Weaving Prayer. The Fabrication of Worship in the Convent of St Agnes, Emmerich, in the Fifteenth Century

The article investigates how textile production gave shape to the devotion within the St Agnes convent, a female Devotio Moderna community placed in Emmerich in the fifteenth century. It draws on insights from nonanthropocentric theoretical fields such as Science and Technology Studies, Post-phenomenology, Posthumanism, and New Materialism and analyzes the biographies of the St Agnes sisters, The St Agnes Schwesternbuch, to gain a further understanding of how practices such as spinning or weaving directly affected the religious culture of the community. Based on analyses of the Emmerich biographies, it is argued that every material body or actant engaged in textile production within the community—human or nonhuman—should be considered as a co-creator of devotion within the convent; that in the convent, devotion was to a great extend carried out through interaction with textile technology. As a result, religious practice in the St Agnes convent was something that could be felt not only spiritually but also physically. Devotion gained a highly practical, dynamic, and tangible character, and its effect was evident to every member of the community.