Holy Lance
The name of the soldier who pierced Christ's side with a "lonchē" is not given in the Gospel of John, but in the oldest known references to the legend, the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus appended to late manuscripts of the 4th century "Acts of Pilate", the soldier is identified as a centurion and called Longinus (making the spear's Latin name "Lancea Longini").
Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion
Lipsius himself, as also Gretser and Godwyn, held that Jesus was nailed not to a "crux simplex", but to a "crux immissa". However, W. E. Vine and E. W. Bullinger, as well as Henry Dana Ward, considered that the "cross" (Greek "stauros", in its original sense literally an upright pale or stake) had no crossbar, and that the traditional picture of Jesus on a cross with a crossbar was incorrect.