Writing of the current time of year in 1440, John Capgrave, wrote that “The Lent went fast, Maundy Thursday is come, when of that sacrament a commemoration we maken.” Though Easter is one of the two most celebrated of Christian holidays and Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the three-day span of Easter as told in the gospels, it has become one of the least understood of days. Any decent Christian knows the Easter story, but, when it comes to what makes it the preceding Thursday maundy and what maundy even means, many are left puzzled.
First, especially for those unfamiliar, it is important to understand the base event. According to the Gospel of John, meeting with his disciples immediately before the Last Supper (the day before the crucifixion), Jesus washes their feet. Doing this as a sign of love, respect, and in order to teach humility – because roads and walkways in the ancient world were quite dirty – Jesus says to them: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you.” (John 13:34)
Considering Jesus’ action as well as His instruction, clearly this is meant to demonstrate charity and humility. Down through the centuries, many have emulated His actions directly by washing the feet of the poor, as Abraham Fleming notes in the Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), writing that: “Upon Maundy Thursday he made his maundy, there having nine and fifty poor men, whose feet he washed.”
Beyond the humility of the washing of the feet, the aspect of charitable giving has also been widespread: writing in his Visits to Remarkable Places (1840), William Howitt remarked that: “On Maundy Thursday he washed and kissed the feet of fifty poor people; gave each twelve pence, three ells of good canvass, for shirts; a pair of shoes; and a cask of red herrings.”
While the religious explanation behind the word may be sensible, the word meaning and origin are a little more murky. From the time it was first used in the English circa 1325 to the current day, maundy is defined as the ceremony of washing feet and charitable giving (associated almost universally with the Thursday before Easter), yet the word itself derived from the Old French mandé, and has its origin in the Latin translation of the gospels, where, in the aforementioned verse, the term “A new commandment” is mandatum novum: essentially, we are not taking the word at its original Latin value, we are using it to mean the action that is associated with it.
True, this may not be the correct interpretation of the word’s meaning, but, especially for Christians at this time of year, actions truly do speak louder than words.
