Dance epidemics were a wide spread phenomena in Europe during the Middles Ages.   The frenzied dancers could not stop moving, even when breathless and collapsing from exhaustion.   Hundreds of participants were involved on some occasions, dancing for weeks on end without sleep or food.   A location particularly favored by the choreomaniacs was the churchyard, leading to accusations of bewitchment and heresy.   Ergot poisoning from fungus found in bread and grain has more recently been advanced as a possible cause of the illness, and Pieter Brueghel the Elder's   drawings of 'The Dancing Pilgrims at Muelebeck' are used as supporting evidence (see Religious Dances by E. Louis Backman, pub. George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London, 1952).

But other understandings of the world were afoot.   The huge west window of Southwell Minster, which is in the Perpendicular style, was inserted in 1486. Nikolaus Pevsner says of it that 'by knocking out nearly the whole of the centre of the Norman front, and replacing it by one gigantic seven-light window... floods of light were admitted into the dark interior, (and) its original character was ruthlessly disturbed' (see Nottinghamshire, in The Buildings of England series by N Pevsner, Penguin, 1951).   This 'letting in of the light' can be thought of as a dispelling the dark medieval world of religious relics, magical images and miracles, and illuminating the way towards the rationalism and humanism of the Reformation and English Renaissance.