A Missing Sacrament? Foot-washing, Gender, and Space in Early Christianity

Abstract

Abstract Although the story recounted in John 13 has often been taken to suggest a communal foot-washing practice existed in some Christian communities, the actual evidence for foot-washing in earliest Christianity suggests not a communal ritual, but women and particularly widows washing the feet of prisoners and others confined and in need. This custom seems to have waned across the third and fourth centuries as expectations of gender roles, liturgical practice, and space shifted, while different readings of the John 13 story encouraged a variety of newer, communal, and more public foot-washing practices, including those connected to initiation, and the monastic communal washings that underlie the medieval and later pedilavium.