Jesus in Golgotha, Theophanes the Cretan, c. 1550
11 April 2025
Good Friday is the day when Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ, which leads many people to ask, “what’s so good about it?” That’s a fair question, and the answer is that good has been used to designate a number of religious holidays. In Old and Middle English, the adjective god (good) could mean pious, devout, morally perfect, so the good in Good Friday is a linguistic relic meaning holy, in other words, Holy Friday.
English isn’t the only language to use a word meaning good in this way. There is the Middle Dutch goede vridach, dating to at least 1240, and the Middle Low German got vridach, dating to the same period. In Anglo-Norman, the dialect of French spoken in post-Conquest England, the day was called Bon Venderdy, attested to c. 1312, and in fourteenth century Anglo-Latin it was bonus dies Veneris. (Jewish holy days are called yom tov, a Yiddish alteration of the Hebrew yom (day) + tob (good), but use of good in English to refer to Jewish holy days appears later and is a translation of the Yiddish/Hebrew rather than an extension of the Christian use of the word.)
But the earliest English use of good to refer to a period of religious observance is older than these other languages, found in the Penitential of Ecgbert, Archbishop of York. Ecgbert was an eighth century cleric, but the work is almost certainly falsely ascribed to him and written sometime later. It’s found in the manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190, which was copied in the mid eleventh century. This penitential uses goden tide (good time) to refer a generic period of penance, not specifically as a name for Lent:
Ðeos tid cymð ymbe twelf-monað; þ[æt] ælc man sceal his scrift gesprecan; & be his seciftes leafan on his fæsten fon; & Gode & his scrifte his gyltas andettan; þa ðe he geþohte; oððe man-slihte; oððe on morðre; oððe on unriht-hæmede; oððe on ænigum þara þinga þe man wið God agyltan mæg. Ðonne hafa þu rihtne geleafan to Gode & to þysse godan tide; & georne beo betende þær þu wite þ[æt] þu geworht hæbbe.
(The time comes, after a year, when every man should speak to his confessor, and, with the his confessor’s permission, begin his fast, and confess to God and to his confessor his sins which he has purposed, whether manslaughter, or murder, or fornication, or by any of those things by which we might sin against God. Have therefore righteous faith in God, and in this good time; & you will quickly repair the harm that you have done.)
The corpus of Old English texts has no use of god to refer specifically to the day of the crucifixion. Instead, that day was referred to as langa frigadæg (Long Friday), probably a reference to the fasting and long religious services held on the day. The following appears as a rubric for the West Saxon Gospel of John 18–19, the chapters that covers the arrest, trial, torture, and crucifixion of Christ. The rubrics, or section headings, in this edition refer to the days on which the section should be read:
Ðes passio gebyrað on langa-frige-dæg
This passion is appropriate for Long Friday
The name Good Friday appears in the version of the life of Saint Brendan found in the South English Legendary, a collection of saints’ lives that dates to before 1325 and uses maundy refer to all the rites and ceremonies of Holy Thursday:
Þis procuratour heom cam aȝein : and welcomede heom a-non,
Ant custe seint brendanes fet : and þe Monekes echon;
And sette heom sethþe to þe soper : for þe day it wolde so,
And sethþe he wuchs hore fet alle : þe maunde for-to do.
huy heolden þare heore maunde— : and þare heo gounnen bi-leue
A-gode friday al þe longue day : for-to an ester eue.
(This procurator came to them again, and welcomed them at once, and kissed the feet of Saint Brendan and every one of the monks; and afterward set them to the supper, for the day would have it so, and afterward he washed all their feet, to perform maundy. They held all their maundy there, and there they remained Good Friday, all the long day, because it was Easter eve.)
(A procurator is an official of a monastery, the monk in charge of the finances and worldly affairs.)
So Good Friday is “holy Friday,” and we’ve been calling it that since the fourteenth century, although the use of good to refer to holy days in general is even older.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, AND2 Phase 1, 2006, s.v. bon, adj.
Dictionary of Old English: A to Le, 2024, s.v. god, adj.
Horstmann, Carl. The Early South-English Legendary. Early English Text Society O.S. 87. London: N. Trübner, 1887, lines 361–66, 229. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud 108. Middle English Compendium.
Middle English Dictionary, 4 March 2025, s.v. fri-dai, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2014, s.v. Good Friday, n., good, adj., n., adv., & int., good tide, n.; June 2016, s.v. Long Friday, n.
Thorpe, Benjamin, ed. Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, vol. 2 of 2. London: Commissioners of the Public Records, 1840, 224. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
———. Ða Halgan Godspel on Englisc: The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Holy Gospels. London: J. G. F. and J. Rivington, 1842, John 18–19 (rubric), 227. Archive.org.
Image credit: Theophanes the Cretan, c. 1550, Stavronikita Monastery, Mt. Athos, Greece. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.