hem 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