Holy Lance
The Holy Lance, also known as the Lance of Longinus (named after Saint Longinus), the Spear of Destiny, or the Holy Spear, according to the Gospel of John, is the lance that pierced the side of Jesus as he hung on the cross.
Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion
"The Greek-English Lexicon" of Liddell and Scott reports that the meaning of the word "σταυρός" in the early Homeric form of Greek, possibly of the eighth to sixth century BC, and also in the writings of the fifth-century BC writers Herodotus and Thucydides and the early-4th century BC Xenophon, is "an upright pale or stake" used to build a palisade or "a pile driven in to serve as a foundation" It reports that in the writings of the first-century BC Diodorus Siculus, first-century AD Plutarch and early second-century Lucian—as well as in , , —the word "σταυρός" is used to refer to a cross, either as the instrument of crucifixion or metaphorically of voluntary suffering; "its form was indicated by the Greek letter T". It also reports that Plutarch used the word with regard to a pale for impaling a corpse. Of the writers whom Liddell and Scott gives as using "σταυρός" to mean a cross, the "New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology" holds that in Diodorus Siculus the word probably means a stake for hanging. Plutarch (in "An vitiositas ad infelicitatem sufficiat") distinguishes crucifixion on a "stauros" from impalement on a "skolops."