The Thursday before Easter is known as Maundy Thursday in the Roman Catholic church. Less famous than Good Friday, I think it deserves more attention. In fact I will be so bold as to declare it my favorite day of Holy Week.

The word “Maundy” comes from Latin for “command” and refers to Christ’s commandment to his disciples to “love one another as I have loved you, and Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper and the establishment of the Holy Eucharist.  Historically Maundy Thursday is associated with powerful figures washing the feet of the marginalized, as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Evidence of the rite of Pedilavium  (the Church’s term for this ceremonial foot washing) goes back to very ancient times and is considered a joyous rather than a solemn ceremony.

I cannot say why exactly I became fixated on this particular religious observance, but I know when—while I was writing my debut novel, The Sister Queens.  King Louis IX, husband of the elder of my two sisters, Marguerite of Provence, was obsessed with penitence. He not only frequently washed the feet of the less fortunate but liked to eat the leftovers of meals consumed by his favorite leper (yes, he had a favorite leper). Louis also was obsessed with wearing hairshirts, but that’s for another time.

Maudy Thursday also appears inthe pages of Médicis Daughter. Given my fixation, I just had to work it in. In Médicis Daughter my protagonist, Marguerite de Valois, watches her brother King Charles IX and her mother Queen Catherine de Médicis observe the Lenten foot-washing tradition rather than participating in it herself.

Would you humble yourself to wash someone else’s feet?