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The Holy Lance and the Spear of Destiny

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The Holy Lance and the Spear of Destiny

The afterlife of Longinus is bound up with the afterlife of his weapon. The lance said to have pierced the side of Christ became one of the most sought-after relics of Christendom, and by the high Middle Ages it had acquired a second identity as a talisman of rule, the Holy Lance, later romanticized as the Spear of Destiny.

Several objects have competed for the identification. The lance kept in the Imperial Treasury (Schatzkammer) in Vienna was carried in the regalia of the Holy Roman Empire; its custodians describe it as a Carolingian winged lance of about the eighth century, later reinterpreted as the lance of Longinus. Other claimants have been venerated at Rome, at Etchmiadzin in Armenia, and elsewhere, and no two can be the same object.

The site records the lance in its Artifact dimension and treats the identification as debated: the physical spears are medieval or later, and their connection to the crucifixion rests on the same legendary tradition that named Longinus himself. The figure and the relic illuminate each other, a named saint conjured from an anonymous soldier, and a venerated weapon conjured from an unremarkable spear, and the atlas links the two while holding both to the same standard of honest provenance.

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