WASHING OF THE FEET. - It is a ceremony performed on Holy Thursday. In ancient times it followed Baptism, but it was soon abandoned in several Churches. St. Ambrose (De Sacramentis, 3, 1) speaks of it at length, giving all the elements of the criticism and development of the rite. St. Augustine did not follow the Milanese custom and in a letter (Epist. LV, 18, 33; CSEL, XXXIV, II, pp. 207-208) states that the washing of the feet must not be connected with Baptism and seems to recommend it for Holy Thursday, even though to Malvy it seems to indicate Good Friday. St. Caesarius of Arles (PL 39, 2071) admits it for the newly baptized. The Sinodus Illiberitana (can. 48 in Hefele-Leclercq, I, 1, p. 249) of 303, on the other hand, had forbidden it.
In fact the ceremony, already recommended by St. Paul (I Tim. 5, 10) to widows, was later practiced for guests in monasteries, in commemoration of the humility of Jesus, at the end of the functions of Holy Thursday. It then passed into the cathedrals, at first divided into two parts: the bishop washed the feet of the canons, then those of the poor; but very soon, for the sake of brevity, the two ceremonies were combined and the bishop washed the feet of 13 poor men. The reason for that number, however, is not very clear. The oldest testimony is found in the Mozarabic Liber Ordinum (ed. Ferotin, Paris 1904, p. 190 ff.) reflecting the customs of the 5th-6th centuries. For Rome the first testimonies are found in 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 dominates, the "mandatum" (hence the name given to the whole ceremony) new of Jesus. In Milan the washing of the feet was preserved throughout the Middle Ages on Holy Saturday and already in the oldest manuscripts (11th century) it is also appointed for Holy Thursday: today only the latter remains, for 12 poor men representing the Apostles, including Judas, to whom a larger compensation in money is given. During the ceremony a few verses of psalm 118 are sung, interspersed with an antiphon taken from Io. 13, 4; 5, 14.
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Enrico Cattaneo
ARCHAEOLOGY
The scene of the washing of the feet performed by the Lord on St. Peter already appears in ancient Christian funerary art; it is represented on Roman and Gaulish 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 Purple Codex of Rossano, to the right of the Last Supper (A. Muñoz, Il codice purpureo di Rossano, Rome 1907, pl. 5); in ivories, as in a diptych of Milan (P. Garrucci, Storia dell'arte, VI, Prato 1881, pl. 450, 1), in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin and in the Museo civico of Bologna (Venturi, II, figs. 440 and 447) and then in the antependium of Salerno; later in bas-reliefs, as at Selles-sur-Cher, at Clermont, and in the Museum of Toulouse (from the cloister of la Daurade); in manuscripts, as in the Gospel of Patmos (of the 10th century) and in ms. lat. 17325 of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, in the evangeliaries of Otto III and of Henry II in the Library of Munich, in a miniature of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge and of the Chudov Psalter. In mosaics already at Ravenna in the Baptistery of the Orthodox, from the time of Bishop Neon (449-59), in the lower register, on the arches, traces remain of the illustrative inscription: ubi deposuit IHS vestimenta. Later in frescoes as at S. Urbano alla Caffarella and at S. Maria in Pallara in Rome, in the church of Saint-Martin-de-Vicq (Indre) in France; in the East in the mosaics of the churches of St. Luke in Phocis (beginning of the 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 Sts. Peter and Paul at Turnovo in Bulgaria, damaged in 1913 (14th century).
The Rossano type is found again in S. Angelo in Formis, in Salerno and in the oldest scenes of Cappadocia, that is, together with the Last Supper. - See pl. LX.
Bibliography2 works
Enrico Josi