rmed into a powerful argument for diabolic
possession.(385)

(385) As to the Maenads, Corybantes, and the disease "Corybantism,"
see, for accessible and adequate statements, Smith's Dictionary of
Antiquities and Lewis and Short's Lexicon; also reference in Hecker's
Essays upon the Black Death and the Dancing Mania. For more complete
discussion, see Semelaigne, L'Alienation mentale dans l'Antiquite,
Paris, 1869.

But it was more especially the epidemics of diabolism in medieval and
modern times which gave strength to the theological view, and from these
I shall present a chain of typical examples.

As early as the eleventh century we find clear accounts of diabolical
possession taking the form of epidemics of raving, jumping, dancing,
and convulsions, the greater number of the sufferers being women and
children. In a time so rude, accounts of these manifestations would
rarely receive permanent record; but it is very significant that even at
the beginning of the eleventh century we hear of them at the extremes
of Europe--in northern Germany and in southern Italy. At various times
during that century we get additional glimpses of these exhibitions, but
it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that we have a
renewal of them on a large scale. In 1237, at Erfurt, a jumping disease
and dancing mania afflicted a hundred children, many of whom died in
consequence; it spread through the whole region, and fifty years later
we hear of it in Holland.

But it was the last quarter of the fourteenth century that saw its
greatest manifestations. There was abundant cause for them. It was a
time of oppression, famine, and pestilence: the crusading spirit, having
run its course, had been succeeded by a wild, mystical fanaticism;
the most frightful plague in human history--the Black Death--was
depopulating whole regions--reducing cities to villages, and filling
Europe with that strange mixture of devotion and dissipation which we
always note during the prevalence of deadly epidemics on a large scale.

It was in this ferment of religious, moral, and social disease that
there broke out in 1374, in the lower Rhine region, the greatest,
perhaps, of all manifestations of "possession"--an epidemic of dancing,
jumping, and wild raving. The cures resorted to seemed on the whole to
intensify the disease: the afflicted continued dancing for hours, until
they fell in utter exhaustion. Some declared that they felt as if bat