Webster, as ever, confuses the issue. Passion Week could easily refer to the week following Passion Sunday. Maundy Thursday is the Thursday in Holy Week. This is the day on which the British Monarch distributes the Maundy Money - an act of symbolic almsgiving. Many churches have vigils, foot-washing rituals and other observations. This is also the original day for the commemoration of the Last Supper, Corpus Christi being a later introduction.

Office hymn: Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium

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Forward to Good Friday

Footnote: Dante's Divine Comedy begins on this day. The Inferno lasts from the Thursday afternoon to the Friday night.

The day Dante intended the events in the Inferno to take place. In New York City an all-night reading of the book for insomniacs is held in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine starting at 9pm.

Maun"dy Thurs"day (?). [OE. maunde a command, OF. mand'e, L. mandatum, from mandare to command. See called from the ancient custom of washing the feet of the poor on this day, which was taken to be the fulfillment of the "new commandment," John xiii. 5, 34.] Eccl.

The Thursday in Passion week, or next before Good Friday.

 

© Webster 1913.

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