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.”[220] 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 “hellish fire,” and as St. Margaret was the Juno Lucina of puerperal women. SECT. 3.—CAUSES. The connexion 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 superadded relics of heathenism[221]. 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[222]. 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[223], and it is more than probable that the Greeks transferred to the festival of John the Baptist, who is also held in high esteem among the Mahomedans, a part of their Bacchanalian mysteries, an absurdity of a kind which is but too frequently met with in human affairs. How far a remembrance of the history of St. John’s death may have had an influence on this occasion, we would leave learned theologians to decide. It is only of importance here to add, that in Abyssinia, a country entirely separated from Europe, where Christianity has maintained itself in its primeval simplicity against