Longinus is the name given in Christian mythology to the unnamed Roman soldier who pierced Jesus
in his side with a lance and who in medieval and some modern Christian traditions is described
as a convert to Christianity.
The lance is called in Christianity the "Holy Lance" (lancea) and his story is related in
the Latin Vulgate Bible during the Crucifixion.
This act is said to have created the last of the Five Holy Wounds of Christ.
This individual, unnamed in the Gospels, is further identified in some versions of the
legend as the centurion present at the Crucifixion, who said that Jesus was the son of God.
Longinus' legend grew over the years to the point that he was said to have converted to
Christianity after the Crucifixion, and he is traditionally venerated as a saint in the
Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, and several other Christian communions.
== Origins of the myth ==
No name for this soldier is given in the canonical Gospels; the name Longinus is instead found
in the Acts of Pilate a text appended to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.
Longinus did not start out as a saint.
An early tradition, found in the 4th-century pseudepigraphal "Letter of Herod to Pilate",
claims that Longinus suffered for having pierced Jesus, and that he was condemned to a cave
where every night a lion came and mauled him until dawn, after which his body healed back
to normal, in a pattern that would repeat till the end of time.
Later traditions turned him into a Christian convert, but as Sabine Baring-Gould observed:
"The name of Longinus was not known to the Greeks previous to the patriarch Germanus,
in 715.
It was introduced amongst the Westerns from the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.
There is no reliable authority for the Acts and martyrdom of this saint."
However, an old tradition does link the birthplace of Longinus with the village of Anxanum (Lanciano),
Samnite territory, in today's Abruzzo region of central Italy.The name is probably Latinized
from the Greek lonche (λόγχη), the word used for the lance mentioned in John 19:34.
It first appears lettered on an illumination of the Crucifixion beside the figure of the
soldier holding a spear, written, perhaps contemporaneously, in horizontal Greek letters,
LOGINOS (ΛΟΓΙΝΟϹ), in the Syriac gospel manuscript illuminated by a certain Rabulas
in the year 586, in the Laurentian Library, Florence.
The spear used is known as the Holy Lance, and more recently, especially in occult circles,
as the "Spear of Destiny", which was revered at Jerusalem by the sixth century, although
neither the centurion nor the name "Longinus" were invoked in any surviving report.
As the "Lance of Longinus", the spear figures in the legends of the Holy Grail.Blindness
or other eye problems are not mentioned until after the tenth century.
Petrus Comestor was one of the first to add an eyesight problem to the legend and his
text can be translated as "blind", "dim-sighted" or "weak-sighted.
The Golden Legend says that he saw celestial signs before conversion and that his eye problems
might have been caused by illness or age.
The touch of Jesus's blood cures his eye problem:
Christian legend has it that Longinus was a blind Roman centurion who thrust the spear
into Christ’s side at the crucifixion.
Some of Jesus’s blood fell upon his eyes and he was healed.
Upon this miracle Longinus believed in Jesus.
The body of Longinus is said to have been lost twice, and that its second recovery was
at Mantua in 1304, together with the Holy Sponge stained with Christ's blood, wherewith
it was told—extending Longinus' role—that Longinus had assisted in cleansing Christ's
body when it was taken down from the cross.
The relic, corpules of alleged blood taken from the Holy Lance, enjoyed a revived cult
in late 13th century Bologna under the combined impetus of the Grail romances, the local tradition
of eucharistic miracles, the chapel consecrated to Longinus, the Holy Blood in the Benedictine
monastery church of Sant'Andrea, and the patronage of the Bonacolsi.The relics are said to have
been divided and then distributed to Prague and elsewhere, with the body taken to the
Basilica of Sant'Agostino in Rome.
However, official guides of the Basilica do not mention the presence of any tomb associated
with Saint Longinus.
It is also said that the body of Longinus was found in Sardinia; Greek sources assert
that he suffered martyrdom in Gabala, Cappadocia.
== Present-day veneration ==
Longinus is venerated, generally as a martyr, in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern
Orthodox Church, and the Armenian Apostolic Church.
His feast day is kept on 16 October in the Roman Martyrology, which mentions him, without
any indication of martyrdom, in the following terms: "At Jerusalem, commemoration of Saint
Longinus, who is venerated as the soldier opening the side of the crucified Lord with
a lance".
The original feast day of 15 March is still maintained in the liturgical calendar in the
Extraordinary Form.
The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 16 October.
In the Armenian Apostolic Church, his feast is commemorated on October 22.The statue of
Saint Longinus, sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, is one of four in the niches beneath the dome
of Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City.
A spearpoint fragment said to be from the Holy Lance is also conserved in the Basilica.
Longinus and his legend are the subject of the Moriones Festival held during Holy Week
on the island of Marinduque, the Philippines.
== In popular culture == In Irving Pichel's 1939 film The Great Commandment,
Albert Dekker portrays him as the commanding officer of a Roman army company escorting
a tax collector about Judea.
Subsequently, he is converted to Christianity through the kindness of Joel bar Lamech and
by his own experiences at Golgotha.
In the George Stevens's 1965 film The Greatest Story Ever Told, Longinus is identified with
the centurion who professed, "Truly this man was the Son of God" on Golgotha (portrayed
by John Wayne in a cameo role).
Longinus is a leading character in the 2005 four-issue comic series The Light Brigade
by DC Comics.
The comic takes place in 1944 during World War II and features an immortal Longinus doomed
to walk the Earth to atone for his deed by fighting fallen angels and their allies.
Casca Rufio Longinus, in the Casca novel series by Barry Sadler, accidentally ingests some
of Christ's blood after lancing him.
He is condemned by Christ to walk the earth as a soldier until they meet again at the
Second Coming.
Cassius Longinus is the main character of Louis de Wohl's novel The Spear (1955).
== Gallery ==
== See also ==
List of names for the Biblical nameless Moriones Festival
Wandering Jew, a figure with whom he is sometimes identified
== References ==
== External links ==
The Reliquary of Saint Longinus Catholic Forum: St. Longinus
St. Longinus Catholic-Saints St. Longinus
Longinus Martyr Longinus