St. Longinus and the Spear of Destiny

The Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy, 1305 (click above for larger image)

In 1994 B.I. (Before Internet) I was engaged in a multimedia project for a college text book publisher. The topic of one module was the Arena Chapel. The story of the Virgin and Jesus which are portrayed on either side of the Chapel, were to be digitized, explained, and recorded on CD-ROMs for distribution with a new art history text. I was the producer and iconographer of the project. As medieval painting were mostly based on either the Bible or the Golden Legend, my task was straight forward; that is, until I came upon the fresco below.

In medieval Christian art the good folks with halos are usually on the right side of Jesus at the crucifixion, the skull of Adam is traditionally beneath the cross, and bad folks on the left of Jesus. But who is the man on the left side, with an unusual head gear and a halo? Here is a good guy hanging with a bad crowd.

Giotto, The Crucifixion, c. 1305

From left to right, Mary the mother of James, Mary the Mother of Jesus (always in blue), the Apostle John (supporting Mary), then Mary Magdalene (a red head). First on our right is a man with a lance, the mystery man, then the soldiers and others.

The two soldiers at the right side of the painting are holding the tunic and are arguing about dividing it; one has a knife and the figure in the white cloak is restraining him. Among the group at the right side of the fresco (most of whom are those who have plotted or carried out the Crucifixion) is the mystery man with a halo. Candidates for the identity of this figure are: Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, or Longinus.

Here is the scripture which the artist and his advisors would have know:

Matthew 27:54

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, "Surely he was the Son of God!"

Mark 15:39

And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, Surely this man was the Son of God!

John 19: 34

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance (longche"), and immediately there came out blood and water.

So, here is what we can make of all this:

The first figure on the left of Jesus is holding a lance, so he may have been the soldier that pierced the side of Jesus. The figure with the halo is perhaps handing him the lance with his right hand (if he were receiving the lance he should be looking in the direction of the lance.) He is dressed in red, the color of a Roman centurion's cloak and is wearing some kind of official head piece. As to the halo, Longinus later became a saint, but so did Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.

The name of the soldier who pierced Christ's side with a longche is not given in any of the Gospels, but in the oldest known references to the legend is the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus appended to late manuscripts of the 4th century Acts of Pilate, the soldier is identified as a centurion and called Longinus (making the spear's correct Latin name Lancea Longini). We must remember Medieval artist were more like modern architects working with clients, mostly churchmen who had the final say. Giotto's technical advisors (there was a monastery nearby the chapel) seem to have bridged the centurion/soldier problem by having a soldier hold the lance and having Longinus' hand close to the lance.

In the final analysis the evidence points to the figure being Longinus. In any event the centurion went on to become St. Longinus and the spear became....

The Holy Lance (The Spear of Destiny)

No actual lance is known in the west until the 6th century pilgrim Antoninus of Piacenza, says that he saw in the Basilica of Mount Zion in Jerusalem "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 occurs in the Breviarius at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The presence in Jerusalem of the relic is also attested by Cassiodorus and Gregory of Tours (who never went to Jerusalem).

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Dedication in 360. Until 1453 the Greek Patriarchal cathedral of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted to a Roman Catholic cathedral. The building was a mosque from 1453 until 1931, next it was opened as a museum in 1935.

In 615, Jerusalem and its relics were captured by the Persian forces of King Chosroes II. According to the Chronicon Paschale the point of the lance, which had been broken off, was taken to Constantinople and placed in the church of Hagia Sophia and later sold to the French King Louis IX. The point of the lance was kept in Sainte Chapelle (below) until the French Revolution when it was lost in the vicissitudes of history.

In 1239 Louis IX bought Christ's crown of thorns and the tip of the lance from Beaudoin II, the Emperor of Constantinople.

The bottom portion of the lance fell into the hands of the Turks and in 1492, the Sultan Bayazid II sent it to Pope Innocent VIII to encourage him to continue keeping his brother and rival Zizim prisoner. This relic has never since left Rome and is kept under the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, but the Church makes no claim to its authenticity.