Spinning with Passion. The Distaff as an Object for Contemplative Meditation in Netherlandish Religious Culture

In two little-studied Middle Dutch texts, the authors present their readers with the distaff and the activities of spinning and cloth-making as a metaphor for Christ’s Passion, and, as such, as a meditative object and activity. These texts represent the ultimate conjunction of ora et labora, but their transmission suggests that the meditative practice was not limited to religious communities. This article explores these texts in their broader cultural and religious context as tools for meditation and expressions of (religious) power relations between men and women in the transitional age between the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.