Origins Of Mothering Sunday | Laetare

Simnel Cake | BBC image

- from the NEWS Notes of SJHN Victoria, BC

Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God: that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace, may mercifully be relieved; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - Collect for Mothering Sunday, Divine Worship: The Missal.

Mothering Sunday falls every year on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, also called Mid-Lent Sunday or Refreshment Sunday, referring to its sense of respite halfway through this season of fasting and penitence.

Medieval traditions surrounding this Sunday ranged from the practice of daughters visiting their mothers – especially important for those engaged as domestic servants away from home – to the gifts of simnel cakes or wafer cakes.

These various customs came from the medieval recognition of this day as ‘Lætare Sunday’. In the Middle Ages, many Sundays were referred to by their Introit, or the first words of the Mass. On Mid-Lent Sunday, it also had a reference to mothering:

Lætare Hierusalem et conuentum facite omnes qui diligitis eam; gaudete cum lætitia, qui in tristitia fuistis, ut exsultetis et satiemini ab uberibus consolationis uestræ.

Rejoice ye with Jerusalem; and be glad for her, all ye that delight in her: exult and sing for joy with her, all ye that in sadness mourn for her; that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations.

The readings for the day in the Sarum Rite included Galatians 4.21-31, including the line ‘Jerusalem… is our mother’. The association of food with the day seems to be linked to St John 6.1-14, the story of the feeding of the five thousand. And there was a relaxation of the rule against playing the organ.

Simnel cake has been associated with the day for centuries, though its exact origins are foggy. ‘Simnel’ is derived from Anglo-Norman simenel, ‘fine wheat flour’, itself apparently derived from the Classical Latin simila, a wheat flour. (The word was borrowed again from Anglo-Norman into medieval Latin as simenellus.)

A custom developed during the Middle Ages of making a procession to one’s ‘mother church’ on this day, usually the local cathedral. This could sometimes get out of hand, as Robert Grosseteste (c.1170–1253), Bishop of Lincoln, warned against in his Letter 22.7: ‘In each and every church you should strictly prohibit one parish from fighting with another over whose banners should come first in processions at the time of the annual visitation and veneration of the mother church... . Those who dishonour their spiritual mother should not at all escape punishment, when those who dishonour their fleshly mothers are, in accordance with God’s law, cursed and punished with death’.

Mothers were honoured in many other different ways. Abbots’ mothers are included in the list of queens and abbesses in the New Minster Liber Vitæ. One Wulfwyn was the mother of the monk Ælfwine, who became abbot in c.1031; he also noted her death in his prayer book.

Mothering in the Middle Ages was multifaceted, complex, and difficult. Intellectuals compared it to the very work of God. Around 1395, Julian of Norwich famously compared God to a mother. Robert of Cricklade could uncontroversially write around 1238, ‘Do you seek the presence of a mother? Just as a mother comforts her children, so will I comfort you, says the Lord’ (Isaiah 66.13). We can all agree: mothering is pretty awesome, and deserves to be celebrated.

Dr Andrew Dunning