have you seen the spear of destiny why would lucius have something this ornate he was just a soldier?

Answer 1

According to legend, the soldier's name was not Lucius, it was Longinus.

The actual spear of Longinus was probably long lost. As you said, it would have been a fairly mundane weapon. It was probably a provided weapon, so when Longinus was finished with it, he would have returned it to the state armory, where it would have sat with every other state supplied spear until it was given to another soldier or retired and destroyed.

In the early days of the church, prior to the nicene creed, the use of relics was an increbily popular habit with Christians of the empire. Pieces of the true cross, the shroud of Turin, the crown of thorns, etc, became the focal point of entire Christian communities which up until their recent conversion had been pagan, thus accustomed to worshipping idols. As the world eventually turned Christian, even rulers began collecting relics as a way to assert their authority. forensic archaeologists place the creation of the spear of destiny as being sometime in the 7th century AD. And over the years, more and more rulers added adornments to give the spear the suitably regal quality that they felt it deserved.

DAVID C - why did you even bother answering if all you were going to do was do a direct copy and paste from Wikipedia?

Answer 2

Any ornate decoration on the spear would have been added later in order to jazz it up a bit. However, in its original form, the spear used by a Roman soldier would have a wooden shaft and an iron head. The point would be attached to a long metal rod, which was designed to bend on impact, so that it could not be re-used by an enamy, once you had chucked it at him.

It is doubtful that such a spear would have any fabled powers, other than those attributed to it by imaginative followers.

Luck

Answer 3

The fancy foil around it was added later.

There are other possible canidates, most of them highly unlikely.

Armenia; doesn't even resemble a Roman spear.

Vatican; based on drawings given of this spear it at least looks Roman.

The other spears mentioned are copies of the Vienna lance. Some people have even argued that the Vienna "lance" is really the Vienna nail. Simply fastened to inside a Frankish spear so it could be carried around.

Here's a picture of the Vienna lance...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/e/ef/20070401023753!Heilige_Lanze_02.JPG ( the nail would be the sliver of metal just in from the tip.)

Answer 4

Additional to the above comments its fair to note that many religious artifact merely contain a small portion of the original item. For instance maybe just a small shard of the original spear is incapsulated in a newer "prettier" arifact. Of the 4-5 know spears of destiny none are traditional , functional roman spears.

Answer 5

It's not ornate, imo. It's quite mundane aside from the little golden sleeve. In any case, the Catholic church is absolutely riddled with forged relics.

Answer 6

HE didn`t - it was "decorated" later once Christianity became more widespread.It`s like every depiction except a few of The Holy Grail as a bejeweled and golden vessel ,when if it was the wine goblet Jesus used at his Last Supper wouldn`t it be simply an ordinary cup ?
Oh and don`t you just love people who cut/paste ?? LOL

Answer 7

another christian fantasy

Answer 8

Oh dear, you are going to put modern consircy thories (spear of Destiny) onto church relics, which are a dubious set of bits in the first place. Ok, lets have history lesson.

First to which spear do you refer?

According to legend, the Holy Lance (also known as the Spear of Destiny, Holy Spear, Lance of Longinus, Spear of Longinus or Spear of Christ) is the lance that reputedly pierced Jesus while he was on the cross. The Biblical account itself does not give a name to the spear, nor does it otherwise support the legends surrounding this artefact.

The lance is mentioned only in the Gospel of John (19:31-37) and not in any of the Synoptic Gospels. The gospel states that the Romans planned to break Jesus' legs, a practice known as crurifragium, which was a method of hastening the death during a crucifixion. Just before they did so, they realized he was already dead and that there was no reason to break his legs. To make sure he was dead, Longinus, a Roman soldier, stabbed him.

... but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water. John 19:34
The phenomenon of blood and water was considered a miracle by Origen (although the water may be explained biologically by the piercing of the pericardial sinus secondary to cardiac tamponade. Catholics generally see in it a deeper meaning: it represents the Church (and more specifically, the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist) issuing from the side of Christ, just as Eve was taken from the side of Adam.

The name of the soldier who pierced Christ's side is not given in the Bible but in the oldest known references to the legend, the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (of uncertain date, likely 4th century), the soldier is identified with a centurion and called Longinus (making the spear's "correct" Latin name Lancea Longini).

A form of the name Longinus also occurs on a miniature in the Rabula Gospels (currently at the Laurentian Library, Florence), which was illuminated by one Rabulas in the year 586. In the picture, the name LOGINOS is written in Greek characters above the head of the soldier who is thrusting his lance into Christ's side. This is one of the earliest records of the name, if the inscription is not a later addition.

Much later Christian tradition, harking back to the novel The Spear by Louis de Wohl (1955), further identifies him as Gaius Cassius Longinus.

Various relics claimed to be the Holy Lance
1. Vatican lance. No actual lance is known until the pilgrim St. Antoninus of Piacenza (AD 570), describing the holy places of Jerusalem, says 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". A mention of the lance also occurs in the so-called Breviarius at the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The presence in Jerusalem of this important relic is attested by Cassiodorus (c. 485 - c. 585) as well as by Gregory of Tours (c. 538 – 594), who had not actually been to Jerusalem.

In 615 Jerusalem and its relics were captured by the Persian forces of King Khosrau II (Chosroes II). 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 Hagia Sophia. This point of the lance, which was now set in an "ycona", or icon in 1244 was sold by Baldwin II of Constantinople to Louis IX of France, and it was enshrined with the Crown of Thorns in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. During the French Revolution these relics were removed to the Bibliotheque Nationale but subsequently disappeared. (The present "Crown of Thorns" is a wreath of rushes.)

As for the larger portion of the lance, Arculpus claimed he saw it at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre around 670 in Jerusalem, but there is otherwise no mention of it after the sack in 615. Some claim that the larger relic had been conveyed to Constantinople sometime during 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. 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.

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 encourage the pope to continue to keep his brother Zizim (Cem) prisoner. At this time great doubts as to its authenticity were felt at Rome, as Johann Burchard records, because of the presence of other rival lances in Paris (the point that had been separated from the lance), Nuremberg (Vienna lance), and Armenia (Etschmiadzin lance). In the mid 1700s 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. This relic has never since left Rome, where it is preserved under the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, although the Roman Catholic Church makes no claim as to its authenticity, or will let anybody inspect it.

The lance currently in Etschmiadzin, Armenia, was discovered during the First Crusade. In 1098 the crusader Peter Bartholomew reported that he had a vision in which St. Andrew told him that the Holy Lance was buried in St. Peter's Cathedral in Antioch. After much digging in the cathedral, a lance was discovered. This was considered a miracle by the crusaders who were able to rout the Muslim army besieging the city and decisively capture Antioch. Some Medieval scholars (e.g. Raynaldi and the Bollandists) believed that this lance afterwards fell into the hands of the Turks and was in fact the lance that Bajazet sent to Pope Innocent and is now in the Vatican.


Vienna lance (Hofburg spear)

The Holy Lance in the Schatzkammer of Vienna. In 1000 Otto III gave Boleslaw I of Poland a replica of the Lance at the Congress of Gniezno. 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 this was the lance of Constantine the Great which enshrined a nail used for the Crucifixion. In 1273 it was first used in the 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). In 1424 Sigismund had a collection of relics, including the lance, moved from his capital in Prague to his birth place, Nuremberg, and decreed them to be kept there forever. This collection was called the Reichskleinodien or Imperial Regalia.

When the army of Napoleon approached Nuremberg in the spring of 1796 the city councilors decided to remove the Reichskleinodien to Vienna, Austria, for safe keeping. The collection was entrusted to one "Baron von Hügel", who promised to return the objects as soon as peace had been restored and the safety of the collection assured. However, the Holy Roman Empire was officially dissolved in 1806 and von Hügel took advantage of the confusion over who was the rightful owner and sold the entire collection, including the lance, to the Habsburgs. As part of the imperial regalia it was kept in the Schatzkammer (Imperial treasury) in Vienna and was known as the lance of Saint Maurice.

During the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed to Germany, Adolf Hitler took the lance. It was returned to Austria by American General George S. Patton after World War II and was temporarily stored in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Currently the Spear is held in the Schatzkammer (Imperial treasury).

Dr. Robert Feather, an English metallurgist and technical engineering writer, tested the lance in January of 2003. In the opinion of Feather and other academic experts, the likeliest date of the spearhead is the 7th century - only slightly earlier than the Museum's own estimate.

Another lance has been preserved at Krakow, Poland, since at least the 1200s. However, German records indicate that it was a copy of the Vienna lance. Emperor Henry II had it made with a small sliver of the original lance. Another copy was given to the Hungarian king at the same time.

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.


Trevor Ravenscroft’s 1973 bestseller The Spear of Destiny (as well as a later book The Mark of the Beast) has fixed his version of the legend in the minds of many today. He claims that Hitler started World War II in order to capture the spear, with which he was obsessed. At the end of the war the spear came into the hands of US General George Patton. According to legend, losing the spear would result in death, and that was fulfilled when Hitler committed suicide. YAWN

Ravenscroft sued James Herbert, claiming Herbert's 1978 novel The Spear infringed on Ravenscroft's copyright. Dr. Howard A. Buechner, M.D., professor of medicine at Tulane and then LSU, claims he was contacted by a former U-boat submariner, who claimed the spear currently on display in Vienna is a fake. The real Spear was sent by Hitler to Antarctica along with other Nazi treasures. In the late 1970s, writer Steve Englehart introduced the concept of the Spear of Destiny to the pages of DC Comics, and it has been used as a plot device by several other writers since. Perhaps its most important usage was by Roy Thomas, who cited the lance as the mystic artefact in the hands of Adolf Hitler which created a magical barrier around all territory held by the Axis Powers in World War II, repelling Allied beings who were either magical in nature, or who were otherwise highly susceptible to magic; this was the official DC explanation as to why the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman didn't go right to Berlin and Tokyo to end the war within days of Pearl Harbour. And if you believe any of it, I suggest you go back to your comic books.