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 important 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. 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 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
solemnise 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
succourer of persons in small-pox, St. Antonius of those suffering under
the "helli