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TOTAL CATHOLIC
If Indiana Jones were not fictional, it is likely that The Spear of Destiny would have ranked alongside the eponymous Lost Ark on his shopping list of ancient artefacts.
For centuries The Holy Lance, as it is also known, has been the stuff of legend, and its possessor credited with holding the fate of the world in their hands.
Little wonder then that Constantine, Charlemagne, Napoleon and Hitler sought the holy relic, hoping that the stories of its power were true.
But in a remarkable move, the spear has been allowed out of the Vienna museum where it has been housed since the Second World War, and for the first time subjected to modern forensic tests in a bid to establish its age - and unravel its true history.
But even before the experts set to work, much was known about the spear and its travels down the centuries from Jerusalem through Egypt, Rome, Constantinople and Prague, and on to Nuremberg.
Hitler was said to be obsessed with it, and rumours still persist that at the end of WWII the Third Reich switched the real spear for a forgery, secreting the original away in the hope that the Nazis would one day return to power. Others say General Patton had it stolen for his own purposes.
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