The Royal Maundy

I see that I have posted twice, and at some length, with links, about the Royal Maundy. These articles, whichnInurge readers to look at, can be seen at The Royal Maundy from 2011 and at The Royal Maundy from last year.

The BBC News report of this year’s service at St George’s Chapel Windsor where the Maundy money was distributed by the Prince of Wales accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall can be seen at Prince Charles stands in for Queen at Maundy Service

Wikipedia has a good account of the history and the developing practice over the centuries of the Royal Maundy and is clearly based on up to date research into its history. The article can be read at Royal Maundy

This refers to the fact that it was King Henry IV who standardised the practice of having as many recipients as the monarch had years. This appears to have come about because of his birth in Holy Week 1366. It may also reflect his own piety as a theologically literate layman and perhaps also a desire to demonstrate piety and humility in the wake of the events which brought him to the throne in 1399. His grandfather King Edward III had given fifty pence to fifty recipients in 1363 when he himself was fifty but it is not clear if this was a particular gesture rather than standard practice. This was a divergence from the usual twelve or thirteen ( as in the first recorded English Royal Maundy by King John ) of ecclesiastical communities and noble households as also of other monarchies such as Austria and Spain. The English tradition of having an equal number of men and women appears to have been a consequence of the shared monarchy of King William III and Queen Mary II, as previously the recipients had been men except for the reigns of Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I when they were all women, as in the miniature reproduced in my previous blog posts about the ceremony. 

The location in earlier centuries was not necessarily in a church but in the hall of a castle or palace. This is like the custom until thr 1950s of the ecclesiastical pedelavium taking place outside the Mass and not in church. This seems to have been the case with the Royal Maundy until the seventeenth century. In the absence of the monarch after 1698 the ceremony was held in the Whitehall Banqueting House, which had become a  chapel until 1890, when it was transferred to Westminster Abbey. It was there that in 1932 KingnGeorge V was the first monarch since the late Stuart period to personally distribute the purses. Although yhrbKing did not do so again it set in motion the revival of the practice and in that respect is similar to various other aspects of the public ceremonial face of the monarchy which come from the early years of his reign, and indeed of his father, in respect of several of the Orders of Chivalry and their chapels as well as the revival of the public Investiture of the Prince of Wales.

As the Wikipedia article shows it only in the present reign that the Monarch has consistently distributed the Maundy Money.  The Queen has taken the service from Westminster Abbey around England to cathedrals and one or two other churches - St George’s Windsor on several occasions, including this year, to two former Benedictine abbeys which are now parish churches at Selby and Tewkesbury - linked in both their instances to their anniversaries of foundation - and once to Wales to St David’s and once to Northern Ireland to Armagh. The visit to St David’s also enabled The Queen to exercise her right as a Canon of the cathedral to occupy her stall in the choir. This unique status comes from John of Gaunt who was added to the capitular body there in the late fourteenth century. This was one of the relatively few occasions on which the service has been televised. I think it a pity that it is not broadcast each year.

My reason for that is what I wrote in 2011 and which I will cite again:

As an exercise in Royal humility, indeed in Christ-like humility, it is inevitibly ritualised, but anyone who has seen in person or on television the Queen distributing the Maundy money can recognise an authentic spirit of compassion in her demeanor as well as the reminder in the liturgy of the monarch as being at the service of their subjects. That is present in all Maundy ceremonies.

Interesting, is n't it, that those elected political leaders who so loudly claim to be of the people do not perform such ceremonies as a reminder to themselves or those they rule of the need for humility in high office. When did you last hear of the Presidential Maundy?