6. The Medieval Nunnery Madness
In the 15th century, a German nun started biting the other sisters in her convent. For some reason, the behavior spread, and before long, the convent was full of crazed nuns running around and biting each other. As described by a contemporary doctor: “A nun in a German nunnery fell to biting all her companions. In the course of a short time all the nuns of this convent began biting each other. The news of this infatuation among the nuns soon spread and it now passed convent to convent throughout a great part of Germany principally Saxony and It afterwards visited the nunneries of Holland and at last the nuns had biting mania even as far as Rome”.
As news of the biting nuns spread, so did the bad habit to other convents throughout Germany. Soon, the hysteria went international, and convents from Holland in the North to Italy in the south were reporting outbreaks of biting nuns. The authorities were baffled and alarmed, and attempted various countermeasures as “the Nuns, at length, worried one another from Rome to Amsterdam“. When prayers and masses failed, the Church resorted to exorcisms and the casting out of devils and demons. That did not work. So they resorted to a more basic approach, and threatened to flog or dunk into water any nun who bit another. After a few salutary examples were made, the nuns came to their senses and the biting fever rapidly subsided.
