ABSTRACT
In Italy, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, visual experience exploded. Flaggelants marched with paintings of the Flagellation, mirror images of Christ and participants in his Passion. The King of Glory energized the Italian imaginary through the trajectories. It brought the intimate portrait-relic of Christ to penitents craving for total immersion in the divine drama, purification and a sacral community energized by rites, pageantry, and elaborate symbolisms. The reception and transformation of a Christian type in tradition begs a theological ground since it is theology that legitimizes its aesthetic expression and underwrites its devotional use—especially in liturgical and sacred art. The arma may lose their singularity and isolation as they are partaking of Christ's redeeming theanthropy, but they remain open to new configurations and alignments consistent with the freedom that defines tradition.
