Above: one of our neighbours has a set of Maundy Money. Given in 2000 I think. The silver coins (which are minted especially) were given in the two leather purses, and she later put them in this plastic display case.
Above: screenshot of the BBC news report (note the mace-holder on the left).
Today is Maundy Thursday. At Westminster Abbey this morning the Queen gave out the Maundy Money. By her side was someone holding a heavy-looking medieval mace - in previous times if any one stepped out of line he would hit them (which seems a good system of crowd control, even today). The choir sang Zadok the priest. The Duke of Edinburgh read the Lesson (about the separation of the sheep from the goats). The Cosmati Pavement was on show.
Rituals are important in society because of their symbolic value. Probably a society could not function properly without them. But it is not always clear what the symbols mean or what the values signify.
To unpick an 800-year ritual like Maundy Thursday would not be easy. And even if you managed to trace back the various strands to the 12th century you may well find that the origins go back even further, maybe another eight hundred years, or eight thousand, or even eighty thousand. What I am trying to say is that society is a lot stranger and deeper than most people realise.
If you were able to go back eighty thousand years you would probably see a tribal chief, protected by a guard holding a club, issuing gifts to the poorest members of the tribe (while warding off the plague with bunches of herbs and flowers).
We flatter ourselves that in a marketing-led consumer-choice society like the United Kingdom we are in control (mostly) of our lives and make all our decisions based on rational thought processes. On a superficial level this might be true, but as soon as you look more deeply at why people make buying decisions you realise we are not in control at all. The cultural instincts we obey were laid down centuries ago, probably millennia.
What is a fair price? Why is silver valuable? Who decides what high status is? etc.
You tell me.
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