History After Dark

The Dancing Plague of 1518

When an Entire City Couldn’t Stop Dancing

July 1518 • Strasbourg, Holy Roman Empire (Modern-day France)

 

Welcome to History After Dark.

The kind of history that didn’t quite make it into your textbooks.

 

 

Imagine waking one morning and looking out your window.

Your neighbor is dancing.

At first, it doesn’t seem strange. Maybe there’s a celebration. Maybe someone is playing music nearby.

By lunchtime, she’s still dancing.

By sunset, she hasn’t stopped.

Blood stains the cobblestones beneath her feet.

Her shoes are gone.

She doesn’t seem happy.

She doesn’t seem drunk.

She just…keeps dancing.

Within days, she isn’t alone.

Then dozens join her.

Then hundreds.

And before long, an entire city begins asking the same impossible question:

How do you stop someone who doesn’t want to dance—but can’t stop?

 

Strasbourg, Summer 1518

Long before anyone would call it The Dancing Plague, Strasbourg was simply another city trying to survive.

Roughly twenty-five thousand people called it home. Merchants filled the markets, church bells echoed through narrow cobblestone streets, and the smell of fresh bread often struggled to overpower the stench of open gutters.

Life wasn’t easy.

The previous year had become known by many as the bad year. Crops had failed. Grain prices had soared. Disease spread easily through crowded streets, and famine had forced desperate families to survive however they could. Some accounts describe people eating spoiled grain. Others tell of starving farmers arriving at the city gates in search of food.

To many, every day felt uncertain.

And in a city where faith shaped nearly every part of life, uncertainty rarely stayed unexplained for long.

When something terrible happened…

It wasn’t always blamed on chance.

Sometimes it was blamed on sin.

Sometimes on the devil.

Sometimes on a saint.

No one knew it yet…

But in just a matter of days, Strasbourg would become known for one of the strangest events in recorded history.

It all began with a single woman.

 

 

The Woman History Barely Remembers

History remembers her by one name:

Frau Troffea.

Whether that was truly her surname or simply the way chroniclers identified her, no one can say with certainty. In fact, historians know remarkably little about the woman herself. There are no surviving descriptions of her personality, no letters, no journal entries, and no record explaining why she walked into the street that July morning.

What happened next, however, was documented.

She began to dance.

Not for a few minutes.

Not for an afternoon.

For days.

For six days, according to the surviving accounts, Frau Troffea danced without rest.

Her feet blistered.

The blisters split open.

Soon, every step left fresh blood on the stones beneath her.

People gathered to watch. Some laughed, believing it was an elaborate performance. Others whispered that she had finally lost her mind. A few wondered whether she was simply trying to escape an unhappy home. One later account even suggested her husband may have been abusive, though historians have never been able to verify the claim.

Everyone had a theory.

No one had an answer.

Because if this was a performance…

It was one she refused—or was unable—to end.

As the days wore on, the spectacle became impossible to ignore. Her body should have collapsed from exhaustion. Her muscles should have given out. Yet somehow, she continued moving.

And then…

Someone else began to dance.

 

 

When One Became Many

One became two.

Two became ten.

Within days, the strange compulsion had spread beyond Frau Troffea. Men and women throughout Strasbourg found themselves caught in the same relentless dance.

They didn’t dance with smiles on their faces.

They danced while crying.

While screaming.

While begging for someone to make it stop.

Witnesses described people collapsing from exhaustion only to stagger back to their feet and begin moving again. Others danced until their feet were swollen beyond recognition, their shoes discarded, their skin torn open against the rough cobblestones.

By August, somewhere between fifty and four hundred people were said to be dancing, depending on which historical account you read.

The city had never seen anything like it.

Neither had anyone else.

 

 

The Cure That Made Things Worse

The city needed answers.

Unfortunately, the answers it found only made things worse.

Physicians examined the dancers and reached a conclusion that, at the time, seemed perfectly reasonable. They believed the affliction was caused by an excess of “hot blood.” Their solution wasn’t to stop the dancing.

It was to encourage it.

The thinking was simple: if the dancers continued moving until the illness had run its course, their bodies would eventually rid themselves of whatever was causing the strange compulsion.

So the city acted.

Marketplaces were cleared.

Guildhalls were opened.

Large wooden stages were built.

Musicians were hired to play day and night.

Professional dancers were even brought in to keep the afflicted moving.

Rather than isolating the dancers…

Strasbourg gave them an audience.

What began as an attempt to cure the outbreak may have unintentionally fueled it instead.

As drums echoed through the streets and fiddles filled the air, more people joined the dance. Whether they were drawn in by the music, swept up in the panic, or suffering from the same unexplained compulsion, no one could say.

The city’s best medical minds believed they were helping.

Instead…

The dancing continued.

 

 

The Saint They Feared

When medicine failed, Strasbourg turned to something far older than science.

Faith.

To understand why, you first have to understand the world the people of Strasbourg lived in.

In 1518, disease wasn’t always explained by bacteria or viruses. Natural disasters weren’t simply unfortunate events. Strange illnesses weren’t always seen as medical conditions.

Many believed they were signs.

Warnings.

Punishments.

The work of forces far beyond human understanding.

Among those forces was Saint Vitus.

Today, Saint Vitus is remembered as a Christian martyr who lived during the Roman Empire and was later honored as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers—a group of saints believed to protect people from illness and suffering.

But medieval Europe remembered him differently.

According to popular folklore, those who angered Saint Vitus risked a terrible punishment.

They would dance.

Not with joy.

Not in celebration.

But uncontrollably.

Relentlessly.

Until their bodies could dance no more.

The strange affliction had become so closely associated with him that outbreaks of choreomania throughout Europe were often called “Saint Vitus’s Dance.”

Whether the people of Strasbourg truly believed they had been cursed or simply feared they had, the result was the same.

The city abandoned medicine.

It placed its hope in faith.

The remaining dancers were loaded into horse-drawn wagons and taken to the shrine of Saint Vitus in Saverne, nearly thirty miles away.

There, priests performed rituals they believed could break the curse.

The dancers were led around a wooden figure of the saint.

Their battered feet were placed into red shoes.

Holy water was sprinkled over them.

Small crosses were marked upon their toes.

Then…

Something remarkable happened.

The dancing slowly began to stop.

 

 

Silence

And then…

As suddenly as it had begun…

The dancing stopped.

Not all at once.

Not with a single miracle.

But little by little, the streets of Strasbourg grew quiet again.

The music faded.

The crowds disappeared.

The exhausted bodies that had filled the marketplaces slowly vanished from public view.

For nearly two months, an entire city had lived through something it could neither understand nor control.

Now…

It was over.

Or at least, it seemed to be.

Many at the time believed the pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Vitus had broken the curse. The rituals had been performed. The prayers had been spoken. The saint had shown mercy.

Others believed the city’s decision to ban public dancing and music had removed the very thing that allowed the strange behavior to spread.

Modern historians offer yet another possibility.

If the outbreak truly was an episode of mass psychogenic illness—a collective psychological response to overwhelming fear, famine, disease, and deeply rooted religious beliefs—then perhaps the combination of changing circumstances, renewed hope, and the power of expectation allowed it to run its course.

The truth is…

No one knows.

History records that the dancing ended.

History does not tell us exactly why.

Five hundred years later, the streets of Strasbourg are quiet once more.

The dancers are gone.

Frau Troffea disappears from the historical record almost as suddenly as she appeared.

The questions, however…

Never left.

 

 

What We Know

More than five centuries have passed since the Dancing Plague of 1518, and while many details remain debated, historians broadly agree on several key facts.

• The outbreak began in Strasbourg, in the Holy Roman Empire (modern-day France), during July of 1518.
• A woman known in historical records as Frau Troffea is the first documented person to begin dancing uncontrollably. Beyond her name—or the name recorded by chroniclers—very little is known about her life.
• The dancing spread beyond a single individual. Historical accounts consistently describe dozens of additional people joining the phenomenon. Estimates of the total number vary widely, ranging from around fifty to as many as four hundred participants.
• Contemporary accounts consistently describe the dancers as being unable to stop. Contemporary accounts describe people continuing until they collapsed from exhaustion, their feet swollen, bruised, and bloodied from days of continuous movement.

• City physicians believed the condition was caused by “hot blood.” Acting on the medical understanding of the time, they encouraged the dancers to continue moving. Musicians were hired, marketplaces were cleared, and public spaces were opened to accommodate them.
• When the medical response failed, city officials turned to religion. The remaining dancers were taken to the Shrine of Saint Vitus in Saverne, where religious rituals were performed in hopes of ending the outbreak.
• The epidemic eventually came to an end. By early autumn, the widespread dancing had ceased, though surviving historical records do not clearly explain why.
• The Dancing Plague of 1518 was not an isolated event. Similar outbreaks of choreomania had been recorded across parts of Europe for centuries, although the Strasbourg outbreak remains the most famous—and among the most extensively documented.

 

What We Don’t Know

This is where the mystery begins.

• Why did Frau Troffea begin dancing?
• Did she choose to dance, or was the compulsion truly beyond her control?
• Why did the behavior spread to so many others?
• How many people were actually affected?
• How many people actually died during the outbreak?
• Why did the outbreak suddenly stop?
• What happened to Frau Troffea after she was taken to the shrine?
• Why did outbreaks like this disappear from Europe by the end of the seventeenth century?

 

 

 

Leading Theories

For more than 500 years, historians, physicians, psychologists, and researchers have debated what happened in Strasbourg during the summer of 1518. No single explanation answers every question, but several theories continue to dominate the conversation.

Mass Psychogenic Illness (The Leading Theory)

Today, many historians consider mass psychogenic illness—sometimes called mass hysteria—to be the most convincing explanation.

The people of Strasbourg were already living under extraordinary stress. Years of crop failures had driven up the cost of food. Famine was widespread. Disease, including the recent spread of syphilis, had created constant fear. Many believed deeply in curses, divine punishment, and the supernatural.

Historian John Waller argues that this combination of extreme psychological stress and sincere religious belief created the perfect conditions for a collective psychological response. In other words, the dancers were not pretending. Their suffering was real, even if its origin may have been psychological rather than physical.

While this theory explains many aspects of the outbreak, it still cannot answer every question—including why it began with Frau Troffea.

Ergot Poisoning

Another well-known theory suggests the dancers may have been poisoned by ergot, a fungus that grows on rye.

During times of famine, people often had little choice but to eat spoiled grain. Ergot contains chemicals related to LSD and can cause hallucinations, muscle spasms, convulsions, and other neurological symptoms.

At first glance, the theory seems convincing.

However, many researchers now question this theory. Ergot poisoning typically causes severe pain, gangrene, and uncontrollable muscle contractions that would have made days of coordinated dancing nearly impossible. It also fails to explain why the outbreak spread through social contact rather than affecting everyone who consumed contaminated grain.

Today, most historians consider ergot poisoning possible, but less convincing than mass psychogenic illness.

A Religious Curse

For the people living in Strasbourg, the answer may have seemed obvious.

Many believed the dancers had been cursed by Saint Vitus, a Christian martyr who, according to medieval folklore, could punish people with uncontrollable dancing.

Whether or not the curse was real isn’t the historical question.

The important question is whether the people believed it was.

Their beliefs shaped how they interpreted the outbreak and ultimately influenced the city’s response. The decision to abandon medical treatment in favor of pilgrimages, prayers, and religious rituals only makes sense when viewed through the worldview of sixteenth-century Europe.

Something We’ll Never Know?

Perhaps the most honest answer is also the least satisfying.

History doesn’t preserve every detail.

Many records from 1518 have been lost, while others contradict one another. Historians continue to debate the number of dancers, the number of deaths, and even the identity of Frau Troffea herself.

Five hundred years later, we may never know exactly what happened in Strasbourg.

But perhaps that’s why the Dancing Plague continues to fascinate us.

It reminds us that even in an age of science and technology, there are still moments in history that refuse to fit neatly into a single explanation.

 

 

Sources & Further Reading

Every History After Dark article is built from multiple sources whenever possible. Historical events—especially ones as unusual as the Dancing Plague—often contain conflicting accounts. Where historians disagree, I’ve done my best to reflect that uncertainty rather than present speculation as fact.

Books

• John Waller. The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness. Sourcebooks, 2009.

Historical & Reference Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica – Dancing Mania⁠
• History.com – Dancing Plague of 1518⁠
• Smithsonian Magazine – The Dancing Plague of 1518⁠

Continue Exploring

If you’d like to hear another engaging retelling of this story, I highly recommend:

• Bailey Sarian – Dark History: “People Danced Until They LITERALLY Died?! The Dancing Plague of 1518″⁠

 

 

History is rarely as tidy as we’d like it to be. Many historical events—especially those hundreds of years old—contain conflicting accounts, missing records, and competing interpretations. Whenever possible, I compare multiple sources and distinguish between documented facts, historical beliefs, and modern theories. If historians disagree, I’ll do my best to tell you why rather than pretend there’s a simple answer.

 

 

The people of Strasbourg never got the answers they were looking for.

Five centuries later…

Neither have we.

Maybe one day new evidence will emerge. Maybe historians will uncover a forgotten document tucked away in an archive somewhere. Until then, the Dancing Plague remains one of those rare moments where history asks a question it cannot fully answer.

History is often stranger than fiction.

See you next Friday.

— Destiny