16th-century icon of the Pskov school of Christ washing the apostle’s feet
9 April 2025
The day before Good Friday is often called Maundy Thursday, but that term is a bit mysterious to most modern English speakers. Outside of the name of the holiday, Maundy isn’t a word we much use anymore. The word comes to us from the Anglo-Norman, the dialect of French spoken in post-Conquest England, mandé, and ultimately from the Latin mandatum (commandment).
The name is a reference to the events of the day before Christ’s execution, that is Good Friday, particularly Jesus’s washing of the apostle’s feet and the Last Supper. Traditionally, European monarchs have washed the feet of the poor and distributed alms to them on this day, a practice that the pope continues to this day. According to John 13, Christ washed the feet of the disciples before the meal, and later said, according to the Vulgate John 13:13–14:
vos vocatis me magister et Domine et bene dicitis sum etenim si ergo ego lavi vestros pedes Dominus et magister et vos debetis alter alterius lavare pedes
(You call me teacher and Lord, and you speak well, for I am. Therefore, if I, teacher and Lord, have washed your feet, so you ought to wash another’s feet.)
And John 13:34:
mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos ut et vos diligatis invicem
(I give to you a new commandment, that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another.)
(In cases such as this, I tend to use the Latin Vulgate, rather than the Hebrew and Greek originals, when quoting the Bible as it was by far the most common translation used in Britain and Europe during the medieval period.)
As a result, the act of washing feet, as Christ had done, became symbolic of loving as Christ had loved and also became part of the mass for that day. This verse was sung in the antiphon that accompanies the foot-washing ceremony in the Latin mass for the day, so mandatum novum would have been well known to and associated with the day even by those who did not speak Latin.
The word maundy first appears in English at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In what is probably the earliest recorded use, in the Northern Passion, found in Cambridge, University Library Gg.1.1, possibly written c.1300, it is in the form of to make maundy, or to take part in the Last Supper:
Wan þei had ysouped alle And maked her maunde in þe halle, Iesu cneled and woisse her fet.
(When they had all eaten and made their maundy in the hall, Jesus kneeled and washed their feet.)
Another early use is in the version of the life of Saint Brendan found in the South English Legendary, a collection of saints’ lives which 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.)
The first recorded use of Maundy Thursday as a phrase is in another saint’s life, a version of the Life of St. Norbert, penned by John Capgrave in 1440.
The Lent went fast, Maunde þursday is come, Whan of that sacrament a commemoracioun We maken.
So the maundy in Maundy Thursday is a linguistic relic that survives in the proper name of the holiday.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, Phase 3, 2008–12, s.v. mandé, n.
Foster, Frances A., ed. The Northern Passion, vol. 1 of 2. Early English Text Society O.S. 145. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1913, 31n19, Cambridge, University Library Gg.1.1 lines 293–94. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
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.
The Latin Vulgate New Testament Bible, Secundum Ioannem 13:13–14 and 13:34, Vulgate.org.
Middle English Dictionary, 4 March 2025, maunde, n.(2).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2001, s.v. Maundy, n., Maundy Thursday, n.
Image credit: Anonymous artist and photographer. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.