The Holy Lance, also called the Spear of Longinus (named after Saint Longinus), the Spear of Destiny, or the Holy Spear, is believed to be the spear that pierced the side of Jesus when he was on the cross during his crucifixion. Like other tools from the Passion of Jesus, the lance is only briefly mentioned in the Christian Bible. However, it became the subject of stories not found in the Bible during the medieval church period. Relics thought to be the lance began appearing as early as the 6th century, first in Jerusalem. By the Late Middle Ages, pieces of the lance (or parts of it) were described in many places across Europe. Some of these items are still kept today.
Holy Lance relics were often used in religious ceremonies. However, some were believed to bring victory in battles. For example, Henry the Fowler’s lance was said to help him win the Battle of Riade. The Crusaders also believed that finding a Holy Lance helped them end the Siege of Antioch successfully.
In modern times, at least four major relics are claimed to be the Holy Lance or parts of it. These are located in Rome, Vienna, Vagharshapat, and Antioch. The most famous relic is the one in Vienna, which has a special gold cuff. This version of the lance is displayed publicly with the Imperial Regalia at the Hofburg.
Biblical references
The lance (Greek: λόγχη, lonkhē) is mentioned in the Gospel of John but not in the Synoptic Gospels. The Gospel describes how the Romans planned to break Jesus' legs, a method used to speed up death during crucifixion called crurifragium. Jesus' followers wanted to ensure he died before the Sabbath began at sunset on Friday so he could be buried promptly, as burials are not allowed on the Sabbath. Before breaking his legs, they noticed Jesus was already dead, and there was no need to break his legs ("and no bone will be broken"). To confirm his death, a Roman soldier stabbed him in the side.
One of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance (λόγχη), and immediately blood and water came out.
The Gospel of John does not name the soldier who pierced Jesus' side with the lance. The oldest known references to this story, found in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, added to late copies of the 4th-century Acts of Pilate, describe the soldier as a centurion named Longinus. This gave the lance its Latin name, Lancea Longini.
A version of the name Longinus appears in the Rabula Gospels from the late 6th century. In an illustration, the name ΛΟΓΙΝΟΣ (LOGINOS) is written above the head of the soldier stabbing Jesus with the lance. This is one of the earliest known records of the name, though the inscription might have been added later.
Relics
A Holy Lance relic is kept in a carved area above the statue of Saint Longinus at Saint Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.
The earliest known records about the Holy Lance date back to the 6th century. The Breviary of Jerusalem (around 530) describes the lance on display at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In his Expositio Psalmorum (about 540–548), Cassiodorus mentions the lance still being in Jerusalem. A report by the Piacenza pilgrim (around 570) places the lance in the Church of Zion. Gregory of Tours described the lance and other Passion relics in his Libri Miraculorum (about 574–594). The holy lance is also said to have been taken from Rome by Alaric and his Visigoths during their attack in August 410. It might have been buried with Alaric among gold, silver, and a golden menorah in Cosenza, southern Italy, in the fall of 410. No one has found Alaric's tomb or treasure, which may have been taken by the Byzantines. Therefore, the holy lance could have appeared in Jerusalem years later.
In 614, Jerusalem was captured by the Sasanian general Shahrbaraz. The Chronicon Paschale says the Holy Lance was among the relics taken, but one of Shahrbaraz’s associates gave it to Nicetas, who later brought it to the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. 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 medieval pilgrim to report the lance in Jerusalem, as Willibald and Bernard did not mention it.
By the middle of the 10th century, a lance relic was honored in Constantinople at the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. This relic may have been seen by some soldiers and clergy during the First Crusade, leading to confusion about another Holy Lance found in Antioch in 1098. During the Siege of Tripoli, Raymond of Toulose reportedly brought the Antioch lance to Constantinople and gave it to Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Scholars disagree on how this situation was resolved. Steven Runciman suggested the Byzantine court called the Antioch relic a nail (ἧλος), using Raymond’s lack of Greek knowledge to avoid offending him. Others, like Edgar Robert Ashton Sewter, believed Alexios wanted to expose the crusaders’ lance as fake, possibly by making Prince Bohemond I of Antioch swear an oath on another lance in 1108. Whether Alexios kept or returned the Antioch lance is unclear. Some 12th-century documents mention a single Holy Lance in Constantinople, without details to identify it as the crusaders’ discovery or the Byzantine spear.
According to Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, a piece of the Holy Lance was placed in an icon that Alexios V Doukas lost in battle with Henry of Flanders in 1204. The capture of this icon by Henry’s forces was important to many sources on the Fourth Crusade. The crusaders reported the event to Pope Innocent III, and it was also recorded by Geoffrey of Villehardouin, the Devastatio Constantinopolitana, Niketas Choniates, Robert de Clari, Ralph of Coggeshall, and Robert of Auxerre. None of these sources mention the icon containing relics, but Alberic claimed it had a fragment of the Holy Lance, a piece of the Holy Shroud, one of Jesus’s teeth, and relics from thirty martyrs. Modern historians doubt Alberic’s account, calling it "fanciful" and "pure invention." After the battle, the crusaders sent the icon to Cîteaux Abbey, but there is no record of whether it arrived.
After the sack of Constantinople, Robert de Clari described the spoils of 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. By the 1230s, the Latin Empire faced financial trouble. In 1239, Baldwin II sold Constantinople’s Crown of Thorns relic to King Louis IX of France. Over the next few years, Baldwin sold twenty-two relics to Louis, including the Holy Lance, which likely arrived in Paris in 1242. These relics were later placed in the Sainte Chapelle. During the French Revolution, they were moved to the Bibliothèque Nationale, but the lance disappeared.
Even after the Holy Lance was sent to Paris, travelers continued to report its presence in Constantinople during the late Byzantine period. John Mandeville, for example, described the lance in both Paris and Constantinople, saying the one in Constantinople was much larger. Though Mandeville’s account is doubted, his work shows that many people believed multiple Holy Lance relics existed.
The relics remaining in Constantinople, including the lance, were likely taken by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453 when he conquered the city. In 1492, Mehmed’s son Bayezid II sent the lance to Pope Innocent VIII to encourage the pope to keep his brother and rival Cem prisoner. At this time, doubts about the lance’s authenticity arose in Rome, as Johann Burchard noted, because other lances existed in Paris, Nuremberg, and Armenia. This relic has remained in Rome since, housed at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Innocent’s tomb, made by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, includes a bronze statue of the pope holding the spear blade he received from Bayezid.
In the mid-18th century, Pope Benedict XIV obtained a drawing of the Saint Chapelle lance to compare it with the spearhead in St. Peter’s. He concluded the Saint Chapelle relic was the broken tip missing from the one in Rome, and the two fragments once formed a single blade.
The Holy Lance in Vienna is displayed in the Imperial Treasury at the Hofburg Palace in Austria. It is the head of a typical winged lance from the Carolingian dynasty. The shaft was likely lost or destroyed by the time of Conrad II (1024–1039), who ordered the Reichskreuz ("Imperial Cross") to be made as a reliquary for the spearhead.
The spearhead is wrapped in a gold cuff added by Charles IV around 1354. The cuff is inscribed with Latin text: "LANCEA ET CLAVVS DOMINI" ("The lance and nail of the Lord"), stating the lance was used by Longinus and that a holy nail is part of the spearhead. The gold cuff covers an older silver cuff made for Henry IV between 1084 and 1105, which also mentions the Holy Nail but identifies the spearhead as the lance of Saint Maurice. Gilded stripes on the silver cuff include another Latin inscription: "CLAVVS DOMINICVS HEINRICVS D[EI] GR[ATI]A TERCIVS / ROMANO[RVM] IMPERATOR AVG[VSTVS] HOC AR
Literary
The Holy Lance has been mixed up with the bleeding lance described in the unfinished 12th-century story Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes. The story also mentions a javelin that wounded the Fisher King, which might or might not be the same as the bleeding lance. Chrétien wrote that the bleeding spear had magical powers that could cause destruction, which do not match any Christian traditions. However, later parts of Chrétien’s poem tried to explain the bleeding spear by linking it to the lance mentioned in the Bible passage John 19:34.
Chrétien’s Perceval was later adapted by Wolfram von Eschenbach into the German story Parzival. Like Chrétien, Wolfram described the bleeding lance in a way that is hard to connect with the spear used by Longinus. Parzival became the main source for Richard Wagner’s 1882 opera Parsifal, in which the Fisher King is shown as being wounded by the spear that pierced Jesus’s side.
Pop culture
The spear is an important part of the Indiana Jones franchise. It plays a major role in the comic series Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny and appears in the movie Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, where the main character tries to take it from the Nazis.
In the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, the Spear of Longinus is a powerful object from another world. It is used to pierce the second angel, Lilith, to stop it from moving.
In the video game Persona 2: Innocent Sin, the Spear of Longinus is used by Maya Okamura to seriously injure Maya Amano. This action fulfills a prophecy called the Oracle of Maia, which predicts the end of the world.
The spear appears in the 2005 movie Constantine. Early in the film, it is discovered in Mexico, wrapped in a Nazi flag. It had been hidden there after being lost following World War II.
In season 2 of the TV show Legends of Tomorrow (2016–2022), the Holy Lance is a major part of the story. The characters collect the broken pieces of the spear from different times and put them back together. The villains later use the spear along with the Blood of Christ to change reality. The heroes then use the spear again to undo the changes and restore the original timeline.