St Longinus, Martyr

From Stadler's Complete Dictionary of Saints

Ss Longinus miles, Longinus Centurio et 2 Soc. MM. (March 15th). In old Latin martyrologies, the name of the soldier who opened Jesus' side on the cross with his lance, so that blood and water flowed (John 19:34), is called Longinus, and this is also his name in the Mart. Roman. on March 15th. Among the Greeks, however, the centurion who was present at the crucifixion of Christ and confessed Jesus as "Son of God" and "righteous" (Matt. 27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47) is called Longinus and is venerated on October 16th. While some (among them Baronius) confuse the two and accept only one Longinus, who confessed Him as "Son of God" and also opened His side, the Bollandists distinguish two holy ones. Soldiers named Longinus, namely a private and a captain, and on March 15 (II. 383. no. 41) they definitely declare two different persons of this name. They also share the records of each, from which this difference is clearly evident. That the captain mentioned by the first three evangelists, who confessed Jesus as the "Son of God," did not also pierce His side, is also evident from the fact that St. John the Evangelist , who was an eyewitness, expressly states that one of the soldiers sent to break Jesus' legs (crurifragium) (thus not their leader or captain) opened Jesus' side with a spear (John 19:34). As for the records of these two, the Bollandists have the following to say about this:

1. The holy soldier Longinus, who pierced Jesus' side with a spear, is said to have come from the province of Isauria in Asia Minor and to have been called Cassius before his conversion. He was one of the soldiers who, under the command of a centurion, had to keep watch at the crucifixion of Christ and the two thieves. Since, according to the account of St. John the Evangelist,(John 19:31-37) Because the crucified were to be taken down from the cross on Friday because of the following Great Easter Sabbath and thus to be completely killed beforehand, the two thieves had their legs broken by the soldiers ordered for this purpose. When they wanted to do the same to Jesus, but found Him already dead, "they did not break His legs, but one of the soldiers opened His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out," to which St. John solemnly testifies, referring to several scriptures that were thereby fulfilled, and by which His death seemed certain. The soldier, full of astonishment, caught this blood and anointed his eyes with it, and thereby, as an ancient Greek poet sings, his eyes were immediately opened. Some have interpreted this as if St. Longinus had previously been blind. However, since a blind soldier could not have opened the Lord's side, others believe he was one-eyed or cross-eyed, and was therefore often teased by his comrades and now healed by the blood of the Lord. But the Greek poet certainly only had the opening of his spiritual eye in mind, and this is how most people interpret it. When he also saw the other extraordinary events surrounding the death of Jesus, he, like his captain, came to the conviction that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth must have been more than a mere human being. The resurrection of the Lord, at which he was probably also present, strengthened his conviction even further; he now believed in Jesus of Nazareth and repented of his former life. The apostles instructed him in the holy faith and received him into the church community through baptism. From then on, his life, as the Acts say, could be called heavenly; so charitable to the poor, so chaste and conscientious did he become, through which he converted many to the faith in Jesus. He then led a monastic life for 28 years (according to others 27, 29, 34, 38) in Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he went after his conversion, and was finally tortured in the most painful way by order of the governor Octavius ​​because of the conversions that had taken place at his instigation. He had his tongue cut out and his teeth knocked out, but this did not prevent him from praising Christ with a loud voice and from portraying idols as worthless and powerless. As a result, many were again converted to Christ. For this reason, St. Longinus was brought before the same governor after some time, but there he found Aphrodisius, the jailer (commentariensis), a defender, whereupon the saint thanked God for having given him a comrade-in-arms. The governor also had Aphrodisius's tongue cut out, at which Saint Longinus sighed and pleaded with the Lord. Behold, the governor became blind instantly; but Aphrodisius, who, despite his tongue being cut out, retained the ability to speak, praised the justice of the Lord. The blind governor then begged Aphrodisius to persuade Longinus to cry out to God for him. Aphrodisius then remonstrated with the governor about his cruel deed and reminded him of the warning he had been given. Saint Longinus, however, now demanded that the governor quickly bestow the crown of martyrdom on him; then he would pray for his healing before the throne of God, as he would have greater confidence in praying to the Lord for him when he stood before His presence. Then Octavius ​​gave the order to behead him. St. Longinus prayed standing for about another hour; then his head was cut off. The governor, however, threw himself on his face before the body and prayed penitently to God. He immediately regained his sight, then wrapped the holy body in clean linen and buried it with great joy. From then on, Octavius ​​remained faithful in his faith in Christ with the preachers of the faith and always praised the Lord. - These are the records that the Bollandists (pages 384-386) provide from several very old manuscripts about this soldier Longinus. The date of his martyrdom falls in the 1st century. In these records, March 15 is given as the day of his martyrdom, while other manuscripts have November 22 or December 2. However, various claims and legends about his name, his body, and his life story are found in other sources. The name Longinus seems to some to be merely fictitious and derived from the Greek word logxn, meaning "lance," so that he would mean, as it were, "the spear-bearer" (Logginos). Among the Greeks, the name is found, which may well have been taken from the apocryphal work on the Passion of Jesus attributed to St. Nicodemus ; but it was not used before the year 715, namely only by the Holy Patriarch Germanus , while the Holy Priest Hesychius , who died around the year 434, wrote of the centurion Longinus. Among the Latins, it would indeed have been St. Augustine , the Church Father, who mentioned him, if the manual attributed to him were really his, whereas it is only a later collection of some thoughts by St. Augustine, St. Anselm,etc. In it it says: "Longinus opened to me the side of Christ with his lance, and I entered and rest there safely." Therefore, only the martyrologies can be considered, which also prove his veneration, and the Bollandists name several, namely those of Rabanus Maurus , Notker , Ado and others, all of which have his name Longinus, set his martyrdom on March 15th and transfer it to Caesarea in Cappadocia, as is also the case in the Mart. Rom. Instead of Caesarea as the place of martyrdom, the Mantuans now want to claim the place of his suffering for their city. Mantua is said to have accepted the faith that St. Longinus preached there and testified to with his blood just two years after Christ's death. But this legend cannot prove its great antiquity. The Mantuan John the Baptist, who died in 1516, reports that the body was brought across the sea to Mantua on a ship. One author also claims that the place Cappadocia was Mantua. There is a place near Mantua, or many more on the island where Mantua now lies, called "Cappadocia," named after the many martyrs martyred in that place near Mantua. Antonius Possevinus even goes so far as to include St. Longinus among the Mantuan knights; however, he cannot fully admit the origin of the name Cappadocia. This legend probably arose as follows: In the time of Charlemagne, around 1804, a lead casket containing a small vessel was dug up near a hospital near Mantua, on which was the inscription: "Blood of Jesus Christ." Soon after, a body was also dug up, which was then taken for that of our St. Longinus. How this opinion was arrived at is not stated in the narrative. Incidentally, even if the name of the exhumed corpse was perhaps designated Longinus by some inscription, it should be noted that this name was very common among the Romans ., and it is quite possible that a Roman soldier of that name was martyred in Mantua, who was then believed to be our biblical St. Longinus. According to the above-mentioned John Baptist, the body of the latter was transferred from Caesarea to Mantua in Cappadocia, along with the Holy Blood, even before the Lombard invasion. - On this occasion, the Bollandists touch on the story of the Holy Blood from the side of the divine Savior. This is said to have been caught by a hermit named James and hidden for a long time in a gourd until two of his followers recognized it through a revelation from an angel, and finally it came into the hands of the pious hermit Basipsabas, whom the Greeks venerate as a saint on October 10th. This is the report from the Orient. According to the Mantuan story, however, our St. Longinus immediately caught the blood of the Lord that flowed out when the side was opened, secretly brought it to Mantua, and buried it there in secret. But even if the holy blood venerated in Mantua is not the one that flowed from Christ's side, there are various other instances where holy blood was obtained, from which it could then have come. According to the report of the Second Council of Nicaea and the Mart. Rom., which relies on this authority on November 9th, an image of Christ was crucified by the Jews at Berytus in Syria, which shed a great deal of blood, from which the Eastern and Western churches received an abundance. This is said to have happened around the year 765, almost 40 years before the discovery of the holy blood in Mantua. Holy blood is also kept in England and elsewhere; but especially in Bruges in Belgium in the Church of St. Basil, where Abbot Leo of St. Bertin brought it in 1148 as a gift from Theodoric, father-in-law of King Baldwin of Jerusalem. It was enclosed in crystal and became liquid every Friday until January 1, 1309. According to pious belief, which the Bollandist does not find improbable, it came from the Descent from the Cross of the Lord, when it was dried out with a sponge. The Eucharistic form of bread and wine was often transformed into blood. In Brussels there are three blood-stained hosts which shed copious amounts of blood as a result of wounds inflicted by Jews, etc. etc. - As for the Holy Lance, which was given by the Holy Empress Helena together with St. Crosses and the other instruments of the Lord's Passion were discovered, it was miraculously rediscovered in Antioch in 1098, and the city was liberated from the most oppressive siege. The Holy Lance subsequently came to the Greek Emperor in Constantinople, who pawned the filed tip to the Venetians, but later gave it to St. Louis, King of France.as a gift. The rest of the iron remained in Constantinople and, during the conquest in 1453, came into the hands of Sultan Mohammed II. His son Bajazet, for the sake of gain, presented it to the Grand Master of the Knights of Jerusalem, by whom it was presented to Pope Innocent VIII in 1492. It was received in Rome with a solemn procession and then kept in the Vatican Basilica. The body of St. Longinus, which, as already mentioned, was found in Mantua in 804, was dug out again in 1049, along with the holy blood, as a result of repeated heavenly dreams. After both had been reburied and remained unknown for some time, they were dug out again in 1049. In 1053, Pope Leo IX testified to St. In Mantua, he venerated the Holy Blood and took a small amount of it to Rome, where it was later kept in the Lateran Church. But by 1055, to avoid becoming enemy booty during the war, both had been reburied. In 1354, Emperor Charles IV, accompanied by several prominent figures of the city, went by night in Mantua to the place where the Holy Blood was kept and to the cupboard where the body of St. Longinus was kept. He had the Holy Blood returned to its place untouched; but after offering devout veneration, he took the right arm and part of the shoulder of St. Longinus's bones to have them brought to Bohemia. A handwritten martyrology in the church of Prague actually speaks of an arm and the head of St. Longinus, which the emperor received from Mantua. The Bollandist declares himself in favor of the head and arm, arguing that the source that mentions them deserves preference. While no head of St. Longinus was found in Bollandist's time, the head of a Saint Innominatus, i.e., "an unnamed," was. The true name has been lost over time, and the latter reference, meaning "anonymous," is to be read as a substitute. However, nothing of a shoulder was actually found, but the indicated arm bone of St. Longinus was. A small portion of these relics came to Lisbon as a gift from Emperor Rudolf II in 1587. In Rome, in the Vatican Basilica, there was an arm of St. Longinus and a ring. The ring, however, was stolen during the sack of Rome by the troops of the Duke of Bourbon in 1527, while the arm was still found around 1617. These relics, like one in the Church of St. Marcellus and one in the Church of St. Augustine, as well as all the Longinus relics in Rome, probably belong to one or the other of the Saints Longinus and not to our Saint Loginus, the page opener. The Bollandist is even less likely to accept a Saint Longinus brought to the island of Sardinia as the Saint Loginus, the page opener.

2. As for the centurion Longinus, according to the Greek Menaea, he was from Sandrales or Adrales near Tyana in the second Cappadocia. According to some (incidentally uncertain) Greek documents, he was also called Primianus. According to the (not very reliable) Spanish author Bivarius, his name was Caius, he was the son of the centurion Caius Oppius, whose servant Jesus healed at Capernaum (Matthew 8:5-13), and later became Bishop of Milan. Caius (Gaius), to whom St. John the Evangelist wrote his third letter, as well as Demetrius, who is praised in this letter, were said to be his sons, but this is all probably just fiction. In any case, it is historically certain that this same man, whether his name Longinus was his real or fictitious one, was in Jerusalem at the time of Christ's crucifixion as commander of a Roman century and had been commissioned by Pontius Pilate to oversee the execution of the death sentence with some soldiers. Having heard that Jesus was being crucified by the Jews because He called Himself the Son of God, and having observed the divinely sublime behavior of Jesus during His painful journey to Golgotha ​​and throughout the entire crucifixion, especially as He stood facing the cross (Mark 15:39), he heard the loud voice piercing heaven and earth: "It is finished!" and "Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit!" with which He gave up His spirit (John 19:30), as well as the earthquake, the splitting of the rocks, etc., that occurred after His death. Then he, the pagan, was so shaken that he—and, as Matthew (27:54) says, also "those who were with him"—cried out before the whole world: "Truly, this man was righteous; he was truly the Son of God." What the Jews had denied and even the Apostles had not yet dared to say, the pagan centurion Longinus here first publicly uttered. When Joseph of Arimathea then requested the body of Jesus from Pilate, he testified to him that Jesus had truly died (Mark 15:44-45). His miraculous public confession and the veneration he deserved for it were now given to the holy priest Hesychius. of Jerusalem, he had occasion to describe his later life based on an old book he had found and other notes that had come to him. These documents are provided by the Bollandists (pages 386-389) based on a Greek manuscript in the Vatican Library. According to these documents, the centurion Longinus was also part of the guard at the tomb, which Pilate had granted the Jews at their request. For greater security, they also sealed the large stone rolled in front of the tomb (Matthew 27:62-66). In this way, he was also a witness to the resurrection of Christ, which only further strengthened his faith in the Son of God. When the high priests, to whom some of the guards of the tomb reported the miraculous events that had taken place at the resurrection, in their great embarrassment, gave them a lot of money so that they would say that the disciples of Jesus had come by night and had stolen Him while they were sleeping, and they also promised them that they would secure them before Pilate for such a neglect of duty, which was certainly shameful and highly punishable for a Roman soldier (Matthew 28:11-15), which may well have cost a lot of money .; then the centurion Longinus rejected this money with contempt and continued to bear fearless witness to the truth, which was extremely unpleasant to both Pilate and the Jews. Since they persecuted him in every way because of this, and because he now, after being instructed and baptized by the apostles, wanted to serve the Lord entirely, he left military service at Caesarea and withdrew to his homeland with two of his soldiers, who also believed in Jesus but are not named in the Acts, where he farmed and at the same time proclaimed the faith in Jesus Christ to the Capadocians. But the hatred of the Jews still pursued him there. They therefore persuaded Pilate, with money, to accuse Longinus before the Emperor Tiberius for abandoning his military post, as well as for his sermons in which he presented Jesus as king. With this complaint, they also sent money to the emperor and actually obtained an order from him to Pilate that he had Longinus killed as a deserter. Pilate then sent some confidants to Cappadocia to carry out this order. Arriving there, they met an unknown man whom they immediately asked where Longinus was. The man kindly received the envoys into his house and entertained them for two days. On the third day, he led them out into the fields, showed them his two companions, whom he had summoned in the meantime, and told them that he himself was the Longinus they were looking for and that he was ready to die. The astonished envoys were reluctant to kill their benefactor for long; Only after he had told them how much he longed for death to be united with Jesus, and after he had indicated to them the place where he wanted to be buried, did they decide to behead him and his two companions, which was done, and indeed, as the records expressly state, on October 16th. They then took his head and brought it to Jerusalem to Pilate as proof of the order carried out. Pilate had it handed over to the bloodthirsty Jews for a large sum of money, but then gave the order that it be thrown onto a dung heap outside the city. There it remained hidden for a long time until it was finally discovered by the saint himself. There was a blind woman in Cappadocia who, hoping for healing, went to Jerusalem with her only son, but there she also lost her son through death. In this double tribulation she called on God for help, and St. Longinus and indicated to her the place where his head could be found, predicting that after its excavation she would receive her sight. She did as she was commanded and actually received the light of her eyes; at the same time he also showed her her son, how he and he were enjoying great glory in heaven, which greatly pleased the mother, but then the head of St.Longinus returned to Cappadocia and laid it in Sandrales to his holy body, etc. According to other documents, which the Bollandists (pages 389-390) provide from another ancient manuscript in the Vatican Library, and in which "the invention of the head of the Holy Captain Longinus" is recounted in more detail, but interspersed with some fables, the woman's name was Christina and her son Christion. She is said to have bought the head of St. Longinus from Prefect Lucius in Jerusalem for 200 denarii and brought it back to her homeland with her son, where the Christians then built a magnificent temple over his holy body. This, in any case, could not have happened until much later, namely, only after the Church had received peace, around the time of the emperor's reign.Constantine and his sons etc. - According to the visions of AK Emmerich, the captain, a native Arab, was called Abenadar and received the name Ctesiphon 4 at his baptism . After he had confessed Jesus as the "Son of God", he no longer wanted to be in the service of his enemies, so he turned his horse to his sergeant Cassius, who later received the name Longinus at his baptism, handed him his lance and horse and then went to Pilate etc. Cassius then mounted the horse and gave the command, but then opened Jesus' side with his lance etc. Later, as a deacon, he preached Christ and always carried with him the holy blood that, mixed with water, flowed from Jesus' side and collected in a depression in the rock beneath the cross, and from which Mary and John and the holy women had also drawn. Some of it was also found in his grave in Italy, etc., etc. In the great Greek Menaea, there is an office of St. Longinus the Centurion on October 16. The discovery of the holy head, however, is celebrated by the Greeks on November 1. The Bollandists have St. Longinus the Centurion and Martyr among the Preterm Masses on October 16 (VII. 792), since they both treat St. Longinus on March 15 (II. 376-390).

1 ▲ It was the surname of the Cassian family (Cassia gens). Our Augsburg Antiquarium also contains a (well-preserved) Roman monument discovered in 1731 on the banks of the Wertach near Augsburg. Claudius Latinus, the custodian of the elite armory (Aedituus Singularium), had it delivered to Victorinus Longinus, a cavalryman from the second Flavian wing of the elite.

2 ▲ In the article "Jesus Christ" on page 165, the Holy Blood is also mentioned several times, namely in numbers 1, 4, 5, and 14.

3 ▲ The Jew Philo also notes that Pilate loved money and even sold his verdicts for money. But in condemning Jesus, he was primarily influenced by the fear of man, which unfortunately also leads many among us into the camp of Jesus' enemies and makes them friends of Barabbas, whom they prefer to their Savior.

4 ▲ The Bollandists wrote the life of St. Ctesiphon, Bishop of Vergio in Spain, on April 1 (I. 4), and in No. 7 they also say that, according to some, he was an Arab, and that his father's name was Abenathar; but they say nothing of a captain named Abenadar.