MAUNDY THURSDAY, the day preceding Good Friday. The word “maundy” (Middle-English, maundee or maundx, a command) is identical with the “mandatum” of the rubric and anthem of the Missal for the fifth day in Holy Week, sometimes called “Dies Mandati” (see this shown at length by Skea! in Etym. Diet., and in note to Piers Plowman, xvi. 140). The “mandatum” or “maund” referred to is the “new commandment” of John xiii. 34, but more particularly the precept given to the disciples in the same chapter “to wash one another’s feet.” The practice by prelates and others of literally and formally carrying out this injunction in a public manner on a given day has long been established both in the East and in the West. Perhaps an indication of it may be discerned as early as the 4th century in a custom, current in Spain, northern Italy, and elsewhere, of washing the feet of the catechumens towards the end of Lent before their baptism; it was not, however, universal, and in the 48th canon of the synod of Elvira (306 a.d.) it is expressly prohibited (comp. Corp. Jur. Can., c. 104, caus. i. qu. 1). Be this as it may, the “pedilavium,” or ceremony of washing the feet of twelve beggars on this day, has now for centuries been observed by the prelates of the Church of Rome, including the pope himself, according to a ritual minutely prescribed in the Missal; it is also practised by the Austrian emperor, the king of Bavaria, and other European sovereigns in the Latin obedience, as well as by the emperor of Russia and others at the head of the Greek Church. In England it was continued by the sovereign even after the Reformation; the last recorded instance of its full performance is in the case of James II., but a distribution of royal alms, consisting of money ...