Original subtitles

Mastrelli: This relic has passed through the hands

Of kings and conquerors.

It's been the center of extraordinary claims.

They say it pierced the side of christ,

That it holds inside it a nail from the crucifixion,

That it guarantees its possessor victory in battle.

But what are its real origins?

How has this one object sparked so many stories?

Wrapped in silver, and gold,

And more than 1,000 years of mythmaking,

What is the truth about the spear of destiny?

(dramatic music)

For centuries, the mysteries of the past

Have kept their secrets,

But there are clues cast in gold,

Etched in stone,

Written in blood.

We can unlock them.

Some objects seem to possess an aura of mystery about them.

In central africa they're called fetishes.

In north america, they're called dream catchers.

Back in the day, this papua new guinean mask

Might have brought its owner some serious renown.

Then again there are objects in this world

That inspire an entirely different order of awe

And fascination that give rise to myths and legends

And that extend the power of the past to the present day.

Deep within the kunst historische museum,

Vienna, austria,

Just such a relic is on public display:

A fractured metal lance head.

Bound with silver wire and wrapped in a sheath of gold.

It bears these words:

Lancea et clavus domini

"the spear and nail of our lord."

It's called the spear of destiny

And, according to urban legend,

Adolf hitler once gazed longingly upon it as a child.

Given the power it's said to wield,

Such a myth is unsurprising.

Feather: The spear is endowed with a power

To give someone invincibility in battle.

And that aura grew and grew and grew through history.

Mastrelli: But what is the real story of the spear?

It's a question a team of researchers

And conservators assembled

By the kunst historische museum hopes to answer.

Kirchweger: We decided to do new research on the holy lance.

Mastrelli: They'll scan it for physical clues.

Schreiner: We have here the results of the analysis.

Mastrelli: And examine the evidence from four countries

And 20 centuries in a quest to find the truth.

Dr. Helen bond is an expert on early christianity

And the biblical origins of the spear story.

It's mentioned just once, in the gospel of st. John.

Bond: The story of the lance is only in john's gospel

And that's the only place in the entire new testament

That you get any reference to the lance at all.

Mastrelli: It comes during the crucifixion.

Jesus hangs lifeless on the cross,

And a roman soldier wants to check that he really is dead.

Bond: One of the soldiers pierced his side with his lance,

And immediately blood and water flowed out.

Mastrelli: The spear, because it delivered the last wound

To jesus' body, is said to possess tremendous power.

Bond: People have clearly thought of the lance

As a way to connect them to the death of jesus.

Mastrelli: In the middle ages, hundreds of artifacts

Were venerated for their supposed connection

To the lives of saints

But objects thought to offer a direct,

Physical link to jesus were much rarer.

Bond: There's not really very many relics connected with jesus

But the primary ones as far as the people in the middle ages

Were concerned were those to do with his death.

Mastrelli: Tradition says that the first attempts to gather

And preserve such objects began in the fourth century ce.

That's when the emperor constantine decreed christianity

The official religion of the roman empire

And his mother helena went on a quest

To find relics of the crucifixion

300 years after the fact.

Bond: According to tradition,

His mother helena went to jerusalem

And she was looking around for the place

Where jesus was crucified.

Mastrelli: As a feat of biblical archeology,

It was a remarkable success.

Bond: And as she was digging around,

She found not only fragments of the true cross,

But also nails that were said to have attached jesus

To the cross and also the lance.

Mastrelli: Could two of helena's finds have been incorporated

Into the spear of destiny?

And could either one, or both, be genuine?

Today, new technology offers the chance

To test those claims.

Kirchweger: The last time substantial investigations

Have been taken were in the 1920s,

And of course the possibilities

Are on a totally different level nowadays.

Mastrelli: As curator, dr. Franz kirchweger

Is the latest keeper of the spear.

He has assembled a multi-disciplinary team.

Kirchweger: The holy lance has different layers

Telling a lot about its history.

Mastrelli: The plan is to study each element of the spear,

Not just the spearhead,

But also the central iron pin that divides the blade

And that some say holds crucifixion nails.

But, first, that golden outer layer.

Kirchweger has enlisted the help of an expert

In medieval metals, dr. Birgit buhler.

Buhler: If you look at it from a distance at the letters,

It actually looks quite good quality,

But when you look at it in an optical microscope

You can see the tiny faults.

It looks like someone was not a master

In the high art of engraving.

Mastrelli: This doesn't tell us who the engraver was

Or for whom he worked,

But every individual feature of his style is a clue,

Especially if the same style

Can be found on other engravings.

Buhler: Craftsmanship is always very specialized.

Mastrelli: Remarkably, a comparable engraving does exist.

It's on the base of a magnificent cross

Whose provenance is as clear

As the spear of destiny's is murky.

Buhler: There maybe is a correlation,

And maybe it's the same craftsman.

Mastrelli: In fact, the two pieces are so similar

That buhler is convinced they're from the same time,

If not the same hand.

Moreover, the inscription on the cross

Names the man for whom it was made.

That man was charles iv,

The holy roman emperor and king of bohemia.

In the mid-14th century, he ruled much of central europe

From what is, today, the czech republic.

Rosario: Charles the relic collector,

Well, there was no one like him.

Wherever he went,

He collected any and every relic that was available.

Mastrelli: Indeed, the inscription is far

From the only indication

That the spear spent time in charles' possession.

Charles himself took care of that.

Here, at this top of his castle residence near prague,

He built an extraordinary chapel

To host his vast collection of relics.

Buhler: You open into a world that is just lavish

And beautiful and sparkling.

The walls are set with semi-precious stones

And with embossed gold work.

Above are the 130 paintings, you can see the recesses there,

Each contained a relic of a saint, it was a sacred space.

Mastrelli: This is where he kept the spear of destiny

But it's how he publicly displayed it

That's the most revealing.

Rosario: A special day organized

Which was only for the holy lance

And nail of the lord and that tells us how important

Charles must of thought that this holy lance was.

Mastrelli: Each year,

It was ceremonially carried out of the chapel

And onto a specially -built balcony,

Here it was held up before an adoring crowd.

King charles knew full well the effect it would have.

Rosario: The holy lance

Had been bathed in the very blood of christ

And consequently for the medieval man,

You could get no closer to the divine than that.

The medieval person considered

That he was in the very presence of god at that moment.

Mastrelli: And that, of course, made the person

Who owned this object very important indeed.

Rosario: Anyone who possessed the lance had been chosen by god

To be his representative on earth,

To sit on the highest throne.

Mastrelli: Charles iv had schemed his way to power,

Uniting a divided, unstable kingdom under his sole control.

Part of that success came from convincing his people

He had a god-given right to rule.

And in that situation, the spear was a very powerful weapon.

It's no wonder, perhaps that he had it wrapped in gold.

Rosario: It was a way of self-legitimizing,

Self-aggrandizing,

And for eternity to come.

Charles iv was on one hand deeply religious,

And on the other hand a hard, cold calculating pragmatist.

Mastrelli: King charles clearly grasped that some relics

Can be a source of real political power.

But charles iv lived some 13 centuries after the crucifixion

And had no way of knowing

Whether the spear was genuine or not.

Today, though,

Thanks to the scientific team now on the case,

That's a question that might finally be answered.

An ancient bladed weapon is more than an instrument of war,

It's also a kind of recording device.

Even a cursory examination can tell you a lot

About the history of a sword or a dagger.

Take a look at the cutting edge on this yemeni janbiya.

See the nicks and furrows?

This is a blade that's been in the heat of battle

And has seen some serious action.

Compare it to this sword, you see how smooth it is?

This thing has never even been sharpened

And it's certainly never seen a day in combat.

Dr. Eric szameit is an anthropologist

With a special interest in ancient weaponry.

He's made a study of how bladed weapons

Have evolved down the centuries.

And, using x-ray images,

He's produced a replica of the spear,

As it would have looked, when it was first made.

Szameit: The blade is rather heavy.

Mastrelli: The key fact for him is that this spear

Is designed for hand -to-hand combat.

You could stroke from above

Or you could stroke from the side.

Mastrelli: It's meant to stab, to chop,

And to fend off an enemy's blows.

Szameit: A very dangerous, heavy weapon.

Mastrelli: It's a style of combat

That will certainly take its toll on the blade.

Szameit demonstrates.

(speaking in foreign language)

He has examined the holy lance in microscopic detail,

But neither x-ray nor microscopic analysis

Reveal any damage to the spear.

Szameit: It has no marks that it was damaged during a battle.

This holy spear was never used in real fighting.

Mastrelli: Given its reputation as a powerful weapon,

It's a striking conclusion,

But it's not the only one eric believes he can draw.

While it's not possible for him

To carbon date the age of an iron spearhead,

It is possible to compare iron-working techniques

As they've evolved over time.

And, if he can compare the spear with weapons

Whose age he knows for certain,

He may be able to identify the era in which it was made.

Szameit: We have a type of early roman period spear,

Then we have part of a sword

From the ninth to 10th century.

Mastrelli: Szameit brings all these items

To metallurgist manfred schreiner.

Schreiner: This is an object full of emotion

As the object itself

Has such a history and is full of myth

But when you do the analysis, it's a material

As all kinds of materials are

And it is very, very important to clarify the history

And to clarify the authenticity of the object.

Mastrelli: Until recently,

Determining an object's chemical make up

Would have involved taking samples and causing damage.

Schreiner: It was a kind of challenge for me

To carry out non-destructive investigations

And identify the material

Which is used for this important object.

So, what we are analyzing

Is mainly the surface of the material

Without taking any sample and without changing the object.

Mastrelli: The method schreiner uses today

Is called x-ray fluorescence.

It sends out a tightly focused beam of x-rays,

And what bounces back is the metal's chemical signature.

Schreiner: We have here the result

Of the x-ray fluorescence analysis

Obtained on the object of the first century bc.

And what we clearly can see is that iron of course

Is the main element present

But there is also a high variety of additional elements

Such as zinc, nickel, even lead.

Mastrelli: Next, schreiner focuses the x-ray

On the 10th century sword.

It shows that its purer iron is made using a process

That wasn't available in roman times.

Schreiner: And, of course, again iron is the main component

But the amount of minor components

And trace elements is much, much smaller.

Mastrelli: Finally, manfred compares these results

To what he finds on the holy lance.

And for him, the results are conclusive.

Schreiner: The holy lance

Completely differs from the material

Which was used for roman lances.

It's rather typical and characteristic for lances

Which were produced seven or even 800 years later.

We have to say that the holy lance is not a roman lance.

Mastrelli: If a lance did pierce jesus' side,

It wasn't this one.

Kirchweger: Today we can be absolutely sure

That this spear is nothing to do with the time

And age of christ and the roman period.

Mastrelli: But what about the crucifixion nails

The spear is said to hold?

Could they be the relic's real treasure?

Metallurgist robert feather has devoted years

To studying claims that the spear of destiny

Holds nails from the crucifixion.

What most intrigues him is this row of tiny brass crosses

Somehow pressed into the pin.

Buhler: In the iron itself there are inlaid brass wires,

And this is a decoration technique

Very typical for the early middle ages.

And they are crosses, which are of course

Related to the sacred character of the object.

Feather: The question arises

What were the gold crosses doing on the spear?

And my deduction was that they were placed there

At time that the spear was modified and the pin,

The central pin put in place.

Buhler: The technique is basically

You cut a groove in the object

And then you inlay the wire, you fix it by hammering.

There could be something below it,

There could be some sacred material,

Some tiny fragment of a sacred material

That you want to preserve,

And you mark this spot with a cross,

And you have it under the brass wire.

Mastrelli: And this is exactly what feather

Believes he sees just visible,

Sticking out from beneath the inlaid crosses

A sliver of a different metal.

Feather: I was able to look at the spear

Under high-powered magnification.

I could see distinctly

That there were separate lumps on the pin.

You could see the join,

The lapping of those lumps on the pin.

They had an iron composition

Which was different from the rest of the pin itself.

Mastrelli: Some might argue this is weak evidence.

Why accept a small shard of unknown metal

As the support for the relic's authenticity?

Then again, a 10th century manuscript

Offers astounding support.

Bond: "it has crosses made from the nails

"driven through the hands and feet of our lord

"and redeemer jesus christ.

"they claim this lance belonged to constantine the great,

"son of saint helena,

"the discoverer of the life-giving cross."

Mastrelli: The same helena who, tradition says,

Went to jerusalem

And tracked down relics from the crucifixion.

Feather: Someone went to an awful lot of trouble

To place these pieces of separate metal,

Marking them with the gold-looking cross,

And revering the spear.

But now it's got something additional,

It's got pieces that connect right back to jesus.

Kirchweger: This golden crosses that are set on the pin,

That was probably the starting point

For this belief in the holy lance

As being something transporting relics of christ.

Mastrelli: Whatever lies beneath those tiny crosses,

Dr. Kirchweger's team cannot reach it.

Not without destroying the lance.

Indeed, this may be the very part of the puzzle

That's destined to remain unsolved.

Put together, the spear's many layers form a record

Of extraordinary faith, superstition, and ambition.

Above all, the spear represents a legend so powerful

That even after many hundreds of years,

The stories that surround it continue to grow.

Kirchweger: It's kind of fascinating

That this historic artifact

Still is able to create legends in 20th and 21st century.

Bond: All of this huge amount of speculation and thought

And adoration has been put onto the lance.

And the amazing part about it

Is that it survived those centuries

And it was always venerated by every ruler.

Rosario: Locked inside the spear of destiny

Is at least a millennium of history.

Regardless of its origins, it is a remarkable object.

And while we cannot prove its ultimate authenticity,

The fact that this spear possesses a kind of power

Is as undeniable today as it was true 1,000 years ago.