Die Heilige Lanze (The Holy Lance) - Imperial Treasury, Vienna

This is the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien's own catalogue record for the Holy Lance in Vienna's Imperial Treasury, the museum that holds, conserves and catalogues the relic and administers its public display. As the holding institution's own standing record it is authoritative for the lance's custody, provenance since its documented history in the Treasury, and the museum's own dating of it as a Carolingian winged lance of the eighth century, later identified in devotional tradition as the lance of Longinus. Its limit is that it is an institutional catalogue entry rather than an independent scholarly study, so a claim resting on the lance's contested identification with the relic described in the Gospel of John, a matter of devotional tradition rather than the museum's own archaeological dating, needs a source engaging that question directly rather than the museum's own custodial account.