Holy Lance (relic)

The term Holy Lance refers to the spearhead of the original lance believed to have been used by a Roman soldier to pierce the side of Jesus Christ while he hung on the cross. The biblical story of Christ's wounding is found only in the Gospel of John; the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke make no mention of it. The Lance is also known as the "Spear of Longinus," after the name traditionally given the Roman who wielded it, who in some accounts became a Christian after being healed by the miraculous mixture of blood and water that flowed from the wound. The Lance is said to have been bathed in the blood of Christ himself, and it is one of the holiest relics in those branches of Christianity that ascribe holiness to relics. However, whether any of the remaining fragments that are claimed to be part of the Lance are truly from the spear that pierced Jesus's side—if such an object ever existed—is doubtful.

Brief History

The earliest record of the Lance as a revered relic comes from the late sixth century, when it was described by the pilgrim Antoninus of Piacenza. Antoninus wrote that the Lance was located in the Basilica of Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Lance was taken by the Persians in their conquest of the city circa 615 CE. The Lance may have been recaptured when the Byzantines retook the city, but in any event it appeared in Constantinople sometime after the Islamic conquests in the Middle East during the seventh century. At some time, the point of the Lance may have been broken off, as in the thirteenth century an icon containing it was given by the ruler at Constantinople Baldwin II to Louis IX of France. The point was kept among the treasures of the French monarchy but was lost during the French Revolution along with other religious artifacts.

The remaining portion of the Lance fell into the hands of the Muslim Ottoman Turks on their conquest of Constantinople in 1453. In 1492, the Lance was given as a present to Pope Innocent VIII by the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II in exchange for the Pope’s holding the Sultan's brother, Djem, as a prisoner. This Lance continues to be held by the Vatican, although the Catholic Church has never claimed that it, or any object claiming to be the Lance, is definitely authentic.

Another object claimed to be the Lance was discovered during the First Crusade (1098) at Antioch in present-day southern Turkey. A vision of the Lance and the excavation of an alleged fragment helped inspire the Crusader army, despite the doubts of many in the expedition as to the object's authenticity. This may be the ultimate source of the Holy Lance of Armenia kept in the cathedral of Etchmiadzin in the Armenian city of Vagharshapat, considered the center of Armenian Christianity.

Another Lance is held in Vienna. It was part of the Imperial regalia held in Nuremburg in the times of the Holy Roman Empire. The history of the Vienna Lance traces to the tenth century. This Lance is alleged to incorporate a nail from the crucifixion and be adorned with gold and silver bands. The Vienna Lance is also known as the Lance of St. Maurice because, according to legend, it was once in the possession of St. Maurice, a Roman soldier who became a Christian martyr. During the French Revolutionary Wars these items were moved from Nuremberg to Vienna to keep them out of the hands of the French armies. They were briefly returned to Nuremberg after Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938 but were sent back to Vienna after the Second World War. There is another Lance at Krakow in Poland, a copy of the Vienna Lance given as a gift to the Polish King Boleslav by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III at the Congress of Gniezno in 1000.

Impact

The Vienna Lance no longer plays a public role since the last Habsburg Emperor, Charles I, lost his throne at the end of the First World War in 1918. A metallurgical study of the Vienna Lance in 2003 indicated that the body of the lance dates from the seventh century, and some historians have speculated that it was part of the regalia of the Lombard Kings of Southern Italy. This theory holds that the Lance was captured by the Frankish ruler Charlemagne, traditionally considered the first Holy Roman Emperor, in his conquest of the Lombard Kingdom in the late eighth century, and was "Christianized" with the incorporation of a first-century Roman nail alleged to be used in the Crucifixion.

The Lance has played and continues to play a significant role in art and popular culture. Frequently associated with another famous Christian artifact, the Holy Grail, it has been incorporated into the mythology surrounding King Arthur of Britain. The Lance, along with the Grail, is the object of the knight Parsifal's quest in the German composer Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal (1882).

Various fringe theories of Nazi occultism have asserted, without any real evidence, that Hitler was obsessed with the Vienna Lance and thought it to have supernatural powers guaranteeing victory to its possessor. (A possible real-life basis for this theory is that, after the Nazi takeover of Austria, the Lance, along with other items of the Imperial regalia, was transferred to Nuremberg, their original home but also the site of the annual Nazi Party rally.) Some even go so far as to assert that the Nazis hid the true Holy Lance in Antarctica and the Lance in Vienna is a fake. The legend extends to asserting that American general George S. Patton was similarly obsessed with the Lance. In this legendary and occultist context, the Lance is often referred to as the "Spear of Destiny."

Bibliography:

Campbell, Mary Baine. "Finding the Grail: Fascist Aesthetics and Mysterious Objects." King Arthur’s Modern Return. Ed. Debra N. Mancoff. New York: Routledge, 2014. 213–25. Print.

Klein, Holger A. "The Crown of His Kingdom: Imperial Ideology, Palace Ritual, and the Relics of Christ’s Passion." The Emperor's House: Palaces from Augustus to the Age of Absolutism. Eds. Michael Featherstone et al. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. 201–12. Print.

Lapina, Elizabeth. Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2015. Print.

Nickell, Joe. Relics of the Christ. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 2007. Print.

Ryan, Salvador. "The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland." The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture: With a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle.’ Eds. Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown. Surrey: Ashgate, 2014. 243–72. Print.

Schier, Volker, and Corine Schleif. "Seeing and Singing, Touching and Tasting the Holy Lance: The Power and Politics of Embodied Religious Experiences in Nuremberg, 1424-1524." Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000-2000. Eds. Nils Holger Petersen et al. Amsterdam: Rodolpi, 2005. 401–26. Print.

---. "The Holy Lance as Late Twentieth-century Subcultural Icon." Cultural Icons. Eds. Keyan Tomaselli and David Scott. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2009. 103–34. Print.