Gender, Sex, and Emotion: The Moravian Litany of the Wounds

by Leto, Jason

The Moravians, a small Pietist sect led by the charismatic Count Nicholaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, established a mission outpost in North America in the early 1740’s. Driven by a strange religious impulse, the Moravians were some of the most successful Protestant missionaries of the eighteenth century. One key part of their religious practice from the 1740’s to the 1760’s was the recitation, performance, and language of the Litany of the Wounds of Christ. In this graphic and bloody text, believers beg to lie in and taste the gruesome wounds of Christ. This thesis offers an interpretation of the Litany that understands it in the context of a uniquely Moravian sense of self, which hinges on Moravian emotional practice stimulated by the Litany. The Moravian European background, Zinzendorf’s biography, and Moravian missionary efforts, are all explored in the context of attempting to understand the context of the litany and its uses.