What symbolizes the spear. The symbol of power is Longin's spear. Who owns it? See the meaning of Spear in other dictionaries

Lance Lance, oskep, oskepishche (Ukrainian "spys") - a cold piercing or throwing weapon, which consists of a hilt and a stone, bone or metal tip, with a total length of 1.5–2.5 m. The lance has been known since primitive times as a weapon infantry, later cavalry. In the early

A spear

Spear Spear, piercing or throwing weapon. It was used during the war and on hunting by the majority of the peoples of the world (see also Dartik, Spear thrower). It appeared in the Paleolithic era. It was originally a stick with a pointed end; later consisted of a pole

A spear

Spear John's version of the crucifixion on the cross is in many ways different from the crucifix depicted in the synoptic Gospels. Jesus himself carries his own cross. No one helps him. The humiliating aspects of the crucifixion, including the mockery of the crowd, are omitted. On the spot

One of the symbols of the world axis. It also means the masculine principle, the phallus, giving life to strength, fertility, military prowess, the wizard’s wand. Attribute of warriors and hunters. In Celts, a spear along with a sling is a long arm or Meadows. In China, a spear is an attribute of many minor gods. In Christianity, the spear symbol represents the suffering of Christ and is an attribute of Saints Michael and Longin (the centurion present at the crucifixion). In the Greco-Roman tradition, the spear and shield of the ephebic youths symbolized initiation and transition to adult status, the virtue of an adult man. Attribute of Athena (Minerva) and Ares (Mars). The Scandinavians have a dwarf-forged spear used by Odin. found the goal itself.

Watch value A spear   in other dictionaries

A spear - or a copy of cf. double-edged piece of iron on the shaft of the cliff, peak, south. dart, weapons, bol. equestrian. Hiking spear: berdysh, protazan, halberd, spear with hatchet; hunting: horn; ........
Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary

A spear   - spears, many no, cf. (vernacular. Obsolete.). The side of the coin on which the eagle was depicted (this name is used up when playing the toss). Not a spear (no) (vernacular.) - Not a penny of money. I have no spears left.
Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

A spear   - 1. SPEAR, -I; many spears, pi; piam; Wed A piercing or throwing weapon, consisting of a long pole with a sharp metal tip. Pierce with a spear. Arm........
Explanatory Dictionary of Kuznetsov

A spear   - A common Slavic word formed from digging (digging) - “beat, strike”, literally “what they strike”.
Etymological Dictionary of Krylov

A spear   - piercing weapons - a shaft with a stone, bone or metal tip. Known since the Early Paleolithic; in the ancient world and the Middle Ages - the main weapon of the infantry ........
Great Encyclopedic Dictionary

Spear Scarifier   - a disposable tool for piercing the skin of a finger for the purpose of taking a blood sample, which is a strip of stainless steel c. pointy end.
Big medical dictionary

A spear   - - piercing weapons: a shaft with a bone or metal tip. It is known from the early Paleolithic, in the ancient world - the main weapon of infantry and cavalry. Today is a sports equipment.
Historical dictionary

Red Spear   - In the mythology of the Irish Celts - one of the copies that belonged to Manannan Mack Lear. Manannan handed it to Diarmid to help him escape from Finn (see chapter 15).
Encyclopedia of Mythology

Spear Scarifier   - a disposable tool for piercing the skin of a finger for the purpose of taking a blood sample, which is a strip of stainless steel with a pointed end.
Medical Encyclopedia

A SPEAR   - SPEAR, I, pl. spears, pi, pi, cf. Stitching or throwing weapons on a pole. Javelin throwing (kind of track and field athletics). - Spears to break because of what (iron.) - to argue fiercely, ........
Explanatory Dictionary Ozhegova

The spear is the second most important weapon (after the sword) of antiquity and the Middle Ages, a symbol of victory, masculinity, the phallic power and fertility of the earth. A broken spear is a symbol of war or an experienced warrior.
In the mythology of the peoples of the planet, all these symbolic meanings are reflected. The emblem of victory is the spear of Indra - the Hindu god of war. The spear helps to defeat the Greek goddess of wisdom Athena in her dispute with Poseidon for patronage over the main city of Attica: thrust into the ground, the spear of Athena turned green and turned into an olive tree. The inhabitants of the controversial policy, having tasted fruits unprecedented before, unanimously awarded the victory to Athena and named their city in her honor.
Phallic symbolism is transparently indicated in the Japanese myth of the demiurge god Izanagi. Together with his wife Iza-nami, Izanagi stood on a heavenly bridge and waved the sea waters with his long precious spear. Drops of water flowing down from the end of the spear turned into the earth's earth, from which the Japanese islands were formed.

In the Phoenician myth dedicated to the storm god Hadad, as in the aforementioned Greek myth about Athena and Poseidon, the spear is a symbol of fertility. Awakening the fertility of the earth, impetuous Hadad plunges a spear into it - lightning with a zigzag shaft.

In mythology, the symbolism of the spear can take on other meanings. For example, in the beliefs of the Andamanites, the evil spirit Chol injures people during the heat of the day with its invisible spear. In this case, the association of the invisible spear with a sunstroke is quite obvious.

In the Christian religion, the spear is a symbolic embodiment of the Passion of the Lord, therefore the Holy Spear, also called the Spear of Fate, the Spear of Power and the Spear of Longin, is one of the relics most revered by the Christian church.

The legend attributes the manufacture of the wonderful spear, which appeared long before the birth of Christ, to the third high priest of Judea, the powerful magician Phinehas. After the death of Phinehas, a magical spear, supposedly capable of giving the owner infinite power over the destinies of the world, went, as they say, on his hands. In ancient Palestine, they were owned by biblical kings: Joshua, Saul, and Herod. From the conquered Judea, the magic spear passed to the Romans. After the centurion Longin pierced them with the side of the Savior crucified on the cross, this legendary weapon acquired even greater magical power, and since then it has been called the Holy Spear.

The following owners of the Holy Spear were the great Roman emperors: Diocletian and Baptist Constantine. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Holy Spear fell to the kings of the Visigoths, and from them to the Franks. The Frankish rulers Clovis, Dagobert, and Pepin Gristristalsky, with the help of the Holy Spear, founded and strengthened the kingdom of the Franks, and Charlemagne, their successor, defeating the Saxons, Avars, Lombards and Bretons, turned the kingdom into a vast Frankish empire. But once he dropped a wonderful spear from his hands and died on the same day, and his empire soon fell apart.
After the collapse of the Frankish Empire, the Holy Lance mysteriously disappears, and then is no less mysteriously acquired during the most dramatic episode of the First Crusade. The Crusaders, besieged in Antioch by countless hordes of Muslims, were on the verge of destruction. The warriors of Christ, driven by hunger to complete despair, have already begun to eat boiled carrion. There was nowhere to wait for help from them, and only a miracle could save the doomed crusaders. And this miracle happened: the Provencal priest Peter Bartholomew, one of the participants in the crusade, once prayed for a long time in one of the city churches, calling on the Lord to save his paladins. Tired of prolonged prayer, the priest fell asleep imperceptibly. In a dream, he saw the apostle Paul, persistently pointing to the ground near the altar. Awakening, Peter Bartholomew tore the earth in the indicated place and found the Holy Spear hidden there. The news of the miraculous find quickly spread around the entire army of the crusaders, but many doubted the authenticity of the relics. Then Peter Bartholomew, in order to convince the little believers, fearlessly went up with the spear he had found and after some time he came out of the flame unharmed. Inspired by the explicit protection of God, the crusaders decided to make a sortie from the fortress. And what? They did not just succeed in breaking out of the besieged city, as they had planned at first; the power of the Holy Spear helped them completely defeat and stampede the large army of the emir of Kerboga.

From Count Raimund Toulouse, who led the sortie, the magic spear passed into the hands of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa. With the help of a spear, Barbarossa pacified the Italian cities that rebelled against his power and expelled from Rome his worst enemy, the pope. However, during the Third Crusade, Frederick Barbarossa died a ridiculous death - he drowned in a small but swift mountain stream. About 150 years after his death, the magic spear was in the Holy Land, but the Crusaders, despite this, for some reason suffered one defeat after another and eventually lost all their possessions there. In the middle of the XIII century, after the failure of the Seventh Crusade, the French king Louis IX the Holy brought an invaluable relic to Europe.

Subsequently, the Habsburgs took possession of the Holy Spear, who carefully preserved the holy relic in Hovburg, its main treasury. But in 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte, dreaming of world domination, took the Holy Spear from their descendants. Happiness did not betray Napoleon until the spear was lost during the campaign to Moscow. In 1938, Hitler took possession of the Spear of Fate, unleashing the monstrous World War II. However, the relic, apparently, did not want to serve the misanthropic aspirations of the possessed Führer. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Holy Spear returned to its former owners, and to this day it is stored in the Vienna treasury of the Habsburg dynasty.

In iconography, a spear (or dart) is an instrument of martyrdom for many saints: the Apostle Thomas is depicted as a pierced spear and embracing a cross before death; a spear pierces the chest of Judah Thaddeus; the martyr Teresa’s chest contains a dart with a burning tip. Longinus pierces the side of the crucified Christ with a spear.
The spear is an invariable attribute of the Roman soldiers and military leaders who suffered for the Christian faith: Artemy of Antioch (beheaded), Fyodor Stratilat (crucified), Dmitry Sounsky (pierced with spears). From this mournful series, only the icon-painting image of St. George the Victorious, striking a dragon with a spear, but he was also executed for refusing to pursue co-religionists.
In art, the Greek hunting goddess Artemis (Roman Diana) is represented with a dart in her hands and a quiver full of arrows, behind her shoulders. The goddess Athena was depicted in full combat arms: in a helmet, with a spear and a shield. About the same Renaissance artists depicted the figure of allegorical Bravery.

In heraldry, the spear emblem is not common. A striking example of knightly times is the emblem appropriated by the favorite of the French king Henry II, Diana de Poitiers. She portrayed a flying dart intertwined with a ribbon with the Latin motto inscribed on it: “No matter what he pursues, he will overtake it.”

In Russian city heraldry, the spear emblem, while not being the main one, does not have independent significance either. So, in the coat of arms of Moscow, the spear is depicted in the hands of George the Victorious, and in the coat of arms of Rostov-on-Don it is one of the offensive and defensive weapons together with a sword, bow, arrow, chain mail and helmet. Occasionally, the spear emblem is found in the arms of Russian nobles (Daudovs, Stremoukhovs, etc.). In modern state heraldry this emblem is not used.

In military affairs, spears have been used since the prehistoric era. The primitive primitive spear was originally an ordinary stick with a pointed and charred end, but somewhat later this ancient spear was replaced by another, improved one: it consisted of a shaft and pointed stone, which was attached to the shaft with plant fibers or leather straps. After several millennia, the stone tip was replaced by a metal one - the Bronze Age began. The ancient era is the time of the true heyday of ancient weapons. During this period several of its varieties appeared: throwing darts, shock spears of foot soldiers, piercing cavalry peaks. The Macedonian sarisses were considered the most formidable weapons of antiquity - the longest spears (up to 6 meters) with which the first six rows of the Macedonian phalanx were armed. In battle, the sarissophores (soldiers armed with saarissas) laid them on the shoulders of those in front. The Macedonian phalanx, bristling with saris-sami itself, terrifying the enemy, was invincible in a flat open space, but on a hilly terrain the phalanx system broke down, and then super-long sarisses became completely useless.

In the Middle Ages, knight's spears were divided into two types: combat and tournament. The combat spear, reaching a length of 3 to 4.5 meters, was equipped with a hand grip and a metal tip, under which a triangular or quadrangular badge was attached. The colors of this badge corresponded to the coat of arms of a particular knight. As for the pole, ash was considered the best material for it.
With the advent of heavy-duty solid metal armor, the shape of the war lance changed significantly: the shaft became shorter and thicker, and a funnel-shaped pad was added to the interception to protect the hand. As before, gonfanon, a triangular icon, was attached under the tip. Darts or skits intended for throwing were widely used in the Middle Ages, but they never were part of the knight's armament - that was the weapon of commoners.

A dull tournament spear, devoid of a metal tip, served as the main weapon during knightly competitions. Despite its seeming harmlessness, the tournament spear was nevertheless a considerable danger for the knight who went to the stadium to “break the spears” with a conditional opponent. Indeed, during a collision with an armored horseman, tournament spears often broke in half, but often they only broke off the edges, and then at the end of the spear an uneven sharp flange formed. If the knight did not throw such a deformed spear, then with the next collision he could inflict a serious wound on the enemy, or even hit him to death. This happened on July 1, 1559, at a festive tournament in France, when the captain of the Scottish guard Gabriel de Montgomery mortally wounded King Henry II. The flake of his spear at impact threw up the visor of the royal helmet and, obliquely piercing Henry's right eye, went behind the ear. A few days later, the king died in terrible agony.

In medieval European armies, “spear” was not only the knightly weapon described above, but also a small military unit, the smallest unit of 3-5 people: a knight, squire, one or more shooters. Tens or hundreds of such copies, united under one standard, made up a banner (regiment).

Old Russian warriors used spears as striking and piercing weapons. The length of the Russian spear was about 2 meters. A sleeve tip was mounted on a shaft, sometimes protected by a metal coating. The spearheads were of different shapes: trihedral, tetrahedral, leaf-shaped, but elongated triangular prevailed in Russia. For throwing, Russian soldiers used sulits - one and a half meter darts with petiolate dagger-shaped tips. The original Russian weapon is the staghorn - a long spear with a massive (up to 1 kg) tip that had the shape of a bay leaf. Initially, stag beetle was used as a military weapon, but later it was more often used when hunting a large beast: a bear or a wild boar.

The age of the war lance was surprisingly long. If the infantry detachments of spearmen effectively acted on the battlefields only until the 18th century, then the cavalry peaks survived even until the beginning of the 20th century - the Russian cavalry used the peaks during the First World War and the Civil War.
Nowadays, a spear that has "retired" from military service is known only as a sports projectile. The name of the spear, veiled by time, is sometimes found in the names of objects well-known to all and remains unrecognized. So, for example, one of the suits of playing cards is still called spades. The small Russian monetary unit introduced into circulation under Elena Glinsky, the mother of Ivan the Terrible, is still called a penny, since it depicts a horseman with a spear - the most popular saint in Russia, George the Victorious.

SPEAR - a symbol of aggression, attack and war. From the spear shaft Zeus created powerful people in the copper age who loved battles and often waged wars. In the ancient world, if there was a wreath at the end of the messenger’s spear, it meant victory, and if the bird’s feather was a sign of defeat.

The spear is an attribute of not only a warrior, but also a hunter. It can be seen in the hand of Minerva, the Greek Athena of Pallas, who in her early version was the goddess of war, one of the four “main virtues” of Courage, portrayed as a warrior holding a shield, spear or sword, and Persistence. At the same time, a thinner spear - a dart - made for throwing, usually acts as a hunting weapon. Such a spear is an attribute of the hunting goddess Diana, Greek Artemis. Diana de Poitiers - the favorite of the French king Henry II - was portrayed in a robe and with the attributes of this goddess. For her emblem, she chose a dart, entwined with a ribbon with the motto inscribed on it: "Whatever he pursues, he will overtake this."

The symbolism of the spear has a positive meaning. If in the state the spear is entwined with grapes and serves as a backup for the vine, then such a state flourishes. According to legend, Athena, in a dispute with Poseidon for possession of Attica, hit the ground with a spear, and an olive grew in this place. According to Ovid, the shaft of the spear of Romulus, which took root on the Palatine Hill, became a symbol of the dependence of the supreme power on divine will. The same Ovid mentions the marriage ritual, when at the end of the pole they parted on the bride’s head. From myths the spear of Lug — the god of the island and continental Celts — is known, brought from Gorlas and having a solar and cosmological meaning, correlating with the World axis.

In Greek mythology, the magic spear of Procida is known, which Artemis gave her: it hit the target itself and returned to the owner. With the same spear, not knowing a slip, Prokrida's husband mistakenly killed her. But the spear is not only a symbol of murder. The son of Hercules Teleus was wounded by the spear of Achilles and was able to recover only by touching the same spear to the wound.

It is symbolic of the spear of the Roman warrior Longinus, whose name is derived from the Greek word for the spear, piercing the ribs of Christ and thereby ending his earthly sufferings. Here we see not only an act of compassion, but also an ancient ritual in which the victim was pierced with a spear. But a reverse symbolic interpretation of the spear finds its place in Christian legends: Parsifal heals with a spear, the tip of which is dipped in the Grail.

The spear was an instrument of martyrdom of the Apostle Thomas, which is sometimes depicted as a pierced spear and dying, embracing the cross. The peak is also an attribute of the apostle and great martyr Judah, who was martyred in Persia, and the broken peak is the legendary warrior, saint and martyr George (3rd century), who, according to legend, defeated the dragon on the seashore, thereby saving the royal daughter from death . He is distinguished from other saints in armor by a broken spear. A dart with a burning tip, piercing the saint’s chest, identifies the martyr Teresa (1515-1582) - the Spanish nun of the Carmelite order - who wrote about her vision of an angel holding a long golden spear or a dart with a fiery tip piercing her heart. This symbolic penetration of divine love is mentioned in the papal bull on the canonization of Theresa in 1622.

One of the symbols of the world axis. It also means the masculine principle, the phallus, giving life to strength, fertility, military prowess, the wizard’s wand. Attribute of warriors and hunters. In Celts, a spear along with a sling is a “long arm” or Luga. In China, a spear is an attribute of many minor gods. In Christianity, the spear symbolizes the suffering of Christ and is an attribute of Saints Michael and Longin (the centurion present at the crucifixion). In the Greco-Roman tradition, the spear and shield of youths-

ephebs symbolized initiation and transition to adult status, the valor of an adult man. Attribute of Athena (Minerva) and Ares (Mars). The Scandinavians forged a dwarf spear that Odin used, itself found a target.

Attribute of a warrior and hunter.

It can be seen in the hand of Minerva, Courage and Persistence. The latter stands leaning against the column. It is tied to the allegorical figure of the Bronze Age (one of the Centuries of Humanity).

A dart with a burning tip, pierced in the chest of the saint, identifies the martyr as Teresa. The spear was an instrument of the martyrdom of Thomas, the apostle, who is sometimes depicted as a pierced spear and, dying, embracing the cross.

The hunting weapon is usually a thinner spear (dart) made for throwing - an attribute of the goddess Diana and - in portraiture - a model bearing her name. Diana de Poitiers (1499-1599), an influential lover of Henry II, king of France, was portrayed in robes and with the attributes of this goddess. For her emblem (impresa), she chose a dart entwined with a ribbon with the motto inscribed on it: "Consequitur quodcunque petit" (lat. - "Whatever he pursues, he will overtake it"). See also peak.

The symbol of war, as well as the phallic symbol (8).

This is a weapon of a man of earthly destiny, unlike, say, a sword that is used for sacred purposes.

The spear is associated with the symbols of a cup or bowl.

From a symbolic point of view, the spear can be compared with a branch, a tree, a cross, as well as with the designation of spatial orientation.

Raimund Lullius in Notes of the Noble Order expresses the belief that the spear was given to the knight as a symbol of high morality.

The "Bloodied Spear", which is mentioned in the Grail legend, is sometimes interpreted as a spear of longings and desires, i.e. in the sense of Passion as such.

Since the spear was used to pierce the ribs of the crucified Christ, it became one of the symbols of the passions of the Lord.