Professor Michael Snape from our department of Theology and Religion explores the history, symbolism, and contemporary significance of the Royal Maundy Service, which King Charles III will continue this Thursday at Durham Cathedral.
This Thursday, King Charles III will visit Durham Cathedral for the Royal Maundy Service. The occasion derives from Christ’s interactions with his apostles at the Last Supper, on the eve of his crucifixion on Good Friday. There, to their surprise and indignation, and assuming a servant’s role, he washed their feet, telling them that ‘I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you’. He also gave them a new commandment –a mandatum, from which ‘Maundy’ takes its name– to ‘Love one another… By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.’
Christ’s words and actions at the Last Supper served as a compelling model of servant kingship for England’s medieval monarchs, for whom Maundy Thursday, on which the Last Supper is commemorated, became a day on which they could act as exemplars of Christian service. Given the precedents of the Last Supper, until the 1730s the ceremony included washing the feet of selected paupers (sometimes pre-washed, given the health risks involved), with the middle-aged Queen Mary washing the feet of forty-one women in 1556. This deceptively random number illustrates an inherent corollary between the monarch’s age and the scale of the charity bestowed. Although almsgiving had always been part of the tradition (which had originated in the early thirteenth century under King John), King Henry IV (r. 1399–1413) initiated the custom whereby the number of beneficiaries should equate with the age of the monarch.
As a salutary display of Christian charity, the details of the Maundy ceremony evolved over time. While it survived the upheavals of the Reformation and the Commonwealth, it came to settle at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace and, by the time the washing of feet was curtailed (superseded, in part, by more practical gifts of clothing), this was being performed by the Lord High Almoner (typically a bishop, and today Graham Usher, the Bishop of Norwich). Indeed, the involvement and even the attendance of the monarch fell into abeyance until King George V (r. 1910–36) was persuaded to distribute Maundy money in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression.
It was only with the accession of his granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1952 that the monarch once again became central to this annual ceremony– a notable development in the new age of television. In a manner that reflected her youth and her particularly earnest Christian faith, the young Queen (accompanied by the choir of the Chapel Royal) took the Maundy Service out of London to different provincial cathedrals each year, first coming to Durham in 1967. For a ceremony laden with symbolism, this was itself significant, as the Royal Maundy Service was the only occasion in which the Queen travelled to meet the recipients of a royal award, rather than vice-versa. By this stage, other details of the Maundy Service had also become established. The age of the monarch determines the number of men and women chosen to receive a white leather purse of specially minted Maundy money, along with a red leather purse containing more conventional currency. Fixtures of the accompanying liturgy include the reading of the mandatum from the Gospel of St John, and the account of the Last Judgment (with its emphasis on the importance of good works) from the Gospel of St Matthew. Handel’s anthem ‘Zadok the Priest’, usually associated with the coronation, is also sung– a powerful reminder of the sacrality of the British monarchy and of its scriptural roots as an institution.
As Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, this Thursday King Charles will be observing an ancient tradition and modelling a distinctively Christian concept of kingship. His intention to follow the example of his late mother is clear– an example that extends to his strong support for other faith traditions (instanced by his initial desire, as Prince of Wales, to be styled ‘Defender of Faith’) and his personal interest in faith issues. How long this might be sustained in an increasingly secular and multi-faith Britain is another –and very much open– question.
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