To get the least offence from “Parsifal” it ought to be accepted in the spirit of the time in which Christian symbolism was grafted on the old tales of the quest of a talisman which lie at the bottom of it.  The time was the last quarter of the twelfth century and the first quarter of the thirteenth.  It is the period of the third and fourth crusades.  Relic worship was at its height.  Less than a hundred years before (in 1101) the Genoese crusaders had brought back from the Holy Land as a part of the spoils of Caesarea, which they were helpful in capturing under Baldwin, a three-cornered dish, which was said to be the veritable dish used at the Last Supper of Christ and his Apostles.  The belief that it was cut out of a solid emerald drew Bonaparte’s attention to it, and he carried it away to Paris in 1806 and had it examined.  It proved to be nothing but glass, and he graciously gave it back to Genoa in 1814.  There it still reposes in the Church of St. John, but it is no longer an object of worship, though it might fairly excite a feeling of veneration.

For 372 years Nuremberg possessed what the devout believed to be the lance of Longinus, with which the side of Christ was opened.  The relic, like most objects of its kind (the holy coat, for instance), had a rival which, after inspiring victory at the siege of Antioch, found its way to Paris with the most sacred relics, for which Louis IX built the lovely Sainte Chapelle; now it is in the basilica of the Vatican, at Rome.  The Nuremberg relic, however, enjoyed the advantage of historical priority.  It is doubly interesting, or rather was so, because it was one of Wagner’s historical characters who added it to the imperial treasure of the Holy Roman Empire.  This was none other than Henry the Fowler, the king who is righteous in judgment and tuneful of speech in the opera “Lohengrin.”  Henry, so runs the story, wrested the lance from the Burgundian king, Rudolph iii, some time about A.D. 929.  After many vicissitudes the relic was given for safe keeping to the imperial city of Nuremberg, in 1424, by the Emperor Sigismund.  It was placed in a casket, which was fastened with heavy chains to the walls of the Spitalkirche.  There it remained until 1796.  One may read about the ceremonies attending its annual exposition, along with other relics, in the old history of Nuremberg, by Wagenseil, which was the source of Wagner’s knowledge of the mastersingers.  The disruption of the Holy Roman Empire caused a scattering of the jewels and relics in the imperial treasury, and the present whereabouts of this sacred lance is unknown.  The casket and chains, however, are preserved in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg to this day, and there have been seen, doubtless, by many who are reading these lines.