WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: Rush reeds fill the ring, which has a diameter of more than 8 inches. There are no longer any thorns included with the Crown of Thorns, for they were dispensed years ago as relics themselves.
And they platted a crown of thorns and put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand; and they kneeled down before him, and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!”
—Matthew 27:29
The last days of Jesus Christ are described in the New Testament.
The night before Jesus’ crucifixion, Roman soldiers and a large crowd carrying clubs, swords, lanterns, and torches went to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus and his disciples were gathered. The religious men had come to the garden after their Passover meal, which would become known as the Last Supper, and now Jesus was praying as his disciples rested. Judas, a disciple of Jesus but a traitor to him, approached and kissed him, revealing to the others that this was the man whom they should arrest. Simon Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples, raised his sword and hacked the right ear off a man in the crowd, but Jesus told Peter to put away the sword, and touching the man’s ear, healed him. The soldiers seized and bound Jesus and took him to the courtyard of the high priest.
The chief priests and Council, also known as the Sanhedrin, immediately held a trial. A procession of witnesses recited various trumped-up charges against Jesus, ending with two men who testified they had heard Jesus say, “I am able to destroy the temple of God, and build it back up in three days.” The high priest asked Jesus to respond to this accusation, but Jesus did not answer. “I adjure thee by the living God,” the high priest said, “that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus responded that he was what the high priest said. “Nevertheless,” Jesus continued, “I say unto you, henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The high priest became livid and ripped his own garments as he shouted “Blasphemy!” There was no need for further witnesses, the high priest said. “Behold, now ye have heard the blasphemy. What think ye?” The group answered that Jesus was “worthy of death.”
The next morning Jesus was taken to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, who, inside his palace and removed from the crowd that wanted Jesus killed, asked him some questions. Pilate then returned to the people outside and said he did not find Jesus guilty of the crimes of which he was accused. Now it was a custom that during the Passover the Roman governor would set a prisoner free, and it just so happened there were two men in Pilate’s custody: Barabbas, a robber; and Jesus of Nazareth. Pilate assumed the crowd would want the latter released, but the crowd shouted for the freeing of Barabbas. Hoping to pacify the group calling for the death of Jesus of Nazareth, Pilate had him scourged inside the palace. He had his centurions flog Jesus, then spit on him, beat him over the head, and finally strip him and put a scarlet robe on him and a crown of thorns over his head, and ridicule him as the “King of the Jews.”
After the scourging and mocking, Pilate again came out before the crowd and said he could still find no crime committed by Jesus worthy of death. He brought out the prisoner before the crowd.
Jesus stood before the crowd with the crown of thorns on his head and the robe draped over him. Pilate told the people to crucify Jesus themselves, for he still could not find him guilty. But the people shouted back that under their law Jesus ought to die because he appointed himself the Son of God. Pilate became fearful now and returned once more inside the palace with Jesus, and asked him where he was from. Jesus would not answer, and when Pilate said he had the authority to release or crucify him, Jesus answered that Pilate’s power had been given to him by God and that those who delivered him to Pilate were guilty of a greater sin. Pilate again sought to release Jesus, but the crowd cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate asked if they wanted their king crucified, and the people responded that their only king was Caesar. And thereupon Pilate turned Jesus over to the will of the people, and the soldiers led him away to be crucified.
An artist's rendition of Jesus wearing the Crown of Thorns.
The wreath set upon Jesus’ head in mockery of a king’s crown is of a class of artifacts called liturgical relics—objects or mementos connected with a holy person or a saint, or the body or a body part of such an individual. People have venerated liturgical relics through time—feverishly in the first millennium since Christ, and even to some extent today—as being imbued with healing powers or having particular emanations owing to their association with a holy person.
Because liturgical relics were thought to have mystical powers, possessing them was like having a personal talisman or amulet. It was the practice in centuries past for churches, as well as kings, noblemen, and wealthy families, to acquire divine objects avariciously and display them in magnificent shrines and reliquaries. People would come from afar to visit and touch them, leaving contributions behind in gratitude and reverence.
The Crown of Thorns as it exists today, enclosed in a ringlet.
History contains many stories of celebrated persons possessing putative liturgical relics. For example, the Roman emperor Justin II was supposed to have owned a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified; Charlemagne also claimed wooden fragments and nails of the True Cross—relics of the Passion of Christ were especially popular and revered.
Indeed, just about every great event of the Old and New Testaments was resurrected in one sort of physical manifestation or another during the Middle Ages. There were, for instance, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Golden Calf, Moses’ staff, fragments of the burning bush, Christ’s manger, loaves from the Last Supper. Saints were revered too and were represented by all manner of anatomical parts: ears, legs, arms, fingers, heads, hair, burned flesh, and complete bodies. There was no limit to the kinds and numbers of relics that surfaced. Enterprising individuals even claimed to have discovered relics of fictional legend, such as King Arthur’s roundtable. In an effort to halt the practice of selling bogus objects—indeed, to curb the mania for relics and the abuses in worshiping them—the Roman Catholic Church eventually mandated its approval for introducing new sacred objects.
But what of Jesus’ crown of thorns? Did it actually exist? And if so, could it possibly have survived through the ages?
There is a historical record of a crown of thorns dating from 409. At that time it was said to be in Jerusalem among the sacred relics of Mount Zion, where people made pilgrimages to worship it. Occasionally, individual thorns from the crown were presented as gifts and these became venerated relics at the locations they were subsequently taken to.
In 1063, when the safety of the Crown of Thorns in Jerusalem was threatened, it was taken to the royal palace at Constantinople (formerly called Byzantium). Constantinople grew so poor that when Baldwin II became emperor in 1228, he had to travel to other countries to raise money, and eventually realized he would be forced to sell off the city’s holy relics to help out. The king of France, Louis IX, was aware of the sanctity of the Constantinople collection and wanted to purchase it. He did, but first he had to pay off the Venetian financiers to whom Baldwin II entrusted his young son as collateral for a loan. When the relics, including the prized Crown of Thorns, arrived in Paris in 1239, they were carried through the streets by the king and others in a grand parade. Around the middle of the thirteenth century Louis IX began construction of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, intended to be a regal and magnificent shrine for the relics of the Passion that he had obtained, especially the Crown of Thorns.
The safety of the sacred relics was jeopardized by the French Revolution—some were melted, others looted—and in 1806 the crown was moved to a nearby cathedral, Notre-Dame de Paris. It has lain here for nearly two centuries along with other relics of the Passion of Christ, and people come from all around the world to venerate it.
Though it has a long documented history, can this be the original crown of thorns, the very crown of thorns placed upon the head
of Jesus Christ some two thousand years ago? Proving that would be difficult if not impossible, but in a sense the authenticity of the Crown of Thorns and other relics is secondary to their incredible history, to their significance in the medieval context, and to their profound meaning to the faithful of both the past and the present.
LOCATION: Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris, France.
THE HOLY LANCE
DATE: A.D. 30 (by tradition), the Nail of the True Cross; eighth or ninth century, the lance.
WHAT IT IS: A lance of the Holy Roman Empire that according to tradition contains a piece of nail driven into a limb of Jesus Christ during the Crucifixion. Middle Ages rulers who possessed the Holy Lance believed it conferred upon them the divine right of monarch or emperor as coming from God and Jesus Christ.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: It is a winged lance made of steel, iron, and brass that lacks a shaft and measures approximately 20 inches long. The lance has an elliptical hole in its middle occupied by a crafted rod-like piece of iron said to be or contain particles of a Nail of the True Cross. An iron band holds together the blade, which is broken in two pieces, and around this are a silver sleeve and gold cuff, each with inscriptions.
But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they broke not his legs; but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
—John 19:33-34
Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, could not appease the crowd before his palace calling for Jesus to be killed, and finally acceded to the pressure. His soldiers led Jesus away and had Simon from Cyrene, a man whom they met on the way out, come with them to carry the cross. When they got to Calvary (in Hebrew, Golgotha), the “place of the skull,” they offered Jesus a drink to numb him against the tremendous pain that would be induced by the Crucifixion. He tasted it but declined to drink.
Jesus was crucified from 9:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M., during the last three hours of which a darkness came over the land. The Roman soldiers drove nails into Jesus’ limbs, suspending him from the wooden beams as his weight bore down and the terrible agony set in. Two other men were crucified by his side, and above Jesus’ cross the soldiers attached a sign, “This is Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.” People passed by and shouted insults at Christ. “If thou be the Son of God,” they cried out, “come down from the cross.” Chief priests, scribes, and elders came by and taunted him. “He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
At the end, Jesus, in agony, shouted, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtbani? ” which in Aramaic means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A soldier dipped a sponge into cheap wine and placed it at the end of a stick for Jesus to drink. Then Jesus cried out and gave his last breath. The Gospel according to Matthew says the earth rumbled and rocks cracked into pieces, graves came apart, and many who had died were brought back to life.
The Roman soldiers broke the legs of the two men who were crucified with Jesus, to hasten their deaths as the Sabbath was approaching. But when they came to Jesus, they did not break his legs, seeing that he was already dead. Instead, a Roman centurion whom tradition names as Longinus—the name itself may actually have derived from the Latin word for lance—took a spear and thrust it into his side, out of which poured blood and water.
There are two relics of the Passion that have historically been confused: the Spear of Longinus and the Holy Lance. Tradition tells us that the Spear of Longinus was the spear of the Roman centurion that pierced the side of Christ during the Crucifixion. The Holy Lance was a product of the eighth or ninth century in which a Holy Nail was inserted. Both are spears and relics of the Passion, reason enough for confusion, and yet to add to the mix-up, writings up to the tenth century referred to the Spear of Longinus as the Holy Lance.
Organized worships of relics of the Passion began with the legend of Saint Helena, mother of Constantine, the Roman emperor and founder of the Byzantine Empire. During the first half of the fourth century, when Saint Helena was advanced in years, she dedicated herself to performing Christian deeds. A former pagan who was divorced from Constantine’s father when he was made ruler of territories of the newly divided Roman Empire and was required to have a noble-born wife, Helena followed Constantine in converting to Christianity after his spiritual awakening. Helena then made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and sponsored the building of churches. As the foundations were being laid for the Church of the Holy Tomb on Calvary, site of the Crucifixion, a miraculous discovery was made. The cross on which Jesus was crucified and the nails that were driven into his body were reported found.
Helena’s True Cross and Nails were conserved at the Church of the Holy Tomb, joined at some point by a Spear of Longinus, whose own provenance is unclear.* All these holy relics remained at Calvary without incident until 614, when the Persian king Khosrau II Parvez attacked Jerusalem and carried off the treasures of the Passion. The Byzantines later seized the spear and placed it in the royal treasury at Constantinople.
The Byzantines began a tradition of claiming to be the bearers of the true Spear of Longinus. Still others claimed to possess the Longinus spear, or Holy Lance, which brings to attention a problem common to all relics of the Passion, the so-called brandeum, or relics by touch: in the Middle Ages people would touch an object to an authentic relic and believe that the power of the authentic relic was transferred to the object that touched it.
When crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204 (the Fourth Crusade), many of the city’s artworks and treasures were taken as booty. The holy relics disappeared too, although in 1492 Sultan Bajazet II presented to Pope Innocent VIII a Spear of Longinus that still exists today at the Vatican (in a small chapel inside the interior of the pillar of Veronica, one of four pillars that hold the great cupola of the Vatican Basilica). Whether this was the Constantinople Spear of Longinus is not known with certainty.
The Holy Lance
Now we cut to the story of a lance made in the eighth or ninth century that was united with a purported Nail of the True Cross and became a venerated weapon believed to confer divine invincibility upon its bearer. With the lance and its Holy Nail, supposedly from Saint Helena’s reliquary, rulers entered into battle with supreme confidence. The lance was handed down from one ruler to another, each one convinced that possession of this sacred object guaranteed their right of sovereignty.
An early owner of this Holy Lance, made during the dynasty of Charlemagne, was King Rudolf of Burgundy. Count Samson, adviser to Italy’s King Hugo, in the early 920s delivered the Holy Lance to Rudolf in the hope that he would oust Berengar, the emperor of Italy. But the German ruler King Henry I coveted the lance as a treasure that would confer on him the divine right as ruler and ensure victories in all military campaigns. Rudolf bestowed the lance on Henry in exchange for gifts. The lance became a symbol of the German empire and on Henry’s death in 936 was passed on to his eldest son, Otto.
Three years later a revolt within his kingdom threatened Otto’s power. Otto did not participate in the battle but observed it while clenching the Holy Lance. His forces crushed the rebels, and thereafter the Holy Lance brought comparisons to the virga Dei, Moses’ staff. Later, Otto’s Lombardian kingdom came under siege from foreign invaders. All attacks were staved off by Otto, who was crowned emperor in 962. Victories were attributed to his sacred instrument, the Holy Lance. (Much of the connection between Otto and the Holy Lance was recorded by Liutprand, a tenth-century Italian historian.)
Near the end of the eleventh century, Henry IV, a Roman emperor, had a silver sleeve with an inscription fitted over an iron band which was used to hold together the lance, whose blade had somehow broken into two pieces. Henry’s inscription paid tribute to the “Nail of the Lord.” About two and a half centuries later, Karl IV, another Roman emperor, ordered an inscribed gold cu
ff to be placed over the sleeve. This inscription similarly paid tribute to the Holy Nail, but in referring to the lance itself as the lord’s lance, it actually was identifying it as the Spear of Longinus. It is not known why such an identification was made, but it is wholly incorrect.
In the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX designated the Holy Lance “Constantine’s Lance” and held that it was the very same weapon used by the Roman centurion Longinus to pierce the body of Christ. The association of the lance with Longinus was decidedly apocryphal, but arose out of the ongoing conflict between Rome and Byzantium (later known as Constantinople), which always prided itself as the city that possessed the True Spear. Gregory wanted to irk the Byzantines.
The Holy Lance, or Heilige Lanze, became an insignia of the Holy Roman Empire, in later centuries combined with the empire’s cross (Reichskreuz), crown (Reichskrone), apple (Reichsapfel), and scepter (Szepter). The empire comprised the territories controlled by Frankish and German kings from 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne the emperor, to 1806, when Napoleon helped bring about its demise.
In the sixteenth century the lance came to the Habsburgs, a royal family of Austria. The Habsburg dynasty venerated the lance and preserved it with other insignia of the Holy Roman Empire (Reichskleinodien).
In 1938, on the eve of the Second World War, the Reichskleinodien, along with the Austrian Crown Jewels and valuable works of art, were packed in crates and transported to a concrete air-raid shelter in Nuremberg. The treasures remained there during the war and escaped seizure by Adolf Hitler or any of his Nazi minions. The treasures survived the war unscathed, even despite a major Royal Air Force attack on Nuremberg in March 1944. (The RAF suffered its heaviest casualties of the war in this raid, perhaps a strange coincidence with the Holy Lance’s being kept in this city.)
Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, & Einstein's Brain Page 8