Holy Lance

Statue of Saint Longinus by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1638)

A Holy Lance relic is preserved at Saint Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, in a loggia carved into the pillar above the statue of Saint Longinus.[6][7] The Catholic Church makes no claim as to its authenticity.

The first historical reference to a lance was made in AD 570 by an unknown pilgrim from Piacenza (often erroneously identified with St. Antoninus of Piacenza) in his descriptions of the holy places of Jerusalem, writing that he saw in the Basilica of Mount Zion "the crown of thorns with which Our Lord was crowned and the lance with which He was struck in the side",[8]^: 18[5] although there is uncertainty about the exact site to which he refers.[8]^: 42 A lance is mentioned in the so-called Breviarius at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.[5] The alleged presence in Jerusalem of the relic is attested by Cassiodorus (c. 485–585) as well as by Gregory of Tours (c. 538–594), who had not actually been to Jerusalem.[9][10]

In 614, Jerusalem was captured by the Sasanian general Shahrbaraz.[11]^: 156 The Holy Lance was among the relics captured, but one of Shahrbaraz's associates gave it to Nicetas who brought it to Constantinople later that year.[11]^: 157 The lance was placed in the church of Hagia Sophia,[5] and later to the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos.[12]^: 35

By 1244 the point of the lance was set in an icon.[5] Emperor Baldwin II sold the point and other relics to King Louis IX of France.[5][13]^: 28–31[14]^{: 307–308} The point of the lance was then enshrined with the crown of thorns in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. During the French Revolution these relics were removed to the Bibliothèque Nationale but the point subsequently disappeared.[5]

As for the larger portion of the lance, Arculf claimed he saw it at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre around 670 in Jerusalem.[5] Some claim that the larger relic had been conveyed to Constantinople in the 8th century, possibly at the same time as the Crown of Thorns. At any rate, its presence at Constantinople seems to be clearly attested by various pilgrims, particularly Russians, and, though it was deposited in various churches in succession, it seems possible to trace it and distinguish it from the relic of the point.[5] Sir John Mandeville declared in 1357 that he had seen the blade of the Holy Lance both at Paris and at Constantinople, and that the latter was a much larger relic than the former.[5] It is worth adding that Mandeville is not generally regarded as one of the Middle Ages' most reliable witnesses, and his supposed travels are usually treated as an eclectic amalgam of myths, legends and other fictions.

"The lance which pierced Our Lord's side" was among the relics at Constantinople shown in the 1430s to Pedro Tafur, who added "God grant that in the overthrow of the Greeks they have not fallen into the hands of the enemies of the Faith, for they will have been ill-treated and handled with little reverence."[15]

Tomb of Pope Innocent VIII

Whatever the Constantinople relic was, it did fall into the hands of the Turks, and in 1492, Sultan Bayezid II sent it to Pope Innocent VIII to encourage the pope to continue to keep his brother and rival Cem prisoner.[16]^{: 311–318} [5] At this time great doubts as to its authenticity were felt at Rome, as Johann Burchard records,[17] because of the presence of other rival lances in Paris (the point that had been separated from the lance), Nuremberg (see Holy Lance in Vienna below), and Armenia (see Holy Lance in Echmiadzin below).[5] This relic has never since left Rome, and its resting place is at Saint Peter's.[5] Innocent's tomb, created by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, features a bronze effigy of the pope holding the spear blade he received from Bayezid.[16]^: 321

In the mid-18th century Pope Benedict XIV states that he obtained from Paris an exact drawing of the point of the lance, and that in comparing it with the larger relic in St. Peter's he was satisfied that the two had originally formed one blade.[18]^: 323

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  A mitred Adhémar de Monteil carrying one of the instances of the Holy Lance in one of the battles of the First Crusade
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  1898 drawing of the Holy Lance in Rome

The Holy Lance in Vienna is displayed in the Imperial Treasury or Weltliche Schatzkammer (lit. Worldly Treasure Room) at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria.[19] It is a typical winged lance of the Carolingian dynasty.[19] At different times, it was said to be the lance of Saint Maurice or that of Constantine the Great.[20]^{: 177, 181}[19] In the tenth century, the Holy Roman Emperors came into possession of the lance, according to sources from the time of Otto I (912–973).[20]^: 178 In 1000, Otto III gave Bolesław I of Poland a replica of the Holy Lance at the Congress of Gniezno.[21]^: 351[22][20]^{: 178 f.7} In 1084, Henry IV had a silver band with the inscription "Nail of Our Lord" added to it. This was based on the belief that the nail embedded in the spear-tip was one that had been used for the Crucifixion of Jesus.[20]^: 181 It was only in the thirteenth century that the Lance became identified with that of Longinus, which had been used to pierce Christ's side and had been drenched in water and the blood of Christ.[19]

In 1273, the Holy Lance was first used in a coronation ceremony. Around 1350, Charles IV had a golden sleeve put over the silver one, inscribed Lancea et clavus Domini (Lance and nail of the Lord).[23]^: 5 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.[23]^: 7–8 This collection was called the Imperial Regalia (Reichskleinodien).

When the French Revolutionary army approached Nuremberg in the spring of 1796, the local authorities turned over the Imperial Regalia to Johann Alois von Hügel, Chief Commissary of the Imperial Diet.[24]^: 18–19[25]^: 732 Baron von Hügel took the regalia to Ratisbon for safekeeping, but by 1800 that city was also under threat of invasion, so he relocated them again to Passau, Linz, and Vienna.[24] When the French entered Vienna in 1805, the collection was moved again to Hungary, before ultimately returning to Vienna.[25]^: 732[24]^: 19 These movements were conducted in secret, as the status of the regalia had not been resolved amid plans for the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. When Nuremberg later appealed for the return of the regalia, the city's requests were easily dismissed by the Austrian Empire.[25]^: 732

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote that the Imperial Insignia "were still preserved in Vienna and appeared to act as magical relics rather than as the visible guarantee of an everlasting bond of union. When the Habsburg State crumbled to pieces in 1918, the Austrian Germans instinctively raised an outcry for union with their German fatherland".[26] During the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed to Germany, the Nazis brought the Reichskleinodien to Nuremberg, where they displayed them during the September 1938 Party Congress. They then transferred them to the Historischer Kunstbunker, a bunker that had been built into some of the medieval cellars of old houses underneath Nuremberg Castle to protect historic art from air raids.[27]

Most of the Regalia were recovered by the Allies at the end of the war, but the Nazis had hidden the five most important pieces in hopes of using them as political symbols to help them rally for a return to power, possibly at the command of Nazi Commander Heinrich Himmler.[27] Walter Horn – a Medieval studies scholar who had fled Nazi Germany and served in the Third Army under General George S. Patton – became a special investigator in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program after the end of the war, and was tasked with tracking the missing pieces down.[27] After a series of interrogations and false rumors, Nuremberg city councilor Stadtrat Fries confessed that he, fellow-councilman Stadtrat Schmeiszner, and an SS official had hidden the Imperial Regalia on 31 March 1945, and he agreed to bring Horn's team to the site.[27] On 7 August, Horn and a U.S. army captain escorted Fries and Schmeiszner to the entrance of the Panier Platz Bunker, where they located the treasures hidden behind a wall of masonry in a small room off of a subterranean corridor, roughly eighty feet below ground.[27] The Regalia were first brought back to Nuremberg castle to be reunited with the rest of the Reichskleinodien, and then transferred with the entire collection to Austrian officials the following January.[27]

The Kunsthistorisches Museum has dated the lance to the 8th century.[19] Robert Feather, an English metallurgist and technical engineering writer, tested it for a documentary in January 2003.[28][29] Based on X-ray diffraction, fluorescence tests, and other noninvasive procedures, he dated the main body of the spear to the 7th century at the earliest.[29] Feather stated in the same documentary that an iron pin – long claimed to be a nail from the crucifixion, hammered into the blade and set off by tiny brass crosses – was "consistent" in length and shape with a 1st-century AD Roman nail.[29]

Not long afterward, researchers at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Archeology in Vienna used X-ray and other technology to examine a range of lances, and determined that the Vienna lance dates from around the 8th to the beginning of the 9th century, with the nail apparently being of the same metal, and ruled out the possibility of it dating back to the 1st century AD.[30]

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  Holy Lance displayed in the Imperial Treasury at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria
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  Polish replica of the Holy Lance, Wawel Hill, Kraków
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  The inscription on the Holy Lance

The Holy Lance in Vagharshapat

A Holy Lance is conserved in Vagharshapat (previously known as Echmiadzin), the religious capital of Armenia.[31]^{: 254–256} It was previously held in the monastery of Geghard. The first source that mentions it is a text Holy Relics of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in a thirteenth-century Armenian manuscript. According to this text, the spear which pierced Jesus was to have been brought to Armenia by the Apostle Thaddeus. The manuscript does not specify precisely where it was kept, but the Holy Lance gives a description that exactly matches the lance, the monastery gate (since the thirteenth century precisely), and the name of Geghardavank (Monastery of the Holy Lance).

In 1655, the French traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was the first Westerner to see this relic in Armenia. In 1805, the Russians captured the monastery and the relic was moved to Tchitchanov Geghard, Tbilisi, Georgia. It was later returned to Armenia, and is still on display at the Manoogian museum in Vagharshapat, enshrined in a 17th-century reliquary.

The Discovery of the Holy Lance in Antioch

During the June 1098 Siege of Antioch, a monk named Peter Bartholomew reported that he had a vision in which St. Andrew told him that the Holy Lance was buried in the Church of St. Peter in Antioch.[32]^{: 241–243} After much digging in the cathedral, Bartholomew allegedly discovered a lance.[32]^{: 243–245} Despite the doubts of many, including the papal legate Adhemar of Le Puy, many of the crusaders credited the discovery of the lance for their subsequent victory in the Battle of Antioch, which broke the siege and secured the city.[32]^{: 247–249, 253–254}[12]^: 34–35

Greek Orthodox sources indicate the veneration of a lance relic in Antioch as early as the 10th century. Historian Klaus-Peter Todt has suggested this relic could have been buried to hide it from Seljuk forces in 1084, allowing the crusaders to find it in 1098.[33]^: 99

In the 18th century, Roman cardinal Prospero Lambertini claimed the Antiochian lance was a fake.