Seite - 72 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 04/02

Charivari or the Historicising of a Question | 71www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 67–79 This transformational process inevitably affects the construction of the collec- tive and subjective identities, as well as the construction of masculinity, if gen- der, and therefore masculinity, is understood as an essential identity marker. This identity is formed in the mystical process of virtual interaction within the lyrical texts of the hymnbooks. The motifs are used to evoke the mystical encounter with the significant other, Jesus Christ; they are a communal and poetic expres- sion of a personal interaction between the “you” of Jesus Christ and the “me” of the individual soul of the singing congregation. This expression is both highly individual in its encounter with the divine in the unio mystica and highly formal- ized in the ritual and – in its printed form in the hymnbook – lyrical standardiza- tion of the possibility for the individual divine encounter. The idea of an “virtual interaction” therefore seems applicable to the piety of the Moravians and its bridal mysticism insofar as the interaction with Jesus Christ is primarily virtual, i.e. textual and lyrical. Additionally, it appears to me that within the bridal ver- sion of the unio mystica lies an opportunity to expand this conception to a kind of “virtual marriage” because on both planes of virtuality – the textual and the transcendental – an interaction occurs between bride and bridegroom, i.e. be- tween the individual and Jesus. From the textual evocation of the bridal interac- tion in the unio mystica to the actual encounter in the mystical peak experience, the soul is determined as the significant other to the courting Jesus Christ and becomes female – in spite of the actual sex of the human it belongs to – by its positioning as bride of the divine bridegroom.16 The construction of the individ- ual’s gender within the Moravian community was affected by the virtual interac- tion and “virtual marriage” and by the bridal transformatio mystica. Whereas the gender construction of female Moravians within the frame of bridal mysticism is congruent with their immanent female gender roles within the community and society, a discrepancy occurs between heteronormative requirements of being a “man”17 – the hegemonic masculinity within the surrounding society, the “white heterosexual males”18 – and the masculinity induced by bridal mysticism, i.e. the hegemonic masculinity inside the Moravian community.19 SINGING TO THE BRIDEGROOM – BRIDAL MYSTICISM, VIRTUAL MARRIAGE, AND MASCULINITY IN THE KLEINES BRÜDERGESANGBUCH To characterize the motifs of bridal mysticism and to apply to these motifs the preceding thoughts on virtuality and masculinity, I will now analyze in three 16 On the female soul see e.g. Peucker 2011, 46. 17 On heteronormativity see Degele 2008, 89. 18 Di Blasi 2013, 17. 19 For hegemonic masculinity see Connell 2000, 98.