"Honor to the Side": The Adoration of the Side Wound of Jesus in Eighteenth-Century Mordvian Piety

Abstract

Abstract The wounded side of Jesus Christ played an important role in the theology and devotional life of the eighteenth-century Moravian community. The adoration of the side wound manifested itself in various ways, ranging from hymnody and preaching to graphic art and ceremonial installations. In the context of a theology of the atonement, the wounded side of Christ signified a place of refuge, an opening out of which the church was "born," and an eschatological token by which Christ will be recognized at the time of his second coming. The Moravians expressed these ideas in a peculiar language that contemporaries often found shocking and that continues to be a puzzling phenomenon for modern scholarship. Especially the description of the side wound as a place of giving birth has given rise to controversial theories about abnormal sexual practices and concepts of gender. At the same time it has become increasingly clear that the Moravian devotion to the side wound must be considered in the context of a larger tradition of side wound piety, going back to early and medieval Christianity and also present in Renaissance art and Lutheran hymnody.