The Holy Lance, also known as the Spear of Longinus (named after Saint Longinus), the Spear of Destiny, or the Holy Spear, is the lance that pierced the side of Jesus as he hung on the cross during his crucifixion. As with other instruments of the Passion, the lance is only briefly mentioned in the New Testament, but later became the subject of extrabiblical traditions in the medieval church. Relics purported to be the lance began to appear as early as the 6th century, originally in Jerusalem. By the Late Middle Ages, relics identified as the spearhead of the Holy Lance (or fragments thereof) had been described throughout Europe. Several of these artifacts are preserved to this day.
Holy Lance relics have typically been used for religious ceremonies, but at times some of them have been considered to be guarantees of victory in battle. For example, Henry the Fowler's lance was credited for winning the Battle of Riade, and the Crusaders believed their discovery of a Holy Lance brought them a favorable end to the Siege of Antioch.
In the modern era, major Holy Lance relics are located in Rome, Vienna and Vagharshapat. The Lance kept in Vienna, adorned with a distinctive gold cuff, is on public display with the rest of the Imperial Regalia at the Hofburg.
Biblical references
The lance (, ) is mentioned in the Gospel of John, but not in the Synoptic Gospels. The gospel states that the Romans planned to break Jesus' legs, a method of hastening death during a crucifixion known as . Jesus's followers wanted to ensure that he died before the start of the Sabbath at sundown on Friday, so that he could be promptly laid to rest; burials are not traditionally permitted on the Sabbath. Just before they did so, they noticed that Jesus was already dead and that there was no reason to break his legs ("and no bone will be broken"). To make sure that he was dead, a Roman soldier stabbed him in the side.
The Gospel of John does not give the name of the soldier who pierced Christ's side with a . The oldest known references to the legend, the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, appended to late manuscripts of the 4th century Acts of Pilate, identify the soldier as a centurion and called Longinus (making the spear's Latin name ).
A form of the name Longinus occurs in the Rabula Gospels in the late 6th century. In a miniature, the name is written above the head of the soldier who is thrusting his lance into Christ's side. This is one of the earliest records of the name, if the inscription is not a later addition.
Relics
The Holy Lance kept at Jerusalem The earliest known references to Holy Lance relics date to the 6th century. The Breviary of Jerusalem (circa 530) describes the lance on display at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In his Expositio Psalmorum (c. 540–548), Cassiodorus asserts the continued presence of the lance in Jerusalem. A report by the Piacenza pilgrim (c. 570) places the lance in the Church of Zion. Gregory of Tours described the lance and other relics of the Passion in his Libri Miraculorum (c. 574–594).
The Holy Lance kept at Constantinople In 614, Jerusalem was captured by the Sasanian general Shahrbaraz. The Chronicon Paschale says that the Holy Lance was among the relics captured, but one of Shahrbaraz's associates gave it to Nicetas who brought it to the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople later that year. However, De locis sanctis, describing the pilgrimage of Arculf in 670, places the lance in Jerusalem, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Arculf is the last of the medieval pilgrims to report the lance in Jerusalem, as Willibald and Bernard made no mention of it.
By the middle of the 10th century, a lance relic was venerated in Constantinople at the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. The relic was likely viewed by some of the soldiers and clergy participating in the First Crusade, adding to the confusion surrounding the emergence of another Holy Lance at Antioch in 1098.
According to Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, a fragment of the Holy Lance was set into the icon that Alexios V Doukas lost in battle with Henry of Flanders in 1204. The capture of this icon by Henry's forces was considered important to many contemporary sources on the Fourth Crusade. In addition to the crusaders' report to Pope Innocent III, the incident was documented by Geoffrey of Villehardouin, the Devastatio Constantinopolitana, Niketas Choniates, Robert de Clari, Ralph of Coggeshall, and Robert of Auxerre. However, none of these sources mention the icon bearing any relics, whereas Alberic claimed it was adorned with the lance fragment, a portion of the Holy Shroud, one of Jesus's deciduous teeth, and other relics from thirty martyrs. Modern historians have regarded Alberic's account with some skepticism, characterizing it as "fanciful" and "pure invention." In any case, after the battle the crusaders sent the icon to Cîteaux Abbey, but there is no record of whether it reached that destination.
Transfer to Paris
Following the sack of Constantinople, Robert de Clari described the spoils won by the newly established Latin Empire, including "the iron of the lance with which Our Lord had His side pierced," in the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. However, by the 1230s, the Latin Empire's financial state had grown desperate. In 1239, Baldwin II arranged to sell Constantinople's Crown of Thorns relic to King Louis IX of France. Over the next several years, Baldwin sold a total of twenty-two relics to Louis. The Holy Lance was included in the final lot, which probably arrived at Paris in 1242. All of these relics were later enshrined in the Sainte Chapelle. During the French Revolution they were removed to the Bibliothèque Nationale, but the lance subsequently disappeared.
Despite the transfer of the Holy Lance to Paris, various travelers continued to report its presence in Constantinople throughout the late Byzantine period. Of particular interest, John Mandeville described the lance relics in both Paris and Constantinople, stating that the latter was much larger than the former. Although the authenticity of Mandeville's travelogue is questionable, the widespread popularity of the work demonstrates that the existence of multiple Holy Lance relics was public knowledge.
Transfer to Rome The relics remaining in Constantinople, including the lance, were presumably seized by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453 when he conquered the city. In 1492, his son Bayezid II sent the lance to Pope Innocent VIII, to encourage the pope to continue to keep his brother and rival Cem prisoner. At this time great doubts as to its authenticity were felt at Rome, as Johann Burchard records, because of the presence of other rival lances in Paris, Nuremberg, and Armenia. This relic has never since left Rome, and its resting place is at Saint Peter's Basilica in a loggia carved into the pillar above the statue of Saint Longinus.
In the mid-18th century Pope Benedict XIV states that he obtained an exact drawing of the Saint Chapelle lance, to compare it with the spearhead in St. Peter's. He concluded that former relic was the broken point missing from the latter, and that the two fragments had originally formed one blade.
The Holy Lance of Vienna
The Holy Lance in Vienna is displayed in the Imperial Treasury (Weltliche Schatzkammer) at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria. It is the head of a typical winged lance of the Carolingian dynasty. The shaft was presumably lost or destroyed by the reign of Conrad II (1024–1039), who commissioned the Reichskreuz ("Imperial Cross") to serve as a reliquary for the spearhead.
The spearhead is wrapped in a distinctive gold cuff, added by Charles IV around 1354. The cuff is inscribed with the Latin text "" ("The lance and nail of the Lord"), saying that the lance was once used by Longinus and that one of the Holy Nails has been incorporated into the spearhead. The gold cuff covers an older, silver cuff produced for Henry IV between 1084 and 1105, which also refers to the Holy Nail but identifies the spearhead as the lance of Saint Maurice. Gilded stripes on both sides of the silver cuff bear another Latin inscription: "" ("Nail of the Lord Henry by the Grace of God the Third, Emperor of the Romans and Augustus, ordered this silver piece to be made to reinforce the Nail of the Lord and the Lance of St. Maurice / Saint Maurice").The inscription refers to King Henry IV, as "the third" because he was the third of his name crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
According to Liutprand of Cremona, the first German monarch to obtain the lance was King Henry the Fowler who purchased it in 926, from King Rudolf II of Burgundy. Rudolf is supposed to have received the lance as a gift from a "Count Samson", about whom nothing else is known. Liutprand associated the lance not with Longinus, but with Constantine the Great, citing a claim that the Roman emperor used the Holy Nails, discovered by his mother Helena, to make crosses in the middle of the spearhead. The description given by Liutprand closely corresponds to the relic kept in Vienna today.
An alternative account of how Henry received the lance is offered by Widukind of Corvey. According to Widukind, King Conrad I of Germany made arrangements on his deathbed in 918 to send his royal insignia, including the Holy Lance, to Henry, who would succeed him as king of East Francia. This version of events has been rejected by historians.
On 15 March 933, Henry carried his lance as he led his forces against the Magyars in the Battle of Riade. From that point forward, the Ottonian dynasty regarded the lance as a talisman guaranteeing victory. The timing of the battle—on the feast day of Longinus—indicates that by this time Henry associated the relic with the lance used in the crucifixion. Along the same lines, it may be telling that Henry's son Otto the Great fought the Battle of Birten in the first half of March 939. However, in 955 Otto sought support from Saint Lawrence to secure victory in the Battle of Lechfeld, which was planned to occur on Lawrence's feast day. This shift may have resulted from the increased diplomatic ties between Germany and the Byzantine Empire circa 949/950. As the Germans became aware of the Byzantine version of the Holy Lance, it became politically inconvenient to associate the Ottonian lance with Longinus. By 1008 the lance was identified with that of Saint Maurice, who had been venerated by Otto the Great.
Otto III commissioned two replicas of the lance. One of these was given to Prince Vajk of Hungary in 996, who was later crowned King Stephen I. The other was presented to Duke of Poland, Bolesław I, at the Congress of Gniezno in 1000. The Polish lance is currently displayed in the John Paul II Cathedral Museum in Kraków. The fate of the Hungarian lance is less clear. When Stephen's successor, Peter Orseolo was deposed in 1041, he sought the aid of German king Henry III, who captured the lance in the Battle of Ménfő. Whether Henry returned the lance to Peter upon his restoration is uncertain. Shortly before World War I, a gold-inlaid spearhead, identified as a Germanic work from around the year 1000, was dredged from the Danube River near Budapest. The gold inlay suggests that this artifact could be Stephen's lance replica, but this has not been confirmed.
In 1424, Sigismund had a collection of relics, including the lance, moved from his capital in Prague to his birthplace, Nuremberg, and decreed them to be kept there forever. This collection was called the Imperial Regalia ().