Chapter IX: Part 9

For this signal victory the Mongol Emperor was indebted to himself, to the genius of the moment, and the discipline of thirty years. He had improved the tactics, without violating the manners, of his nation, whose force still consisted in the missile weapons and rapid evolutions of a numerous cavalry. From a single troop to a great army, the mode of attack was the same; a foremost line first advanced to the charge, and was supported in a just order by the squadrons of the great vanguard. The general's eye watched over the field, and at his command the front and rear of the right and left wings successively moved forward in their several divisions, and in a direct or oblique line; the enemy was pressed by eighteen or twenty attacks; and each attack afforded a chance of victory. If they all proved fruitless or unsuccessful, the occasion was worthy of the Emperor himself, who gave the signal of advancing to the standard and main body, which he led in person. But in the battle of Angora, the main body itself was supported, on the flanks and in the rear, by the bravest squadrons of the reserve, commanded by the sons and grandsons of Timur. The conqueror of Hindustan ostentatiously showed a line of elephants, the trophies rather than the instruments of victory; the use of the Greek fire was familiar to the Mongols and Ottomans; but had they borrowed from Europe the recent invention of gunpowder and cannon, the artificial thunder, in the hands of either nation, must have turned the fortune of the day. In that day Bajazet displayed the qualities of a soldier and a chief; but his genius sunk under a stronger ascendant; and, from various motives, the greatest part of his troops failed him in the decisive moment. His rigor and avarice had provoked a mutiny among the Turks; and even his son Solyman too hastily withdrew from the field. The forces of Anatolia, loyal in their revolt, were drawn away to the banners of their lawful princes. His Tartar allies had been tempted by the letters and emissaries of Timur, who reproached their ignoble servitude under the slaves of their fathers; and offered to their hopes the dominion of their new, or the liberty of their ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet the cuirassiers of Europe charged with faithful hearts and irresistible arms; but these men of iron were soon broken by an artful flight and headlong pursuit; and the janizaries, alone, without cavalry or missile weapons, were encompassed by the circle of the Mongol hunters. Their valor was at length oppressed by heat, thirst, and the weight of numbers; and the unfortunate Sultan, afflicted with the gout in his hands and feet, was transported from the field on the fleetest of his horses. He was pursued and taken by the titular Khan of Zagatai; and, after his capture and the defeat of the Ottoman powers, the kingdom of Anatolia submitted to the conqueror, who planted his standard at Kiotahia, and dispersed on all sides the ministers of rapine and destruction. Mirza Mehemmed Sultan, the eldest and best beloved of his grandsons, was despatched to Bursa, with thirty thousand horse; and such was his youthful ardor that he arrived with only four thousand at the gates of the capital, after performing in five days a march of two hundred and thirty miles. Yet fear is still more rapid in its course; and Solyman, the son of Bajazet, had already passed over to Europe with the royal treasure. The spoil, however, of the palace and city was immense; the inhabitants had escaped; but the buildings, for the most part of wood, were reduced to ashes. From Bursa, the grandson of Timur advanced to Nice, even yet a fair and flourishing city; and the Mongol squadrons were only stopped by the waves of the Propontis. The same success attended the other mirzas and emirs in their excursions, and Smyrna, defended by the zeal and courage of the Rhodian knights, alone deserved the presence of the Emperor himself. After an obstinate defence, the place was taken by storm; all that breathed was put to the sword; and the heads of the Christian heroes were launched from the engines, on board of two caracks, or great ships of Europe, that rode at anchor in the harbor. The Moslems of Asia rejoiced in their deliverance from a dangerous and domestic foe and a parallel was drawn between the two rivals, by observing that Timur, in fourteen days, had reduced a fortress which had sustained seven years the siege, or at least the blockade, of Bajazet.

The "iron cage" in which Bajazet was imprisoned by Timur, so long and so often repeated as a moral lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. They appeal with confidence to the Persian history of Sherefeddin Ali, according to which has been given to our curiosity in a French version, and from which I shall collect and abridge, a more specious narrative of this memorable transaction. No sooner was Timur informed that the captive Ottoman was at the door of his tent than he graciously stepped forward to receive him, seated him by his side, and mingled with just reproaches a soothing pity for his rank and misfortune.

"Alas!" said the Emperor, "the decree of fate is now accomplished by your own fault; it is the web which you have woven, the thorns of the tree which yourself have planted. I wished to spare, and even to assist, the champion of the Moslems. You braved our threats; you despised our friendship; you forced us to enter your kingdom with our invincible armies. Behold the event. Had you vanquished, I am not ignorant of the fate which you reserved for myself and my troops. But I disdain to retaliate; your life and honor are secure; and I shall express my gratitude to God by my clemency to man."

The royal captive showed some signs of repentance, accepted the humiliation of a robe of honor, and embraced with tears his son Musa, who, at his request, was sought and found among the captives of the field. The Ottoman princes were lodged in a splendid pavilion; and the respect of the guards could be surpassed only by their vigilance. On the arrival of the harem from Bursa, Timur restored the queen Despina and her daughter to their father and husband; but he piously required that the Servian princess, who had hitherto been indulged in the profession of Christianity, should embrace, without delay, the religion of the Prophet. In the feast of victory, to which Bajazet was invited, the Mongol Emperor placed a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand, with a solemn assurance of restoring him with an increase of glory to the throne of his ancestors. But the effect of this promise was disappointed by the Sultan's untimely death. Amid the care of the most skilful physicians, he expired of an apoplexy, about nine months after his defeat. The victor dropped a tear over his grave; his body, with royal pomp, was conveyed to the mausoleum which he had erected at Bursa; and his son Musa, after receiving a rich present of gold and jewels, of horses and arms, was invested by a patent in red ink with the kingdom of Anatolia.

Such is the portrait of a generous conqueror, which has been extracted from his own memorials and dedicated to his son and grandson, nineteen years after his decease; and, at a time when the truth was remembered by thousands, a manifest falsehood would have implied a satire on his real conduct. Weighty, indeed, is this evidence, adopted by all the Persian histories; yet flattery, more especially in the East, is base and audacious; and the harsh and ignominious treatment of Bajazet is attested by a chain of witnesses.

I am satisfied that Sherefeddin Ali has faithfully described the first ostentatious interview, in which the conqueror, whose spirits were harmonized by success, affected the character of generosity. But his mind was insensibly alienated by the unseasonable arrogance of Bajazet; and Timur betrayed a design of leading his royal captive in triumph to Samarkand. An attempt to facilitate his escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mongol Emperor to impose a harsher restraint; and in his perpetual marches, an iron cage on a wagon might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but as a rigorous precaution. But the strength of Bajazet's mind and body fainted under the trial, and his premature death might, without injustice, be ascribed to the severity of Timur.

From the Irtysh and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hands of Timur; his armies were invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire to conquer and convert the Christian kingdoms of the West, which already trembled at his name. He touched the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable, though narrow, sea rolled between the two continents of Europe and Asia; and the lord of so many myriads of horse was not master of a single galley. The two passages of the Bosporus and Hellespont, of Constantinople and Gallipoli, were possessed, the one by the Christians, the other by the Turks. On this great occasion they forgot the difference of religion, to act with union and firmness in the common cause; the double straits were guarded with ships and fortifications; and they separately withheld the transports which Timur demanded of either nation, under the pretence of attacking their enemy. At the same time they soothed his pride with tributary gifts and suppliant embassies, and prudently tempted him to retreat with the honors of victory. Solyman, the son of Bajazet, implored his clemency for his father and himself; accepted, by a red patent, the investiture of the kingdom of Romania, which he already held by the sword; and reiterated his ardent wish of casting himself in person at the feet of the king of the world. The Greek Emperor--either John or Manuel--submitted to pay the same tribute which he had stipulated with the Turkish Sultan, and ratified the treaty by an oath of allegiance, from which he could absolve his conscience so soon as the Mongol arms had retired from Anatolia. But the fears and fancy of nations ascribed to the ambitious Tamerlane a new design of vast and romantic compass; a design of subduing Egypt and Africa, marching from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, entering Europe by the Straits of Gibraltar, and, after imposing his yoke on the kingdoms of Christendom, of returning home by the deserts of Russia and Tartary. This remote, and perhaps imaginary, danger was averted by the submission of the Sultan of Egypt, the honors of the prayer and the coin attested at Cairo the supremacy of Timur; and a rare gift of a giraffe, or camelopard, and nine ostriches, represented at Samarkand the tribute of the African world. Our imagination is not less astonished by the portrait of a Mongol, who, in his camp before Smyrna, meditates, and almost accomplishes, the invasion of the Chinese empire. Timur was urged to this enterprise by national honor and religious zeal. He received a perfect map and description of the unknown regions, from the source of Irtysh to the Wall of China. During the preparations, the Emperor achieved the final conquest of Georgia; passed the winter on the banks of the Araxes; appeased the troubles of Persia; and slowly returned to his capital, after a campaign of four years and nine months.

On the throne of Samarkand he displayed, in a short repose, his magnificence and power; listened to the complaints of the people; distributed a just measure of rewards and punishments; employed his riches in the architecture of palaces and temples; and gave audience to the ambassadors of Egypt, Arabia, India, Tartary, Russia, and Spain, the last of whom presented a suit of tapestry which eclipsed the pencil of the oriental artists. A general indulgence was proclaimed; every law was relaxed, every pleasure was allowed; the people was free, the sovereign was idle; and the historian of Timur may remark that, after devoting fifty years to the attainment of empire, the only happy period of his life was the two months in which he ceased to exercise his power.

But he soon awakened to the cares of government and war. The standard was unfurled for the invasion of China; the emirs made their report of two hundred thousand, the select and veteran soldiers of Iran and Turan; their baggage and provisions were transported by five hundred great wagons and an immense train of horses and camels; and the troops might prepare for a long absence, since more than six months were employed in the tranquil journey of a caravan from Samarkand to Peking. Neither age nor the severity of the winter could retard the impatience of Timur; he mounted on horseback, passed the Sihun on the ice, marched seventy-six parasangs (three hundred miles) from his capital, and pitched his last camp in the neighborhood of Otrar, where he was expected by the angel of death. Fatigue and the indiscreet use of iced water accelerated the progress of his fever; and the conqueror of Asia expired in the seventieth year of his age, 1405, thirty-five years after he had ascended the throne of Zagatai. His designs were lost; his armies were disbanded; China was saved; and, fourteen years after his decease, the most powerful of his children sent an embassy of friendship and commerce to the court of Peking.

The fame of Timur has pervaded the East and West; his posterity is still invested with the imperial title; and the admiration of his subjects, who revered him almost as a deity, may be justified in some degree by the praise or confession of his bitterest enemies. Although he was lame of a hand and foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest; and if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements.

In his religion he was a zealous, though not perhaps an orthodox, Mussulman; but his sound understanding may tempt us to believe that a superstitious reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only affected as an instrument of policy. In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without a rebel to oppose his power, a favorite to seduce his affections, or a minister to mislead his judgment.

Timur might boast that at his accession to the throne Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, while under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the East to the West. Such was his confidence of merit that from this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories and a title to universal dominion. The four following observations will serve to appreciate his claim to the public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude that the Mongol Emperor was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. If some partial disorders, some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timur, the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease. By their rapine, cruelty, and discord the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities was often marked by his abominable trophies--by columns, or pyramids of human heads. Astrakhan, Karizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Bursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others were sacked or burned or utterly destroyed in his presence and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience would have been startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order. His most destructive wars were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkestan, Kiptchak, Russia, Hindustan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces. From thence he departed laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious nor magistrates to protect the obedient natives. When he had broken the fabric of their ancient government, he abandoned them in their evils which his invasion had aggravated or caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits. The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he labored to cultivate and adorn as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labors were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his sons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly redressed by the tardy rigor or inquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise the _Institutions_ of Timur as the specious idea of a perfect monarchy. Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren--the enemies of each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after his decease the scene was again involved in darkness and blood; and before the end of a century Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Usbegs from the north, and the Turcomans of the black and white sheep. The race of Timur would have been extinct if a hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Usbeg arms to the conquest of Hindustan. His successors--the great Mongols--extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmere to Cape Comorin, and from Kandahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire has been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber; and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern Ocean.

DANCING MANIA OF THE MIDDLE AGES

A.D. 1374

J. F. C. Hecker[59]

The black death, which originated in Central China about
1333, appeared on the Mediterranean littoral in 1347,
ravaged the island of Cyprus, made the circuit of the
Mediterranean countries, spread throughout Europe northward
as far as Iceland, and in 1357 appeared in Russia, where it
seems to have been checked by the barrier of the Caucasus.

Scarce had its effects subsided, and the graves of its
25,000,000 victims were hardly closed, when it was followed
by an epidemic of the dance of St. John, or St. Vitus, which
like a demoniacal plague appeared in Germany in 1347, and
spread over the whole empire and throughout the neighboring
countries. The dance was characterized by wild leaping,
furious screaming, and foaming at the mouth, which gave to
the individuals affected all the appearance of insanity.

The epidemic was not confined to particular localities, but
was propagated by the sight of the sufferers, and for over
two centuries excited the astonishment of contemporaries.
The Netherlands and France were equally affected; in Italy
the disease became known as _tarantism_, it being supposed
to proceed from the bite of the tarantula, a venomous
spider. Like the St. Vitus' dance in Germany, tarantism
spread by sympathy, increasing in severity as it took a
wider range; the chief cure was music, which seemed to
furnish magical means for exorcising the malady of the
patients.

The epidemic subsided in Central Europe in the seventeenth
century, but diseases approximating to the original dancing
mania have occurred at various periods in many parts of
Europe, Africa, and the United States. Nathaniel Pearce, an
eye-witness, who resided nine years in Abyssinia early in
the nineteenth century, gives a graphic account of a similar
epidemic there, called _tigretier_, from the Tigré district,
in which it was most prevalent. In France, from 1727 to
1790, an epidemic prevailed among the Convulsionnaires, who
received relief from brethren in the faith known as
Secourists, very much after the rough methods administered
to the St. John's dancers and to the _tarantati_. About the
same period nervous epidemics of a similar character,
largely propagated by sympathy, were very prevalent in the
Shetland Islands and in various parts of Scotland, but were
for the most part eradicated by cold-water immersion.

An epidemic of _chorea sancti Viti_, recorded by Felix
Robertson of Tennessee (Philadelphia, 1805), found vent in
an unparalleled blaze of enthusiastic religion, which spread
with lightning-like rapidity in almost every part of
Tennessee and Kentucky, and in various parts of Virginia, in
1800, being distinguished by uncontrollable and infectious
muscular contractions, gesticulations, crying, laughing,
shouting, and singing. To similar epidemics are attributed
the uncontrollable acts which, till late in the nineteenth
century, were a feature of North American camp meetings for
divine service in the open air, and which exhibited the same
form of mental disturbance as did the St. Vitus' dance in
mediæval Europe.

So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these spasmodic ravings, but the bystanders frequently relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping and trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterward asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.

Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless, panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amid strange contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the world of spirits.

It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighboring Netherlands. In Liège, Utrecht, Tongres, and many other towns of Belgium the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and their waists girt with cloths, that they might, as soon as the paroxysm was over, receive immediate relief on the attack of the tympany. This bandage was, by the insertion of a stick, easily twisted tight. Many, however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows, which they found numbers of persons ready to administer; for, wherever the dancers appeared, the people assembled in crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they took possession of the religious houses; processions were everywhere instituted on their account and masses were said and hymns were sung, while the disease itself, of the demoniacal origin of which no one entertained the least doubt, excited everywhere astonishment and horror. In Liège the priests had recourse to exorcisms, and endeavored, by every means in their power, to allay an evil which threatened so much danger to themselves; for the possessed, assembling in multitudes, frequently poured forth imprecations against them and menaced their destruction. They intimidated the people also to such a degree that there was an express ordinance issued that no one should make any but square-toed shoes, because these fanatics had manifested a morbid dislike to the pointed shoes which had come into fashion immediately after the "great mortality," in 1350. They were still more irritated at the sight of red colors, the influence of which on the disordered nerves might lead us to imagine an extraordinary accordance between this spasmodic malady and the condition of infuriated animals; but in the St. John's dancers this excitement was probably connected with apparitions consequent upon their convulsions. There were likewise some of them who were unable to endure the sight of persons weeping. The clergy seemed to become daily more and more confirmed in their belief that those who were affected were a kind of sectarians, and on this account they hastened their exorcisms as much as possible, in order that the evil might not spread among the higher classes, for hitherto scarcely any but the poor had been attacked, and the few people of respectability among the laity and clergy who were to be found among them were persons whose natural frivolity was unable to withstand the excitement of novelty, even though it proceeded from a demoniacal influence. Some of the affected had indeed themselves declared, when under the influence of priestly forms of exorcism, that, if the demons had been allowed only a few weeks more time, they would have entered the bodies of the nobility and princes, and through these have destroyed the clergy. Assertions of this sort, which those possessed uttered while in a state which may be compared with that of magnetic sleep, obtained general belief, and passed from mouth to mouth with wonderful additions. The priesthood were, on this account, so much the more zealous in their endeavors to anticipate every dangerous excitement of the people, as if the existing order of things could have been seriously threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions were effectual, for exorcism was a powerful remedy in the fourteenth century; or it might perhaps be that this wild infatuation terminated in consequence of the exhaustion which naturally ensued from it; at all events, in the course of ten or eleven months the St. John's dancers were no longer to be found in any of the cities of Belgium. The evil, however, was too deeply rooted to give way altogether to such feeble attacks.

A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those possessed amounted to more than five hundred, and about the same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went, spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not, however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to suppress these impostors, which had so alarmingly increased the original evil. In the mean time, when once called into existence, the plague crept on, and found abundant food in the tone of thought which prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable.

Strasburg was visited by the dancing plague, or St. Vitus' dance,[60] in the year 1418, and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who came to look after those among the misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families. 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 work upon 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 that many were, through the influence of devotion and the sanctity of the place, 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, and that from him alone assistance was implored, and 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 the year 303. The legends respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been passed over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of the first centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St. Denis, 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 manifested at his new sepulchre, which were of essential service in confirming the Roman faith among the Germans, and St. Vitus was soon ranked among the fourteen saintly helpers (_Nothhelfer_ or _Apotheker_). His altars were multiplied, and the people had recourse to them in all kinds of distresses, and revered him as a powerful intercessor. As the worship of these saints was, however, at that time stripped of all historical connections, 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 afflicted with the dancing plague, as St. Martin of Tours was at one time the succorer of persons in smallpox.

The connection which John the Baptist had with the dancing mania of the fourteenth century was of a totally different character. He was originally far from being a protecting saint to those who were attacked, or one who would be likely to give them relief from a malady considered as the work of the devil. On the contrary, the manner in which he was worshipped afforded an important and very evident cause for its development. From the remotest period, perhaps even so far back as the fourth century, St. John's Day was solemnized with all sorts of strange and rude customs, of which the originally mystical meaning was variously disfigured among different nations by super-added relics of heathenism. Thus the Germans transferred to the festival of St. John's Day an ancient heathen usage, the kindling of the _Nodfyr_, which was forbidden them by St. Boniface, and the belief subsists even to the present day that people and animals that have leaped through these flames, or their smoke, are protected for a whole year from fevers and other diseases, as if by a kind of baptism by fire. Bacchanalian dances, which have originated in similar causes among all the rude nations of the earth, and the wild extravagancies of a heated imagination, were the constant accompaniments of this half-heathen, half-Christian festival. At the period of which we are treating, however, the Germans were not the only people who gave way to the ebullitions of fanaticism in keeping the festival of St. John the Baptist. Similar customs were also to be found among the nations of Southern Europe and of Asia,[61] and it is more than probable that the Greeks transferred to the festival of John the Baptist, who is also held in high esteem among the Mahometans, a part of their Bacchanalian mysteries, an absurdity of a kind which it but too frequently met with in human affairs. How far a remembrance of the history of St. John's death may have had an influence on this occasion we would leave learned theologians to decide. It is of importance here to add only that in Abyssinia, a country entirely separated from Europe, where Christianity has maintained itself in its primeval simplicity against Mahometanism, John is to this day worshipped as protecting saint of those who are attacked with the dancing malady. In these fragments of the dominion of mysticism and superstition, historical connection is not to be found.

When we observe, however, that the first dancers in Aix-la-Chapelle appeared in July with St. John's name in their mouths, the conjecture is probable that the wild revels of St. John's Day, A.D. 1374, gave rise to this mental plague, which thenceforth has visited so many thousands with incurable aberration of mind and disgusting distortions of body.

This is rendered so much the more probable because some months previously the districts in the neighborhood of the Rhine and the Maine had met with great disasters. So early as February both these rivers had overflowed their banks to a great extent; the walls of the town of Cologne, on the side next the Rhine, had fallen down, and a great many villages had been reduced to the utmost distress. To this was added the miserable condition of Western and Southern Germany. Neither law nor edict could suppress the incessant feuds of the barons, and in Franconia especially the ancient times of club law appeared to be revived. Security of property there was none; arbitrary will everywhere prevailed; corruption of morals and rude power rarely met with even a feeble opposition; whence it arose that the cruel, but lucrative, persecutions of the Jews were in many places still practised, through the whole of this century, with their wonted ferocity. Thus, throughout the western parts of Germany, and especially in the districts bordering on the Rhine, there was a wretched and oppressed populace; and if we take into consideration that among their numerous bands many wandered about whose consciences were tormented with the recollection of the crimes which they had committed during the prevalence of the black plague, we shall comprehend how their despair sought relief in the intoxication of an artificial delirium. There is hence good ground for supposing that the frantic celebration of the festival of St. John, A.D. 1374, only served to bring to a crisis a malady which had been long impending; and if we would further inquire how a hitherto harmless usage, which like many others had but served to keep up superstition, could degenerate into so serious a disease, we must take into account the unusual excitement of men's minds and the consequences of wretchedness and want. The bowels, which in many were debilitated by hunger and bad food, were precisely the parts which in most cases were attacked with excruciating pain, and the tympanitic state of the intestines points out to the intelligent physician an origin of the disorder which is well worth consideration.

The dancing mania of the year 1374 was, in fact, no new disease, but a phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous stories were traditionally current among the people. In the year 1237, upward of a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized with this disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Arnstadt. When they arrived at that place they fell exhausted to the ground, and, according to an account of an old chronicle, many of them, after they were taken home by their parents, died, and the rest remained affected to the end of their lives with the permanent tremor. Another occurrence was related to have taken place on the Mosel bridge at Utrecht, on June 17, 1278, when two hundred fanatics began to dance, and would not desist until a priest passed who was carrying the host to a person that was sick, upon which, as if in punishment of their crime, the bridge gave way, and they were all drowned. A similar event also occurred, so early as the year 1027, near the convent church of Kolbig, not far from Bernburg. According to an oft-repeated tradition, eighteen peasants, some of whose names are still preserved, are said to have disturbed divine service on Christmas Eve by dancing and brawling in the church-yard, whereupon the priest, Ruprecht, inflicted a curse upon them, that they should dance and scream for a whole year without ceasing. This curse is stated to have been completely fulfilled, so that the unfortunate sufferers at length sank knee deep into the earth, and remained the whole time without nourishment, until they were finally released by the intercession of two pious bishops. It is said that upon this they fell into a deep sleep, which lasted three days, and that four of them died; the rest continuing to suffer all their lives from a trembling of their limbs.[62] It is not worth while to separate what may have been true and what the addition of crafty priests in this strangely distorted story. It is sufficient that it was believed, and related with astonishment and horror, throughout the Middle Ages, so that, when there was any exciting cause for this delirious raving, and wild rage for dancing, it failed not to produce its effects upon men whose thoughts were given up to a belief in wonders and apparitions.

This disposition of mind, altogether so peculiar to the Middle Ages, and which, happily for mankind, has yielded to an improved state of civilization and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies and adversaries, was long after used as a malediction.[63] The indignation also that was felt by the people at large against the immorality of the age was proved by their ascribing this frightful affliction to the inefficacy of baptism by unchaste priests, as if innocent children were doomed to atone, in after years, for this desecration of the sacrament administered by unholy hands. We have already mentioned what perils the priests in the Netherlands incurred from this belief. They now, indeed, endeavored to hasten their reconciliation with the irritated and at that time very degenerate people by exorcisms, which, with some, procured them greater respect than ever, because they thus visibly restored thousands of those who were affected. In general, however, there prevailed a want of confidence in their efficacy, and then the sacred rites had as little power in arresting the progress of this deeply rooted malady as the prayers and holy services subsequently had at the altars of the greatly revered martyr St. Vitus. We may, therefore, ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus' dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly colored descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its severity, and not a single fact is to be found which supports the opinion that any one of the essential symptoms of the disease, not even excepting the tympany, had disappeared, or that the disorder itself had become milder in its attacks. The physicians never, as it seems, throughout the whole of the fifteenth century, undertook the treatment of the dancing mania, which, according to the prevailing notions, appertained exclusively to the servants of the Church. Against demoniacal disorders they had no remedies, and though some at first did promulgate the opinion that the malady had its origin in natural circumstances, such as a hot temperament, and other causes named in the phraseology of the schools, yet these opinions were the less examined, as it did not appear worth while to divide with a jealous priesthood the care of a host of fanatical vagabonds and beggars.

It was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that the St. Vitus' dance was made the subject of medical research, and stripped of its unhallowed character as a work of demons. This was effected by Paracelsus, that mighty, but as yet scarcely comprehended, reformer of medicine, whose aim it was to withdraw diseases from the pale of miraculous interpositions and saintly influences, and explain their causes upon principles deduced from his knowledge of the human frame. "We will not, however, admit that the saints have power to inflict diseases, and that these ought to be named after them, although many there are who in their theology lay great stress on this supposition, ascribing them rather to God than to nature, which is but idle talk. We dislike such nonsensical gossip as is not supported by symptoms, but only by faith, a thing which is not human, whereon the gods themselves set no value."

Such were the words which Paracelsus addressed to his contemporaries, who were as yet incapable of appreciating doctrines of this sort; for the belief in enchantment still remained everywhere unshaken, and faith in the world of spirits still held men's minds in so close a bondage that thousands were, according to their own conviction, given up as a prey to the devil; while, at the command of religion as well as of law, countless piles were lighted, by the flames of which human society was to be purified.

Paracelsus divides the St. Vitus' dance into three kinds: First, that which arises from imagination (_Vitista_, _chorea imaginativa_, _æstimativa_), by which the original dancing plague is to be understood; secondly, that which arises from sensual desires, depending on the will (_chorea lasciva_); thirdly, that which arises from corporeal causes (_chorea naturalis_, _coacta_), which, according to a strange notion of his own, he explained by maintaining that in certain vessels which are susceptible of an internal pruriency, and thence produce laughter, the blood is set in commotion, in consequence of an alteration in the vital spirits, whereby involuntary fits of intoxicating joy, and a propensity to dance, are occasioned. To this notion he was, no doubt, led from having observed a milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter of the moderns, except that it was characterized by more pleasurable sensations, and by an extravagant propensity to dance. There was no howling, screaming, and jumping, as in the severer form; neither was the disposition to dance by any means insuperable. Patients thus affected, although they had not a complete control over their understandings, yet were sufficiently self-possessed, during the attack, to obey the directions which they received. There were even some among them who did not dance at all, but only felt an involuntary impulse to allay the internal sense of disquietude, which is the usual forerunner of an attack of this kind, by laughter, and quick walking carried to the extent of producing fatigue. This disorder, so different from the original type, evidently approximates to the modern chorea, or rather is in perfect accordance with it, even to the less essential symptom of laughter. A mitigation in the form of the dancing mania had thus clearly taken place at the commencement of the sixteenth century.

On the communication of the St. Vitus' dance by sympathy, Paracelsus, in his peculiar language, expresses himself with great spirit, and shows a profound knowledge of the nature of sensual impressions, which find their way to the heart--the seat of joys and emotions--which overpower the opposition of reason; and while "all other qualities and natures" are subdued, incessantly impel the patient, in consequence of his original compliance, and his all-conquering imagination, to imitate what he has seen. On his treatment of the disease we cannot bestow any great praise, but must be content with the remark that it was in conformity with the notions of the age in which he lived. For the first kind, which often originated in passionate excitement, he had a mental remedy, the efficacy of which is not to be despised, if we estimate its value in connection with the prevalent opinions of those times. The patient was to make an image of himself in wax or resin, and by an effort of thought to concentrate all his blasphemies and sins in it. "Without the intervention of any other person, to set his whole mind and thoughts concerning these oaths in the image;" and when he had succeeded in this, he was to burn the image, so that not a particle of it should remain.[64] In all this there was no mention made of St. Vitus, or any of the other mediatory saints, which is accounted for by the circumstance, that, at this time, an open rebellion against the Romish Church had begun, and the worship of saints was by many rejected as idolatrous. For the second kind of St. Vitus' dance, Paracelsus recommended harsh treatment and strict fasting. He directed that the patients should be deprived of their liberty, placed in solitary confinement, and made to sit in an uncomfortable place, until their misery brought them to their senses and to a feeling of penitence. He then permitted them gradually to return to their accustomed habits. Severe corporal chastisement was not omitted; but, on the other hand, angry resistance on the part of the patient was to be sedulously avoided, on the ground that it might increase his malady, or even destroy him; moreover, where it seemed proper, Paracelsus allayed the excitement of the nerves by immersion in cold water. On the treatment of the third kind we shall not here enlarge. It was to be effected by all sorts of wonderful remedies, composed of the quintessences; and it would require, to render it intelligible, a more extended exposition of peculiar principles than suits our present purpose.

About this time the St. Vitus' dance began to decline, so that milder forms of it appeared more frequently, while the severer cases became more rare; and even in these, some of the important symptoms gradually disappeared. Paracelsus makes no mention of the tympanites as taking place after the attacks, although it may occasionally have occurred; and Schenck von Graffenberg, a celebrated physician of the latter half of the sixteenth century, speaks of this disease as having been frequent only in the time of his forefathers.

ELECTION OF ANTIPOPE CLEMENT VII

Beginning of the Great Schism

A.D. 1378

HENRY HART MILMAN

In 1308 Pope Clement V, a Frenchman, under the influence of
King Philip the Fair, of France, transferred the papal chair
from Rome to Avignon, a possession of the holy see beyond
the Alps, in Philip's dominions. The sojourn there of
Clement and his successors, which continued until 1376, is
known as the "Babylonish captivity" of the popes.

Rome, from the first, was angry at this loss of supremacy,
and aimed at recovering her prestige; and throughout the
Christian world--France alone excepted--it was regarded as a
scandal that the chair of St. Peter should rest on any soil
but that of the Eternal City; but the French kings, and the
cardinals of France--outnumbering all others in the sacred
college--were determined to retain the pontifical seat in
their own territory.

During the pontificate of Gregory XI (1371-1378) Italy was
torn by civil dissensions; the "free companies"--bands of
organized marauders--ravaged the country with fire and
sword, plundering Guelf and Ghibelline alike. Gregory's
legates in the government of the ecclesiastical states
rendered themselves so odious to the people by their
immorality and rapacity that a league of the more powerful
political factions was formed for throwing off the yoke of
the "absentee" papal rulers. This was the beginning of the
War of Liberation (1375) that was to shake the papal power
in Italy to its very foundations.

Gregory saw that, in order to preserve even a vestige of
temporal power in the Italian states, he must act with
crushing vigor. He therefore sent the cardinal legate,
Robert, of Geneva--afterward Antipope Clement VII--into
Italy with a company of Breton adventurers dreaded for their
ferocity, and trained to plunder in the terrible wars of
France. In spite of the atrocities committed by Robert and
his hirelings, the revolt continued with unabated fury, and
at last Gregory was constrained to return in person to Italy
with the purpose of pacifying the turbulent forces. He
entered Rome, January 17, 1377; but after a year of futile
effort he died, leaving the confusion worse than he found
it.

Since, according to ecclesiastical law, the election of a
new pope must be held at the place of the last pontiff's
decease, great clamor arose among the Romans, whose demands
were seconded throughout Europe, for the election of a
Roman pope and the ending of the "Babylonish captivity." The
history of the Great Schism and election of the rival
pontiffs is nowhere to be found in better form of narrative
than that of Milman, which here follows.

Gregory XI had hardly expired when Rome burst out into a furious tumult. A Roman pope, at least an Italian pope, was the universal outcry. The conclave must be overawed; the hateful domination of a foreign, a French pontiff, must be broken up, and forever. This was not unforeseen. Before his death Gregory XI had issued a bull conferring the amplest powers on the cardinals to choose, according to their wisdom, the time and the place for the election. It manifestly contemplated their retreat from the turbulent streets of Rome to some place where their deliberations would not be overborne, and the predominant French interest would maintain its superiority. On the other hand there were serious and not groundless apprehensions that the fierce Breton and Gascon bands, at the command of the French cardinals, might dictate to the conclave. The Romans not only armed their civic troops, but sent to Tivoli, Velletri, and the neighboring cities; a strong force was mustered to keep the foreigners in check.

Throughout the interval between the funeral of Gregory and the opening of the conclave, the cardinals were either too jealously watched, or thought it imprudent to attempt flight. Sixteen cardinals were present at Rome, one Spaniard, eleven French, four Italians. The ordinary measures were taken for opening the conclave in the palace near St. Peter's. Five Romans, two ecclesiastics and three laymen, and three Frenchmen were appointed to wait upon and to guard the conclave. The Bishop of Marseilles represented the great chamberlain, who holds the supreme authority during the vacancy of the popedom. The chamberlain, the Archbishop of Arles, brother of the Cardinal of Limoges, had withdrawn into the castle of St. Angelo, to secure his own person and to occupy that important fortress.