Dance Mania and Healing Networks in Sixteenth-Century Strasbourg 10 views

In mid-July 1518, crowds of people began to dance in the streets of Strasbourg. The secular government of the city, the Magistrat, in an attempt to aid the dancers, sent them on pilgrimage to the nearby shrine dedicated to St. Vitus. I argue that the Magistrat was intimately involved in the healing process undertaken by the dancers. The outset of this pilgrimage is traditionally the end of the story of the St. Vitus dancers. Previous scholarship primarily pathologizes the dance, focusing on symptoms rather than methods used to relieve them. Municipal records reveal the centrality of the pilgrimage to the healing of the dancers as well as the Magistrat’s concern for the health of Strasbourg’s citizens. They prescribed that the dancers visit the shrine to St. Vitus and engage with the ‘healing community’ there. It was however, ultimately through a ‘healing network’ which included the saint, the priests in Saverne, and the Magistrat itself that dancers experienced social and spiritual reconciliation. Sarah Ritchey suggests ‘healing communities’ as a method by which those excluded from institutions of care sought healing. The case of the Strasbourg dancers shows that, at least in sixteenth-century Strasbourg, it was not the inaccessibility of care that led pilgrims to the shrine, but rather that communities around saints formed one part of a larger ‘healing network’ which also included institutional bodies, such as the Church, hospital, and Magistrat.

MA (Master of Arts)

St. Vitus dance; Choreomania; Devotion; Pilgrimage; Paracelsus

English

All rights reserved by the author (no additional license for public reuse)

2026-04-30