SECT. 1--TARANTISM


It was of the utmost advantage to the St. Vitus's dancers that
they made choice of a favourite patron saint; for, not to mention
that people were inclined to compare them to the possessed with
evil spirits described in the Bible, and thence to consider them
as innocent victims to the power of Satan, the name of their great
intercessor recommended them to general commiseration, and a magic
boundary was thus set to every harsh feeling, which might
otherwise have proved hostile to their safety. Other fanatics
were not so fortunate, being often treated with the most
relentless cruelty, whenever the notions of the middle ages either
excused or commanded it as a religious duty. Thus, passing over
the innumerable instances of the burning of witches, who were,
after all, only labouring under a delusion, the Teutonic knights
in Prussia not unfrequently condemned those maniacs to the stake
who imagined themselves to be metamorphosed into wolves--an
extraordinary species of insanity, which, having existed in Greece
before our era, spread, in process of time over Europe, so that it
was communicated not only to the Romaic, but also to the German
and Sarmatian nations, and descended from the ancients as a legacy
of affliction to posterity. In modern times Lycanthropy--such was
the name given to this infatuation--has vanished from the earth,
but it is nevertheless well worthy the consideration of the
observer of human aberrations, and a history of it by some writer
who is equally well acquainted with the middle ages as with
antiquity is still a desideratum. We leave it for the present