Tanz als Krankheit, Tanz als Therapie. Die Formierung eines religiös-medizinischen Konzepts (15. und 16. Jahrhundert)

Abstract

‘Dancing mania’ has often been understood as an expression of purportedly ‘typical medieval’ mass hysteria. Yet evidence suggests that a better interpretation would be to see it as a disease, the idea of which was shaped by patterns tracing back to antique cosmology. During the later Middle Ages, this concept became reality as a form of suffering primarily determined by spiritual forces (e.g. the might of Saint John the Baptist) which typically struck only individuals or small groups in narrowly defined regions. This article closely examines a key shift in the semiotic setting of how this disease was interpreted: During the 15^th and early 16^th centuries, it became medicalised and desacralized. Evidence of this development can be found in isolated instances of ‘dancing mania’ in towns of the Rhine and Moselle area which at first glance would appear to be of little significance. As a medical concept, ‘dancing mania’ would survive the Reformation, and as a concept of primarily medical understanding it would later be re-integrated into the renewed Catholic culture of the late 16^th and 17^th centuries.