Love Thy Neighbor and Dance: Dance as an Expression of Neighborly Love in France, 16th and 17th Centuries

This paper proposes to examine the intersection between "neighborly love" and dancing in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century French discourses on dancing. Until the 16th century, churches did not fundamentally challenge social dance except when it was performed by clergy or in sacred spaces. In the course of the reformations, however, French Calvinists and segments of the Catholic Church launched campaigns against social dancing because it threatened, rather than strengthened, social peace and sexual morality. How did dancers and apologists respond to this onslaught?

Much of the argumentation invoked by pamphlets related to dance's social functions: the ability to socialize, the role dance played for the youth in particular, and its part in courtship. Implicitly or explicitly, these arguments fit within a moral frame. At a minimum, some argued, dance sheltered Christians from sins they could commit against their neighbors if they remained idle, including gossiping, drunkenness and lewd behavior. However, more than as a lesser evil, dancing functioned as an essential tool to assert or practice moral and social norms. Dance could demonstrate neighborliness, honor and proper relations between the sexes, its advocates argued. Indeed, it could even serve to breech the gap between confessions in France. If many popular dances hardly seem to exemplify neighborly love, it is because moral norms were adjusted for young men in particular in their relationships to both women and other young men.

Considering the relationship between dance and neighborly love reminds us of the fact that defenses of dancing were grounded in Christian assumptions; and that dance, far from providing freedom from social constraints, imposed different kinds of social constraints on its participants. Neighborly love functioned as a central argument both in elite and popular dances -yet what was meant by it differed considerably depending on the social and religious context.