3--CAUSES 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 solemnised 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.
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.