of February in the following year.
This year, 1436, the seasons were inclement and rainy, and there was a dearth of corn in various parts of Europe. Epidemic coughs, small pox, and fevers swept away many thousands from the face of the earth. The moisture which existed during the preceding year in Spain, was excessive; it did not cease raining and snowing in Castile from the 29th of October, 1434, to the 7th of January in the following year, 1435.
Four years after, 1439, the city Huesca, in the kingdom of Aragon, suffered from such a cruel pestilence, that, following the credulity of the times, Alonso de Burgos says in his Treatise on Plague, “that the disease in Huesca only yielded to a solemn and general vow which the city made, to celebrate a feast on the day of the Conception of the Virgin, and to observe its vigil with an absolute fast.”
A.D. 1438, there was a famine in England. During a storm on the 25th of November a heavy gust of wind blew off the leads of the Grey Friars Church, in London, and almost beat down the whole side of a street called the Old Exchange.
A.D. 1441. During this year, brother Diego de Herrera complained of an itching, or leprosy, all over his body: the physicians declared the disease to be communicable, and obliged him to live outside the monastery of Mejorada—a fact showing that this disease had existed previously in Spain, and that the physicians were acquainted with its characters. These observations are to be found in the life of the illustrious Senhor Don Diego de Anaya, Archbishop of Granada.
A.D. 1443, there was a severe frost in England from the 14th of November until the 10th of February in the following year. A thunder-storm with severe lightning did much damage to St. Paul’s Church and to that of Waltham Cross; they were fired by the lightning on Candlemas day. From about this period until 1450, famine and pestilence were destructive to millions of the human race, especially in Italy, Gaul, Germany, Asia, and Spain. About the same date, King Don Alonso of Aragon, surnamed the Wise, conquered the kingdom of Naples. The great obstacles which presented themselves before accomplishing the subjugation of the provinces of Abruzzo, coupled with the sufferings caused by a protracted and desperate war, subjected the numerous cavalry employed in the service to attacks of disease. Great numbers of their horses died from a particular kind of epizootic. This great mortality caused the king to order his major domo, one Manuel Diaz, to call together all the veterinary surgeons of his cavalry and the surgeons of the infantry, in order that they should compose a work on farriery—thus giving rise to the renewal of that most useful art, as noted in the Spanish Hippiatria, or Veterinary of Spain.