The Legend of the Spear

The Spear of Destiny, also known as the Spear of Longinus and the Heilige Lance — Holy Lance — is one of the most important Christian relics of the Passion of Jesus Christ. As first described in John 19:31-37, the Spear was used by a Roman soldier (Gaius Cassius, later called Longinus) to pierce the side of Christ as he hung on the cross. The Spear, bathed in the blood of the Lamb and playing a significant role in the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, is believed to have acquired tremendous mystical power. The first sign of that power was the purported healing of Gaius Cassius’s failing eyesight by blood from the wound. The centurion later become an early convert to Christianity.

The Spear subsequently passed through a multitude of hands, coming into the possession of many of Europe’s most important political and military leaders, including Constantine I, Alaric (the Visigoth king who sacked Rome in the year 410), Frankish general Charles Martel, Charlemagne, Frederick of Barbarossa, and Frederick II. A leader who possessed the Spear was said to be invincible; Charlemagne and Frederick of Barbarossa were undefeated in battle until they let the Spear fall from their hands. A legend arose that whoever claimed the Spear “holds the destiny of the world in his hands for good or evil.”

As a young man Adolf Hitler was fascinated by the Spear of Destiny, which he first saw displayed in the Hofsburg museum in Vienna, Austria in 1909. Hitler was familiar with the legend of the Holy Lance. His interest in the relic was further amplified by its role in the 1882 opera Parsifal — by Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner — which concerned a group of ninth-century knights and their quest for the Holy Grail. Hitler’s fascination with the Spear was pivotal in sparking his interest in the occult, which gave birth to his ideas on the origins and purpose of the Germanic race and contributed to his belief in his own destiny as a world conqueror.

On October 12, 1938, not long after the German annexation of Austria, Hitler ordered the S.S. to seize the Spear and other artifacts from Vienna. They were taken by train to Nuremberg, where they were stored in St. Katherine’s Church. The Spear remained in St. Katherine’s until 1944, when it was moved to a specially constructed vault beneath the church, built in secret and at great expense, intended to protect it and the other stolen relics from Allied bombs. Nuremberg was captured by Allied troops in April of the following year. The vault was subsequently discovered by American Army officers. The Spear was confiscated by American forces on the afternoon of April 30, 1945, less than two hours before Hitler’s suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin. Like the Spear’s previous owners, Hitler perished after the relic was taken from him.

Was It Real?
Like most holy relics, the history of the Spear of Destiny is complex and difficult to authenticate. The earliest reports of the Spear were circa 570 A.D., when it was said to have been on display in the basilica of Mount Sion in Jerusalem alongside the Crown of Thorns. The point of the spear’s blade was apparently broken off following the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 615 A.D. The point, set into an icon, found its way to the church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople and later to France, where it remained in the Sainte Chapelle until the 18th century. It was briefly moved to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris during the French Revolution, but it subsequently disappeared. Meanwhile, the rest of the spearhead was transferred from Jerusalem to Constantinople sometime in the eighth century. It was taken by the Turks in the 14th century and sent by Sultan Bajazet as a gift to Pope Innocent VIII in 1492. Innocent ordered the relic placed in Saint Peter’s in Rome, where it remains today, although the Catholic Church makes no great claim as to its authenticity.

There are several other competing relics in different locations. One such “Holy Lance” was allegedly unearthed by Crusader Peter Bartholomew in Antioch in 1098. That Lance is now at Etschmiadzin in Armenia; scholars believe that it is not actually a Roman lance but the head of a standard, although it may have an interesting history of its own, separate from the legend of the Lance. Another claimant has rested in Krakow for about eight hundred years.

Hitler’s lance was the fourth Spear, called the Lance of St. Maurice and the Holy Lance of Hapsburg, which is part of the Reichkleinodien (Imperial Regalia) of the house of Hapsburg. This spearhead is bound with gold, copper, and silver threads to a nail — purported to be one of the nails of the Crucifixion. The earliest verifiable account of this Spear was its use in a coronation ceremony in 1273. It rested in Nuremberg during the Middle Ages, but by the early 20th century it was placed on display at the Treasure House of the Hofsburg museum in Vienna, where Hitler saw it in 1909. This Spear has no greater claim to authenticity than any of the others, although Hitler — who conducted his own less-than-rigorous investigation into its history — was firmly convinced that it was the genuine article, leading to its confiscation by the S.S. in 1938. In 1946 the Spear and the rest of the Imperial Regalia were returned to Austria. Today they are once again on public display at the Hofsburg museum.

It should be noted that all the various purported Holy Lances are only spearheads, not complete weapons. The spear used by Longinus was most likely a Roman hasta (long spear), an iron head mounted on a hardwood shaft roughly 12 feet long. The shaft of the Spear either was not preserved or was lost to the ravages of time.

The Holy Lance
We read in the Gospel of St. John (xix), 34), that, after our Saviour's death, "one of the soldiers with a spear [lancea] opened his side and immediately there came out blood and water". Of the weapon thus sanctified nothing is known until the pilgrim St. Antoninus of Piancenza (A.D. 570), describing the holy places of Jerusalem, tells us that he saw in the basilica of Mount Sion "the crown of thorns with which Our Lord was crowned and the lance with which He was struck in the side". The mention of the lance at the church of the Holy Sepulchre in the so-called "Breviarus", as M. de Mely points out (Exuviae, III, 32), is not to be relied on. On the other hand, in a miniature of the famous Syriac manuscript of the Laurentian Library at Florence, illuminated by one Rabulas in the year 586, the incident of the opening of Christ's side is given a prominence which is highly significant. Moreover, the name Longinus -- if, indeed, this is not a later addition -- is written in Greek characters (LOGINOS) above the head of the soldier who is thrusting his lance into our Saviour's side. This seems to show that the legend which assigns this name to the soldier (who, according to the same tradition, was healed of ophthalmia and converted by a drop of the precious blood spurting from the wound) is as old as the sixth century. And further it is tempting, even if rash, to conjecture that the name Logginos, or Logchinos is in some way connected with the lance (logche). Be this as it may, a spear believed to be identical with that which pierced our Saviour's body was venerated at Jerusalem at the close of the sixth century, and the presence there of this important relic is attested half a century earlier by Cassiodorus (In Ps. lxxxvi, P.L., LXX, 621) and after him by Gregory of Tours (P.L., LXXI, 712). In 615 Jerusalem was captured by a lieutenant of the Persian King Chosroes. The sacred relics of the Passion fell into the hands of the pagans, and, according to the "Chronicon Paschale", the point of the lance, which had been broken off, was given in the same year to Nicetas, who took it to Constantinople and deposited it in the church of St. Sophia. This point of the lance, which was now set in an "yeona", or icon, many centuries afterwards (i.e., in 1244) was present by Baldwin to St. Louis, and it was enshrined with the Crown of Thorns (q.v.) in the Sainte Chapelle. During the French Revolution these relics were removed to the Bibliotheque Nationale, and, although the Crown has been happily preserved to us, the other has now disappeared.

As for the second and larger portion of the lance, Arculpus, about 670, saw it at Jerusalem, where it must have been restored by Heraclius, but it was then venerated at the church of the Holy Sepulchre. After this date we practically hear no more of it from pilgrims to the Holy Land. In particular, St. Willibald, who came to Jerusalem in 715, does not mention it. There is consequently some reason to believe that the larger relic as well as the point had been conveyed to Constantinople before the tenth 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 companion relic of the point. Sir John Mandeville, whose credit as a witness has of late years been in part rehabilitated, 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. Whatever the Constantinople relic was, it fell into the hands of the Turks, and in 1492, under circumstances minutely described in Pastor's "History of the Popes", the Sultan Bajazet sent it to Innocent VIII to conciliate his favour towards the sultan's brother Zizim, who was then the pope's prisoner. This relic has never since left Rome, where it is preserved under the dome of St. Peter's. Benedict XIV (De Beat. et Canon., IV, ii, 31) 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. M. Mély published for the first time in 1904, an accurate design of the Roman relic of the lance head, and the fact that it has lost its point is as conspicuous as in other, often quite fantastic, delineations of the Vatican lance. At the time of the sending of the lance to Innocent VIII, great doubts as to its authenticity were felt at Rome, as Burchard's "Diary" (I, 473-486, ed. Thusasne) plainly shows, on account of the rival lances known to be preserved at Nuremberg, Paris, etc., and on account of the supposed discovery of the Holy Lance at Antioch by the revelation of St. Andrew, in 1098, during the First Crusade. Raynaldi, the Bollandists, and many other authorities believed that the lance found in 1098 afterwards fell into the hands of the Turks and was that sent by Bajazet to Pope Innocent, but from M. de Mely's investigations it seems probable that it is identical with the relic now jealously preserved at Etschmiadzin in Armenia. This was never in any proper sense a lance, but rather the head of a standard, and it may conceivably (before its discovery under very questionable circumstances by the crusader Peter Bartholomew) have been venerated as the weapon with which certain Jews at Beirut struck a figure of Christ on the Cross; an outrage which was believed to have been followed by a miraculous discharge of blood.

Another lance claiming to be that which produced the wound in Christ's side is now preserved among the imperial insignia at Vienna and is known as the lance of St. Maurice. This weapon was used as early as 1273 in the coronation ceremony of the Emperor of the West, and form an earlier date as an emblem of investiture. It came to Nuremberg in 1424, and it is also probably the lance, known as that of the Emperor Constantine, which enshrined a nail or some portion of a nail of the Crucifixion. The story told by William of Malmesbury of the giving of the Holy Lance to King Athelstan of England by Hugh Capet seems to be due to a misconception. One other remaining lance reputed to be that concerned in the Passion of Christ is preserved at Cracow, but, though it is alleged to have been there for eight centuries, it is impossible to trace its earlier history.