FOOT WASHING. – It is a ceremony performed on Holy Thursday. In ancient times it followed Baptism, but it was soon abandoned in many Churches. St Ambrose (De Sacramentis, 3, 1) speaks of it at length, giving all the elements of the rite’s criticism and development. St Augustine did not follow the Milanese custom and in a letter (Epist. LV, 18, 33: CSE, LXXXIV, II, pp. 207-208) states that foot washing should have no relation to Baptism and seems to recommend it for Holy Thursday, even if it appears to be directed to Good Friday according to Malvy. St Caesarius of Arles (PL 30, 2071) admits it for the newly baptised. The Synodus III-Berytana (can. 48 in Hefele-Leclercq, I, 1, p. 249) of 303, however, had prohibited II.
In fact, the ceremony, already recommended by St Paul (1 Tim. 5, 10) for widows, was then practised for guests in monasteries, in commemoration of Jesus’ humility, at the end of the Holy Thursday services. It then passed into cathedrals, initially divided into two parts: the bishop washed the feet of the canons and then those of the poor; but soon, for brevity, the two ceremonies were combined and the bishop washed the feet of 13 poor people. It is not, however, very clear why that number was chosen. The earliest testimony is in the Mozarabic Liber Ordinum (ed. Ferotin, Paris 1904, p. 190 ff.), reflecting usages of the 5th-6th centuries. For Rome, the first testimonies are in the Ordo X and XII of the 12th-14th centuries. A. Wilmart published the texts of the chants used in the ceremony, in which the concept of charity, the “mandatum” (from which the name given to the whole ceremony derives), of Jesus predominates. In Milan the foot washing was preserved throughout the Middle Ages on Holy Saturday and in the oldest manuscripts (11th century) it is also ordered for Holy Thursday: today only the latter remains, performed for 12 poor people representing the Apostles, including Judas, to whom a larger monetary compensation is given. During the ceremony some verses of Psalm 118 are sung, interspersed with an antiphon from Jn. 13, 4; 5, 14.
ARCHAEOLOGY. – The scene of the foot washing performed by the Lord on St Peter already appears in early Christian funerary art; it is represented on Roman and Gallic sarcophagi (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, p. 161; pls. 1, 2, 4; 5, 16, 1-2; 20, 5; 121, 1); it occupies the left corner, as a counterpart to the scene of the Lord before Pilate.
It is then found represented in the Rossano Purple Codex, to the right of the Last Supper (A. Muñoz, Il codice purpureo di Rossano, Rome 1907, pl. 5); in ivories, as in a diptych from Milan (P. Garrucci, Storia dell’arte, VI, Prato 1881, pl. 450, 1), in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin and in the Civic Museum of Bologna (Venturi, II, figs. 440 and 447), and later in the pulpit of Salerno; later in bas-reliefs, such as at Selles-sur-Cher, Clermont, and in the Museum of Toulouse (from the cloister of la Daurade); in manuscripts, such as the Gospel of Patmos (10th century) and ms. lat. 17325 of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, in the Gospels of Otto III and Henry II in the Library of Munich, in a miniature of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge and of the Psalter of Chludov. In music, already at Ravenna in the Baptistery of the Orthodox, from the time of Bishop Neon (449-59), on the lower order, on the arches, traces remain of the illustrative inscription: ubi deposuit IHS vestimenta. Later in frescoes such as at S. Urbano alla Caffarella and S. Maria in Pallara in Rome, in the church of Saint-Martin-de-Vicq (Indre) in France;
FOOT WASHING – LAVIGERIE CHARLES-MARTIAL
in the East in the musical settings of the churches of St Luke in Phocis (early 11th century), of Nea Moni on Chios and of Daphni (mid-11th century); in frescoes of the rock churches of Cappadocia and in the paintings of the church of SS Peter and Paul in Turnovo in Bulgaria, damaged in 1913 (14th century).
The type from Rossano is found again in S. Angelo in Formis, in Salerno and in the earliest scenes of Cappadocia, that is, together with the Last Supper. – See pl. LX.