File LC-R16 · Lost civilizations · Fact recordFiled 2026-10-16

Is the Spear of Destiny real? The Holy Lance and its legends, checked

The objects are real; the claims attached to them are not proven. At least three lances are venerated as the Holy Lance of John 19:34, and the best known, in Vienna, is dated by its own museum to the eighth century. The story that Hitler coveted it for occult power comes from a 1970s occult book whose research, a court later recorded, included a psychic medium.

What is the Spear of Destiny?

The Spear of Destiny, Holy Lance and Spear of Longinus are three names for the same claimed relic: the spear that, in the Gospel of John 19:34, a Roman soldier used to pierce the side of Jesus after his death on the cross. Tradition later named the soldier Longinus. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that nothing certain is recorded about the weapon until a pilgrim from Piacenza saw it in Jerusalem around 570.

From there the trail splits. Encyclopaedia Britannica counts at least three reputed relics, in Rome, Vienna and Armenia, and adds that the Vatican does not claim authenticity for any of them. A fourth, dug up at Antioch in 1098, has its own story. This file keeps apart what the objects physically are, which can be measured, and what faith attaches to them, which cannot.

What examination found: the Spear of Destiny in Vienna

The Vienna lance is the one most people mean by the Spear of Destiny. It belongs to the Imperial Treasury in the Hofburg, part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, under inventory number WS XIII 19. The museum's catalogue describes it as Carolingian, dated to the eighth century, 50.7 cm long and 968 g. A silver sleeve added in the second half of the eleventh century carries an inscription naming Emperor Henry III and St Maurice; a gold sleeve from the third quarter of the fourteenth century reads "Lancea et clavus Domini", the lance and nail of the Lord. The museum's catalogue photographs are where most Spear of Destiny photos online come from.

The catalogue is candid about how the object acquired its meaning. It says that "Pious wishful thinking soon turned the central pin into one of the nails" from the crucifixion, that the lance was seen at different times as Constantine's and as St Maurice's, and that only in the thirteenth century was it taken for the lance of Longinus.

British metallurgist Robert Feather tested the lance for a documentary broadcast in June 2003; TIME reported that his X-ray tests dated the main body to the seventh century at the earliest, and history.co.uk adds that no trace of blood or DNA was found. Feather did consider the iron pin consistent with a first-century Roman nail, while conceding, in his words, "We're in the realm of speculation." That autumn a University of Vienna team under M. Mehofer began an archaeometallurgical study for the museum; in February 2004 the gold and silver cuffs were removed for the first time since 1924. Using only non-destructive methods, they described a winged lance of a form typical of the second half of the eighth century, broken in two, with a pin set into the blade and most alterations completed before the mid-tenth century. The results appeared in the museum's 2005 volume on the lance.

The mainstream account of the other lances

Rome. The Catholic Encyclopedia records that the larger part of the Jerusalem lance reached Constantinople and that Sultan Bayezid sent it to Pope Innocent VIII in 1492; it is kept under the dome of St Peter's. Its point, broken off and taken to Constantinople in 615, was given to Louis IX of France in 1244 and disappeared after the French Revolution.

Antioch. History Today describes a peasant, Peter Bartholomew, who claimed St Andrew had shown him where the lance lay in the cathedral of St Peter in Antioch. On 15 June 1098 workmen dug and found nothing, until Peter jumped into the trench and produced a piece of iron. The bishop of Le Puy was sceptical, but morale soared and the besieged crusaders broke out on 28 June. Doubts grew; on Good Friday, 8 April 1099, Peter walked through fire to prove his visions and died of his burns on the 20th, and Britannica says the lance was discredited. The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests this may be the object now kept at Etchmiadzin in Armenia, which Britannica says local legend attributes instead to the apostle Jude. None of the four has been shown to date to the first century, and the Vienna lance has been shown not to.

Popular claims: the Spear of Destiny and Hitler

The occult reputation is modern. The book that made it, The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft, appeared in 1973 according to History of War magazine. It told of a young Adolf Hitler in Vienna captivated by a tour guide's story of the lance, who seized it once the Nazis entered Austria and drew power from it. Ravenscroft named the Viennese-born scholar Walter Johannes Stein, who died in 1957, as his source. According to History of War, Ravenscroft and Stein never actually met while Stein was alive. When Ravenscroft later sued the novelist James Herbert for plagiarism, the court recorded that his book was researched using "a combination of empirical techniques and use of a psychic medium". He won, and the magazine explains why: the events he described had no basis in fact, so they counted as his own invention.

What did happen is more ordinary. Austria-Forum records that the imperial regalia, including the lance, were kept at Nuremberg from 1424, moved away in July 1796 ahead of French troops and handed over in Vienna in October 1800. After the annexation of Austria, with Hitler's consent, they went back to Nuremberg by special train at the end of August 1938; the Americans handed them over to Vienna in early 1946, and they have been on display in the Hofburg treasury since 1954. History of War reads Hitler's interest as pan-German symbolism, not magic. The popular version, repeated by history.co.uk, has American troops taking possession of the lance on 30 April 1945, two hours before Hitler's suicide.

What is still unsolved

The Spear of Destiny mystery, stripped of fiction, comes down to three open points: whether the Vienna pin is a first-century nail, as Feather thought and the museum doubts; the age of the Rome relic, never examined as Vienna's was; and whether the Armenian lance really is the 1098 Antioch find, a scholarly guess rather than a documented chain of custody.

Verdict

Is the Spear of Destiny real? There is a real eighth-century winged lance in Vienna, a real relic in St Peter's and a real one in Armenia. What is not established is that any of them is the spear of John 19:34, and the only one examined in a laboratory is centuries too young. The occult Hitler legend is a 1970s literary creation. Real or Legend files the relic as disputed, because the objects exist and their dating is contested, and the Spear of Destiny Hitler story as having no basis in the record.