RE: The BBC Finally Catches On!
July 26, 2011 at 9:11 pm
(This post was last modified: July 27, 2011 at 6:39 pm by Oldandeasilyconfused.)
Quote:British taxpayers will wince at the thought that a king of England once paid 100,000 gold coins for the "real" crown of thorns from the New Testament.
Indeed, AND during the crusades, Salah al Din had a piece of the true cross.The crusaders acquired it, believing it would make them invincible;it didn't.
During the middle ages other relics on offer included breast milk from the virgin Mary ,straw from Jesus manger and of course "The Spear of Longinus' or " Spear of Destiny" used to pierce the side of Jesus on the cross. There have been a few of those kicking around. The best known was allegedly owned by Adolf Hitler at one stage. I understand that over the centuries, that spear has had several new shafts and a couple of new blades
Oh, two churches in Italy have the head of John The Baptist. It's simple; one of it's heads is that of John as younger man.There's probaly another of him as an infant somewhere.
Really old Italian churches creepy.They all seem to have at least one body part of some obscure saint. Some have an entire rotting cadaver in a glass case. Yucchh!
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For interest:
Quote:The Holy Lance (also known as the Spear of Destiny, Holy Spear, Lance of Longinus, Spear of Longinus or Spear of Christ) is the name given to the lance that pierced Jesus's side as he hung on the cross in John's account of the Crucifixion.
Quote:No actual lance is known until the pilgrim Antoninus of Piacenza (AD 570), describing the holy places of Jerusalem, says that he saw in the Basilica of Mount Zion "the crown of thorns with which Our Lord was crowned and the lance with which He was struck in the side".[2] A mention of the lance also occurs in the so-called Breviarius at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The presence in Jerusalem of the relic is attested by Cassiodorus (c. 485 - c. 585)[3][4] as well as by Gregory of Tours (c. 538 – 594), who had not actually been to Jerusalem.
Quote:Vienna Lance (Hofburg spear)
The Holy Lance in the Schatzkammer of Vienna
The inscription on the Holy Lance
The Holy Roman Emperors had a lance of their own, attested from the time of Otto I (912-973). In 1000 Otto III gave Boleslaw I of Poland a replica of the Lance at the Congress of Gniezno. In 1084 Henry IV had a silver band with the inscription "Nail of Our Lord" added to it. This was based on the belief that this was the lance of Constantine the Great which enshrined a nail used for the Crucifixion. In 1273 it was first used in the coronation ceremony. Around 1350 Charles IV had a golden sleeve put over the silver one, inscribed "Lancea et clavus Domini" (Lance and nail of the Lord). In 1424 Sigismund had a collection of relics, including the lance, moved from his capital in Prague to his birth place, Nuremberg, and decreed them to be kept there forever. This collection was called the Reichskleinodien or Imperial Regalia.
When the French Revolutionary army approached Nuremberg in the spring of 1796 the city councilors decided to remove the Reichskleinodien to Vienna for safe keeping. The collection was entrusted to one "Baron von Hügel", who promised to return the objects as soon as peace had been restored and the safety of the collection assured[citation needed]. However, the Holy Roman Empire was disbanded in 1806 and the Reichskleinodien remained in the keeping of the Habsburgs. When the city councilors asked for the Reichskleinodien back, they were refused. As part of the imperial regalia it was kept in the Imperial Treasury Schatzkammer (Vienna) and was known as the lance of Saint Maurice.
During the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed to Germany, the Reichskleinodien were returned to Nuremberg and afterwards hidden. They were found by invading U.S. troops and returned to Austria by American General George S. Patton after World War II.
In 615 Jerusalem and its relics were captured by the Persian forces of King Khosrau II (Chosroes II). According to the Chronicon Paschale, the point of the lance, which had been broken off, was given in the same year to Nicetas, who took it to Constantinople and deposited it in the church of Hagia Sophia, and later to the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. This point of the lance, which was now set in an icon, was acquired by the Latin Emperor, Baldwin II of Constantinople, who later sold it to Louis IX of France. The point of the lance was then enshrined with the Crown of Thorns in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. During the French Revolution these relics were removed to the Bibliothèque Nationale but subsequently disappeared.[5] (The present "Crown of Thorns" is a wreath of rushes.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear_of_Longinus
