Maundy Thursday

When I was a kid, and the family church celebrated Maundy Thursday, I thought they were saying "Monday Thursday," which I thought was very odd. I suspect I'm not alone in that. Maundy Thursday is actually "The Thursday before Easter, observed in commemoration of the Last Supper of Jesus. Also called Holy Thursday." "Maundy," or in Middle English "maunde" refers to the ritual of washing the feet of the poor, a rather common event on this day even now in many churches. Middle English maunde derives from Old French mande, from Latin mandatum novum , or "new commandment," a reference to Jesus' words to the Apostles after he washed their feet, as described in John 13:34. In the Latin, Jesus says "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos." In the 1611 King James version, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you." The Latin mandtum is the same word that gives us Modern English mandate, or "An authoritative command or instruction." In England there are very strong ties to Maundy Thursday and alms-giving, that is, charity for the poor. The image above is the hand-colored print William Blake created of his poem "Holy Thursday, " from his collection of poems Songs of Innocence. You can read the entire poem here.

Mandate, like mandum and maundy, its cognates, all derive from the Proto Indo-European root *man-2 or "hand." It's an interesting root, since it gives us a variety of words, including manacle, maneuver, manuscript, mastiff, manipulation, demand, command, and commend—and manure. That last one made me pause a second, but then I remembered that manure was initially a verb. Manure is from Middle English manuren, "to cultivate land," from Anglo-Norman mainouverer, which of course is recognizable of Modern English maneuver.

Maundy Thursday is preceded by Ash Wednesday, and followed by Good Friday.