Category:Holy Lance (subject)
According to Christian traditions, the Holy Lance (Spear of Destiny) is one of the Relics of Jesus.
Overview
The Gospel of John narrated that Jesus on the cross was struck by a spear.
Christian traditions identified as Longinus the Roman soldier who stroke Jesus, and legends soon flourished around his life and deeds.
Over the centuries, relics of the spear were venerated in various locations, notably, in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Paris, Vienna, Armenia, and in the Vatican.
The Paris and the Vatican Lances
The presence of the Holy Lance as one of the relics of Jesus preserved in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is attested since the 6th century until the year 615, when Jerusalem was captured by the Persians.
According to the Chronicon Paschale, during the sack of the city, the iron point of the lance was broken off but given in the same year to Nicetas, the cousin of Emperor Heraclius, who took it to Constantinople and deposited it in the church of Hagia Sophia. Many centuries later in 1244 this lance-point, embedded in an icon, was obtained from the Latin emperor at Constantinople, Baldwin II, by Louis IX of France, who enshrined it with his relic of the Crown of Thorns in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris [France]. During the French Revolution the relic of the Holy Lance were removed to the Bibliotheque Nationale and then disappeared.
As for the larger portion of the lance, it was deemed to be lost until it resurfaced many centuries later in Constantinople (now under the Ottoman Empire). In 1492 the Sultan Bayazid II sent the relic to Innocent VIII to encourage the pope to continue to keep his brother and rival Zizim (Cem) prisoner. The origins of the specimen is obscure, but it was believed to be the larger, missing part of the Holy Lance, once preserved in Jerusalem. The relic has never since left Rome, where it is preserved under the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica.
The Armenian Lance
The lance now preserved at the Alex and Marie Manoogian Treasury House in Echmiadzin, Armenia, is told to have been brought to Armenia by the Apostle Thaddeus.
The Alex and Marie Manoogian Treasury House in Echmiadzin, Armenia
The relic of the Holy Lance
The Vienna Lance
Since the 10th century, the Holy Roman Emperors claimed possess of the Holy Lance, whose existence was traced back to St. Maurice, Constantine, and Charlemagne. In 1273 the lance was first used in the coronation ceremony. In 1474 the relic was sold by Emperor Sigismund to the City Council of his birth town, Nuremberg [Germany]. When the French Revolutionary Army approached Nuremberg in the spring of 1796, the relict was brought to Vienna [Austria] and kept ever since in the Schatzkammer (Imperial Treasury). When Austria was annexed to Germany in 1938, Adolf Hitler took the lance back to Nuremberg. It was returned to Austria by American General George S. Patton after World War II and stored in the Schatzkammer at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna.
In January 2003, Robert Feather, an English metallurgist and technical engineering writer, was authorized to test the Vienna lance in a laboratory environment. The examination indicated the 7th century as the likeliest date of the spearhead.
Modern legends
The Spear has taken a life of its own in contemporary Fiction. In his opera Parsival, Richard Wagner identified the Holy Spear with two items that appear in Wolfram von Eschenbach's medieval poem Parsival--a bleeding spear in the Castle of the Grail and the spear that has wounded the Fisher King.
In more recent times, several popular New Age and conspiracy theory books have popularized the legend of the Spear. The Spear has magic power; whoever possesses it, will control the entire world. According to Trevor Ravenscroft, Adolf Hitler started World War II in order to capture the spear, with which he was obsessed, and committed suicide when the spear came into the hands of US General George Patton. Howard A. Buechner claimed that the spear currently on display in Vienna is a fake, the original beings hidden somewhere in Europe by a Nazi secret society.
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Pages in category "Holy Lance (subject)"
The following 6 pages are in this category, out of 6 total.