Nocturnal Journeys and Ritual Dances in Bernardino of Siena

This article takes its starting point in a story from a famous fifteenth-century sermon against sorcery by Bernardino of Siena. The story involves a solitary page travelling through a rural area who finds a group of people dancing on a threshing floor; at dawn, all the dancers vanish but one one girl to whom the page is holding fast. This girl is not treated by Bernardino as a sorceress, though the larger context of the story makes the absence of the perception of sorcery something of a puzzle. In search of possible origins for this story, the author examines an array of parallels, suggesting ultimately that Bernardino’s story could be linked to actual folk practices that involved nocturnal dancing.