Holy lance
The Holy Lance (also Longinus lance , Mauritius lance or Spear of Fate ) is the oldest piece of the imperial regalia of the kings and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire . It supposedly contains a piece of a nail from the cross of Christ ( Holy Nail ). According to legend, the lance belonged to Mauritius , the leader of the Thebaic Legion , or, according to other sources, to the Roman captain Longinus , who used it to check the death of Jesus so that it should also be soaked in his holy blood .
At times it was the most important piece of the insignia , later the imperial crown took its place . The lance tip was kept in a cavity inside the cross bar of the Reichskreuz . A ruler who owned this lance was considered invincible. It was the visible sign that his power emanated from God and that he was Christ's representative.
For at least three other lances or their tips, the claim was made to be the "real" Holy Lance from the time of Christ (see Other Holy Lances ). Already at the time of Emperor Otto III. two copies of the lance belonging to the imperial regalia were made and given to befriended rulers.
The lance was brought from Nuremberg to Vienna together with the other imperial regalia during the Napoleonic campaigns to protect it from being attacked by Napoléon Bonaparte .
Hitler had the lance brought back to Nuremberg shortly before the Second World War . It was found in a tunnel in 1945 by Allied soldiers and brought back to Vienna. It is exhibited in the treasury of the Vienna Hofburg under inventory number XIII, 19.
Appearance
The Holy Lance, of which only the tip has survived, is a 50.7 centimeter long winged lance . The lance shaft, which was probably made of wood, is missing. A pointed oval part is cut out of the lance blade over a length of 24 centimeters and a maximum width of 1.5 centimeters. In this an ornamentally forged piece of iron , also known as a thorn (Latin spina ), is fitted, the lower broken end of which is missing. It is fastened with four-fold silver wire, although it is not clear whether it was previously inserted more firmly into the space in another way.
For centuries, this thorn was considered the "holy nail". It cannot have been a (cross) nail. However, there are crosses inlaid with brass on two of the three crescent-shaped recesses with knot-like thickenings of the thorn , which may mark embedded cross nail particles.
Where the lance blade tapers to merge into the spout, a short additional steel cutter is subsequently attached to each side of the lance , on the inner side of which holes have been drilled for attachment to the lance. On these two roughly rectangular steel blades, which were often interpreted as knife blades, unusually deep nicks are noticeable, as if caused by a sharp blade when parrying or in a counter cut.
Such damage can be proven in large numbers on the blades of lance tips from sacrificial finds from the pre-Roman and Roman imperial periods.
These additional blades are held and fastened mainly by the leather straps, which are largely concealed by the precious metal cuffs, and the artfully braced silver wire. Since the way they are connected to the main part of the lance blade is very similar to the iron mandrel inserted above, it has long been assumed that both were added in the same operation, i.e. about 1000 years ago.
The lance blade is broken. Possibly it broke while chiseling out the gap shortly before the year 1000, as it was in a simplified, still existing copy, the Emperor Otto III. gave away to Krakow , a replica of this thorn is also fitted. The break is triple clad, first with a narrow iron band, then with a wide sheet of silver and finally with a sheet of gold. The silver cuff bears the following Latin inscription on a gold-plated strip :
“CLAVVS DOMINI + HEINRICVS D (EI) GR (ATI) A TERCIVS ROMANO (RUM) IMPERATOR AVG (USTUS) HOC ARGENTUM IVSSIT FABRICARI AD CONFIRMATIONE (M) CLAVI LANCEE SANCTI MAVRICII + SANCTVS MAVRICIVS”
"Nail of Lord + Heinrich by the grace of God the Third, exalted Emperor of the Romans, ordered this piece of silver to be produced for fastening the nail of the Holy Lance of Mauricius + Saint Mauricius"
The client of the silver cuff is Heinrich IV. , He had it attached between 1084 and 1105. Heinrich IV had captured them in the battle of Flarchheim through the fighting for him, Duke Vratislav from King Rudolf von Rheinfelden . He instructed that in future the lance should be carried forward to the Dukes of Bohemia on ceremonial occasions .
The uppermost gold cuff, which Emperor Charles IV had made, bears the Latin inscription “ + LANCEA ET CLAVUS DOMINI ” (German: “+ Lance and nail of the Lord”).
history
Emergence
Metallurgical investigations by the Montan University Leoben showed as early as 1914 that the Holy Lance could not have been manufactured until the 8th century AD after the model of a Carolingian winged lance. At the court conference in Worms in 926, King Heinrich I acquired the Holy Lance from King Rudolf II of Burgundy , who had received it in 922 from Count Samson and rulership of Italy, in exchange for the south-west corner of eastern France (the city of Basel ). Soon the legend developed that Heinrich I owed his victory over the dreaded Hungarian army in the battle of Riyade on the Unstrut in 933 only to the use of the Holy Lance. The lance is also said to have been used at the Battle of Birten in 939, in which Otto I prevailed against internal imperial opponents, and in the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, in which the Hungarians were finally defeated by King Otto I. However, the latest investigations by scientists from the University of Vienna did not reveal any typical signs of battle on the lance tip. The Holy Lance, on the other hand, was probably used as a flag lance in its beginnings. The fact that the four rivet holes of the new iron ring on the lance shaft are worn confirms that the lance was initially used intensively and not carefully - after the year 1000, as this shaft ring is not yet available on the copy in Krakow.
Even carrying the Holy Lance on military expeditions supposedly guaranteed the ruler invincibility. Therefore, Otto III. on his way to Rome in 996 carry the lance ahead of the army. Otto III. appreciated the lance so much that in the year 1000 he passed a copy on to the Polish Duke Boleslaw I of Poland when he named him “socius et amicus” (Latin for “ally and friend”). Boleslaw I derived from this procedure the royal dignity for himself. Otto III. had always had the lance with him, even when he died at the age of 21 in Italy with no direct descendants.
When his body was transferred to Aachen in 1002, accompanied by Archbishop Heribert of Cologne , the later Emperor Heinrich II brought the imperial regalia into his power in order to secure the succession to the throne. However, the Holy Lance had already been sent in advance, and so Heinrich II also imprisoned Archbishop Heribert's brother, the Bishop of Würzburg , in order to force the surrender of the lance. Bernhard II only handed the Holy Lance in his care to Heinrich II, when he promised to respect the old Saxon law in the by-election (for king) in Merseburg in July 1002 .
Description and reinterpretation of the Mauritius lance
The first comprehensive description of the lance can be found around the year 961 by Liutprand von Cremona , a historian from the time of Otto I. He writes about the appearance of the lance (German translation):
“The lance was different from the other lances, something new in type and shape, insofar as the iron has openings on both sides of the ridge, and instead of the short branches pointing sideways, two very nice cutting edges extend to the slope of the central ridge ... And on the thorn , which I previously called the ridge, she wore crosses from her nails (which were struck by the hands and feet of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ) ... "
The early Ottonian historians called the lance simply "lancea sacra". In the centuries that followed, however, it was believed that it was worn by Saint Mauritius , a Roman legionnaire and martyr who was executed at the time of the Roman Emperor Maximian , the father-in-law of Emperor Constantine . A passing on of the lance by Constantine, as tradition has it, would not have been entirely improbable. The earliest written evidence of this change in meaning can be found in a letter from Bruno von Querfurt written around 1000 , which, however, does not yet speak directly of the Mauritius lance. Only in the middle of the 11th century can the lance be identified in written sources as "lancea sancti Mauritii". Under Henry III. the reinterpretation was so dominant that he had the lance covered with a silver cuff with a Mauritius inscription. As a result, the cult around the lance and Mauritius were very strongly linked. In the High Middle Ages, the Mauritius lance was considered one of the most powerful sacred objects, as it guaranteed invincibility to the wearer in battle.
Prague, Nuremberg and Vienna
Emperor Charles IV of the Luxembourgers rediscovered the Holy Lance as a symbol of power. Since the imperial crown was in the possession of his opponents from the House of Wittelsbach , Karl had the lance brought to his residence in Prague from the Cistercian monastery in Stams in Tyrol to legitimize his imperial dignity . It was not until the beginning of the 13th century that a papal letter handed down the legend that the Holy Lance was the same lance that was used by a Roman legionnaire named Longinus to verify the death of Jesus on the cross. Previously, the splinters of the nails used in the lance, which supposedly came from the cross of Christ, were sufficient to establish the reputation of the lance as an important relic . In the beginning only the particles of nails were mentioned, later the thorn in the middle of the lance tip was called the nail of the cross of the Lord. Perhaps the installation of this central piece broke the lance, but perhaps also when material was removed for copies that Otto III. made.
Charles IV had the Pope confirm the importance of the Holy Lance as a double relic and set up a holiday in her honor. Around 1354, for the first celebration of the "Solemnity of the Holy Lance including the cross nail", Charles IV had the break further strengthened with another golden cuff over the first two made of iron and silver and inscribed accordingly. This cuff contains an inscription that identifies the lance as a double relic and mentions the nail from the cross of Jesus: LANCEA ET CLAVUS DOMINI - lance and nail of the Lord.
Under Emperor Sigismund broke into Bohemia the Hussite wars from. The imperial insignia and with it the Holy Lance were brought outside the country and handed over to the city of Nuremberg by Sigismund in 1424 for "eternal" safekeeping. The Holy Lance drew large crowds of pilgrims to Nuremberg to worship it, especially on Solemn Festival. Only with the Reformation did the importance of the lance as a relic end.
In the course of the Napoleonic Wars , the imperial regalia were again endangered. Emperor Franz II feared that Napoleon could lay claim to the Roman-German imperial title should he come into possession of the imperial insignia. That is why he had them brought to Regensburg together with the Holy Lance in 1796 and then to his treasury in the Hofburg in Vienna in 1800 .
The lance in the "Third Reich"
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In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote in reference to the separation of Austrian and Prussian-German history brought about by the German War in 1866: “The imperial insignia of former imperial glory in Vienna seem to continue to work as a wonderful magic as a pledge of an eternal community.” After the annexation of Austria the regalia were transferred to the German Reich from Vienna to Nuremberg in 1938. It is clear that Hitler so that the local politicians of the city, through the organization of party conventions on the Nazi Party Rally Grounds fixed to the Nazi party , wanted a favor were connected. It was not until the end of the 20th century that theses emerged that Hitler was only concerned with the Holy Lance, which was supposed to give him invincibility and which he wanted to use as a miracle weapon . This thesis seems to walk on the book The Spear of Destiny ( The Spear of Destiny , 1973) by Trevor Ravenscroft back (it being noted that a lance no spear is).
Another argument against these theses is that the lance, together with the other insignia of the Roman-German Empire, was still in Nuremberg at the end of the war, where it was found by American soldiers. In 1946 the imperial regalia were returned from the United States to the treasury in Vienna as looted by the “ Third Reich ” . The Holy Lance is still on display there. The rumor that the lance had found its way to the United States and that only a copy was exhibited in the treasury was also not proven. X-rays and other non-destructive material tests carried out by the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Archeology at the University of Vienna in recent years have shown that it is the 1200-year-old lance that is often described.
Regardless of all rumors, it can be said that medieval studies in the “Third Reich” led an intensive discussion about the lance as the ruling insignia of the Ottonians, especially in the hands of Heinrich I and Otto I. Since the 19th century, the first two Ottonians have generally been regarded as the forerunners of eastward-looking imperialism and have been particularly valued since 1933. Recognized historians close to the SS were involved in the discussion. Marked Albert Brack man repeated the lance as Mauritius relic in the hands of Otto, for which the in Magdeburg have Mauritius revered as the "patron saint of the German East" counted. Otto Höfler, who works in the “ Ahnenerbe ” and teaches at the universities in Munich and Kiel , incorrectly identified the lance as the “holy spear of Wotan ”, which as an imperial lance is merely Roman-Christian in a lecture on the “Germanic continuity problem” at the 1937 Historians' Day in Erfurt had been foreigned. In the early 1940s, alongside Brackmann, the medievalist Hans-Walter Klewitz , Josef Otto Plassmann as a great admirer of Heinrich on Heinrich Himmler's personal staff , and Alfred Thoss, Nazi writer and member of the Waffen SS , participated in the discussion in another edition ( 1943) of his Heinrich monograph from 1936.
Meaning of the Holy Lance
The age of the Reformation and the Enlightenment also demythologized the Holy Lance and thus stripped of its symbolic content, which makes up its real value. Therefore, compared to other imperial regalia, relatively little attention is paid to it. This may also be due to the fact that the other parts of the imperial regalia arouse interest solely through the gold, precious stones and enamel work.
Other holy lances
When the crusaders were besieged by a Muslim army in the city of Antioch they had conquered in 1098 during the First Crusade , the unexpected discovery of the so-called "Holy Lance of Antioch" by Petrus Bartholomaeus motivated them so strongly that the approx. 20,000 crusaders failed undertook and defeated the overpowering besiegers with over 200,000 men. The authenticity of the Holy Lance of Antioch was questioned during the crusade of Arnulf von Chocques . In April 1099, Petrus Bartholomaeus offered to undergo a trial by fire . Since he survived this (presumably) only seriously injured and died a few days later, the lance was considered a forgery by most crusaders. The whereabouts of the Holy Lance of Antioch is unknown.
The apostle Thaddäus is said to have brought a lance to Armenia , with which the death of Christ was established on Golgotha . It was kept in the Geghard monastery founded in the 4th century (40 kilometers southeast of Yerevan ). This is how the monastery got its current name around 1250: Geghardavank ("Monastery of the Holy Lance"). To the present day Geghard is one of the most important pilgrimage sites of the Armenian Christians. There the relic is in the museum of the Etchmiadzin Cathedral .
King Louis IX of France (1214–1270), who led two crusades, brought many relics to Paris , such as the crown of thorns , for the storage of which he had the Sainte-Chapelle built, and the tip of a lance that is said to have belonged to the Roman captain Longinus . In 1492 Sultan Bajazeth II offered Pope Innocent VIII a 'Longinus lance', which came into his possession after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and the broken extreme tip of which was that of Louis IX. supposed to have been a relic brought to Paris. This papal lance is located in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome . The front end of the lance tip from the Sainte-Chapelle was lost during the French Revolution .
Emperor Otto III. had two copies made of the Holy Lance given to him with the imperial insignia. He handed this over to the princes of Poland and Hungary. How much original material from the original Holy Lance was incorporated into the copies is not known. The Polish lance is in the treasury of Kraków's Wawel Cathedral .
literature
- Mechthild Schulze-Dörrlamm: Holy nails and holy lances. In: Falko Daim, Jörg Drauschke (Hrsg.): Byzanz - the Roman Empire in the Middle Ages. Part 1: World of Ideas, World of Things (= monographs RGZM Bd. 84,1). Verlag des Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseums, Mainz 2010, ISBN 978-3-88467-153-5 , pp. 97–171 ( online ).
- Gunther Wolf: Prolegomena for the exploration of the Holy Lance. In: Die Reichskleinodien, rulership symbols of the Holy Roman Empire (= writings on Staufer art and history. Vol. 16). Verlag Gesellschaft für Staufische Geschichte, Göppingen 1997, ISBN 3-929776-08-1 .
- Franz Kirchweger (Ed.): The Holy Lance in Vienna. Insignia - relic - spear of fate (= writings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vol. 9). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85497-090-0 .
- Hermann Fillitz : The insignia and jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. Schroll, Vienna et al. 1954.
- Peter Worm: The Holy Lance. Change of meaning and worship of a symbol of power. In: Works from the Marburg auxiliary science institute , ed. by Erika Eisenlohr and Peter Worm (= elementa diplomatica. 8). Marburg 2000, ISBN 3-8185-0303-6 .
- Sabine Haag (Ed.): Masterpieces of the Secular Treasury. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-85497-169-6 .
- Albert Bühler: The Holy Lance. An iconographic contribution to the history of the German imperial regalia. In: Das Münster , H. 3/4, 1963 (16th year), pp. 85–116.
Web links
- Art and legend of the Longinus lance: The Spear of God , article by Tobias Micke in Die Nachlese, August 3, 2003
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The Holy Lance. Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien , accessed on November 4, 2018 (illustration and description).
- ↑ Gunther Wolf, Franz Kirchweger, p. 165.
- ↑ Wilhelm Wegener: The lance of St. Wenceslaus. An attempt at the history of medieval rulers . In: ZRG, 1955, pp. 56-82.
- ↑ Liutprand of Cremona , Antapodosis IV, 25th
- ^ The "Holy Lance" between science and legend Online newspaper of the University of Vienna, April 4, 2005 (accessed on May 16, 2010)
- ^ Widukind von Corvey , Res gestae Saxonicae I, 25.
- ↑ Bruno von Querfurt turns against the alliance between the Christian King Heinrich II and the pagan Ljutizen, for which he contrasts Christianity and paganism. Two consecutive questions connect the pairs Mauritius / Holy Lance on the one hand and the heathen god Zuarasi / "diabolica vexilla" on the other; see. A. Brackmann, The Political Significance of Mauritius Worship in the Early Middle Ages ; in: Meeting reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin , Berlin 30.1937, p. 292f.
- ^ For example: Ekkehard von St. Gallen , Casus sancti Galli , c. 65; Hugo von Flavigny , Chronicon II, 29; Benzo from Alba, Ad Henricum IV. Imperatorem I, 9.
- ↑ See: M. Kuhn, Saint Mauritius with the lance, the Ottonian imperial patron ; in: Geschichte am Obermain , Vol. 7, Lichtenfels 1971–72; P. 54f. Bühler claims, however, that it was not until Henry IV. 1084 that the cuff was attached, cf. Albert Bühler, The Holy Lance. An iconographic contribution to the history of the German imperial regalia ; in: Das Münster 16.1963, pp. 85–116.
- ↑ Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf . First volume: a settlement . P. 11.
- ↑ Otto Höfler: The Germanic continuity problem . Writings of the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany, Hamburg 1937.
- ^ Alfred Thoss: Heinrich I. The founder of the German People's Empire . 3. Edition. Berlin 1943, p. 79.
- ^ Cathedral Museum. Armenian Apostolic Church , accessed December 5, 2014 .
- ^ The John Paul II Wawel Cathedral Museum. Wawel Cathedral , accessed November 4, 2018 .