Why is it called Maundy Thursday?

The words behind the name

John’s account of the last supper has no bread and cup. Instead, Jesus gets up from the table, wraps a towel around his waist, pours water into a basin and washes his disciples’ feet, a servant’s job. Peter protests. Then Jesus explains.

If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.

A few verses later, with Judas gone out into the night, comes the line that named the day.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another.

In the Latin Bible of the Western church the verse begins Mandatum novum do vobis, “A new commandment I give to you.” Those words became the antiphon sung while a priest or bishop washes feet on that Thursday, and the rite itself took the name Mandatum.

From mandatum to Maundy

English borrowed the word through French. Old French mandé passed into English around 1300 as the name of the foot-washing ceremony, and then of the day that held it. The same Latin root gives English “mandate.” A rival theory, that the name comes from maunds, the baskets in which English kings carried their alms, has had defenders, but most dictionaries follow mandatum.

What the day remembers

Maundy Thursday falls three days before Easter and recalls the whole of that night: the meal, the bread and cup, the foot-washing, the prayer in Gethsemane and the arrest. Paul, writing around AD 55, already dates the meal by it.

the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread

In Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper opens the three days before Easter. The bells ring at the Gloria and then fall silent until the Easter Vigil. After communion the altar is stripped bare, often read as a picture of the disciples deserting Jesus. In 2013 Pope Francis washed the feet of young prisoners in Rome, women and Muslims among them, and in 2016 the Vatican changed the rule so that women may be chosen too. For the rest of the week, see what happened during Holy Week.

The Royal Maundy

England kept the custom in royal form. King John gave alms on Maundy Thursday in 1210, and medieval kings and queens washed the feet of poor people themselves; the last to do so is usually said to be James II, in 1685. Today the sovereign hands out Maundy money instead: specially struck silver pennies, twopences, threepences and fourpences, given to one man and one woman for each year of the monarch’s age. Officials still wear linen towels at the waist and carry posies of sweet herbs, once used to mask the smell of feet. Charles III held his first Royal Maundy at York Minster in 2023.

Other names for the same day

• Holy Thursday: the usual Catholic name, and the name in most European languages: Jueves Santo, Giovedì Santo, Quinta-feira Santa.
• Great and Holy Thursday: the Orthodox name.
• Sheer Thursday: an old English name, from shere, “clean” or “bright,” perhaps for the cleaning done that day. Its Nordic cousins live on in Swedish skärtorsdag and Danish skærtorsdag.
• Gründonnerstag: German for “green Thursday,” either from an old word for weeping or from the fresh green food eaten that day.