ABSTRACT
The reintegration of a fragmented, dissolute body through spiritual communion suggests multiple resurrections and in a Maximian gesture, the plerotic nature of deification. The time of eschatological events is personal. The place where they unfold is now visceral, imaginational, and mnemonic. Painted images stand in the threshold where human and divine time fuse: they are mystical gates to a palpable God. An image infused with this kind of depth may shed its aesthetic integrity and become inscribed or punctuated by symbols and performance cues. It may, in other words, undergo a kind of ontological dispersion to become viscerally and imaginationally operational. Spiritual knowledge results from the activation of the innate faculties of the soul by divine grace. Despite differences between Orthodox and Catholic spiritualities, the relationship is one of communion rather than opposition. Climacus, Francis, the Spirituals, the laude of Jacopone da Todi (1230/36–1306), and Perugia's flagellants (disciplinati) are among the many threads that pass through this interchange.
