Washing the Disciples’ Feet

Some early reliquaries were simply quite practical means of housing relics being kept for personal use—relatively plain boxes, or small pendants. Later, however, reliquaries were developed for the display of relics to pilgrims or congregations, evoking the meaning of the objects they contained so to elicit devotion (Hahn 2012). In this process, as this reliquary shows, even the lowly foot could become freighted with meaning, and an object of beauty and inspiration.

The finely wrought artwork comprises a wooden core, the upper part of which is covered with sheets of silver. Gilded copper is used for the sole, for the plaque on the top which caps the foot at the ankle, and for the decorated frame of the small rock crystal window through which relics of St Blaise could be viewed. On the plaque, Blaise is depicted standing in the splendour of his episcopal robes, a canopy over his head. But the carved foot itself possesses its own dignity, with its fine modelling, gentle and graceful arch, and elegant toes.

St Blaise was bishop of Sebastea (present day Sivas in central Türkiye) and was martyred around 316 CE. He had reputedly been a physician prior to becoming a bishop, and continued a ministry of healing to humans and animals, right up to his death. Notwithstanding his relative obscurity, he gained considerable popularity in the later Middle Ages as someone whose help could still be sought for bodily ailments (Farmer 2011) and his relics were so prized as to be deemed worthy of costly casing in this and many other instances.

Whether this reliquary contained his whole foot, one or more of its bones, or even some other body part, is unclear. What is clear however (as well as noteworthy) is that a representation of a human foot—base body part that it is—could be conceived as worthy of reverence, rather than of disgust, and a fitting object of prayerful meditation. How does the foot become such an object?

At the close of the foot-washing scene in John, Jesus connects what he has done with the sending out of the apostles—‘he who receives any one whom I send receives me’ (John 13:20). The feet of those whom Jesus sends have been made beautiful. For ‘how beautiful are the feet’—even the feet—‘of those who preach the gospel of peace’ (Isaiah 52:7; Romans 10:15).

References

Farmer, D.H. 2011. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University)

Hahn, Cynthia. 2012. Strange Beauty: Issues in the Marking and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press)

Peter accepts the washing of his feet, but he does not seem to do so comfortably. His tightly clasped hands, furrowed brow and troubled visage, suggest an uneasy state of mind, even if his initial demurral (‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’; John 13:6) has been overcome. Judas to the left (identified by a bag of coins, being the one who kept ‘the money box’; John 12:6, and his traditional red hair) looks on coolly—but the other disciples seem as unsettled as Peter, and the one with his head in his hands especially so.

What is discomfiting to Peter is presumably just that Jesus should take on a task usually performed by a slave (to use the proper translation). And from the low, close up perspective Ford Madox Brown has chosen, we focus on these two main ‘actors’, but also appreciate that the job of washing a dozen pairs of dusty feet is no mean feat—or rather is a distinctly mean feat. The kneeling Christ, however, bends intently to his task, with the determination which will lead him quite shortly to go out to sacrifice his life. This act of humility and service is both the opening scene and a prefiguration of that later one.

In accordance with ideals championed by some members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with which he was associated (albeit not as a member), Brown portrays the scene with a naturalness of action and emotion—and in his first attempt at the work, Christ, who ‘laid aside his garments’ to wash his disciples’ feet (v.4), was depicted in a loin cloth, his legs and torso as bare as they would be at his crucifixion.

But as Peter could barely tolerate that the one he called Lord should so humble himself, no more could Brown’s contemporaries tolerate the depiction of Christ as a naked servant, and so—bowing to public taste—Brown added to the composition the much fuller green robes which Christ now wears. The utter humility of the servant Lord was as intolerable to his later as to his earlier followers.

Two vast feet on a pedestal are the remains of what would once have been a monumental statue. This colossus depicted Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt for nearly 40 years in the early fourteenth century BCE when it was at the height of its power, prestige, and cultural achievement.

The statue would have stood about 8m tall, but for all its monumentality, it was but one small element in Amenhotep’s vast funerary temple at Thebes (Smith 1998: 154–56).

Though merely a fragment, the feet are extraordinarily eloquent of the essence of kingship. To be placed on a pedestal seems to belong to the vocation of rulers, conceived as standing between heaven and earth as guarantors of the good order of their realms. But to guarantee this order, rulers’ feet are essential equipment—they must be ready to put a foot down from time to time, to stamp out any trouble, and even, if it comes to it, to put the boot in.

On the pedestal beneath Amenhotep’s elegant feet, hieroglyphic names of the nations south of Egypt are carved in relief. Around the pedestal’s base are busts of prisoners, hands tied behind their backs. They are linked one to another by the stem of a plant (papyrus) symbolic of Upper Egypt, which winds around their necks.

The statute was made for one of his predecessors, and has simply been reinscribed for Amenhotep. Yet although his standing atop the subjected people of the south does not represent his own direct achievement, but rather an inherited role, it reasserts his readiness to fulfil that role.

Pharaohs are usually depicted without sandals, but used sandals have been found in their tombs, and they surely wore them beyond the confines of palaces and temples. And such is the use to which human feet, especially kingly feet, are put, that even sandaled feet need washing. So too the feet of the disciples. When James and John had requested of Jesus that he ‘grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory’ (Mark 10:37), the others were ‘indignant’, not on account of the request, but because James and John got in first. The disciples may have sought thrones not pedestals, but they still needed to learn that sharing in Christ’s Lordship consisted in washing the feet of others, not in putting these others under their own feet.

References

Smith, W.S. 1998. The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt, 3rd edn rev. by W.K. Simpson (New Haven. Yale University Press)