About the Piece
In the Gospel of John, an unnamed Roman soldier pierces the side of Jesus with a spear during the Crucifixion. Later Christian tradition gave the soldier a name — Longinus — and the weapon became known as the Holy Lance. The object preserved today in Vienna’s Imperial Treasury entered that story centuries later. An 8th-century Carolingian lance, it was identified at different times with Emperor Constantine and Saint Maurice before becoming associated with Longinus by the 13th century.
What makes the Vienna lance extraordinary is that those changing beliefs became physically built into the object. Its central iron pin came to be venerated as one of the nails of the Crucifixion. A silver sleeve was added in the 11th century, and in the 14th Emperor Charles IV added the gold sleeve inscribed LANCEA ET CLAVVS DOMINI — “Lance and Nail of the Lord.” By then the weapon had become one of the most important insignia of the Holy Roman Empire: part relic, part symbol of rulership, its sacred identity used to reinforce imperial legitimacy and power.
Spectres recreates the Vienna relic as it survives after centuries of alteration rather than imagining a Roman spear from the Crucifixion. The divided blade, inserted central pin, bound construction and gold sleeve all belong to the object that history actually preserved. Selective gilding isolates the sleeve because it marks one of the most important moments in that transformation — when an ancient weapon carrying generations of belief was literally inscribed as the Lance and Nail of the Lord.
Specifications
What’s Included
- Individually numbered Spectres piece
- Matching numbered Certificate of Authenticity with product specifications
- Custom-designed Spectres presentation box
Every Spectres piece carries the Ghost mint mark.
How is this a coin?
- A coin is defined by its official issuance, not by its physical shape. This piece is formally issued as legal tender by a sovereign issuing authority, with an official denomination and year of issue.
- Money and coinage have also taken unconventional forms throughout history, including ancient Chinese knife- and spade-shaped money. Spectres continues that idea in modern legal tender, where a coin may be round, shaped, functional, sculptural or fully three-dimensional.
