Mace

The mace is a blunt weapon consisting of a heavy metal or metal-flanged head mounted on a shaft, designed to deliver crushing, bone-breaking blows rather than the cutting wounds of an edged weapon, and it became especially prominent in medieval European warfare from roughly the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries as plate and mail armor made cutting weapons progressively less effective. Its concentrated striking force could stun or kill an armored opponent even without penetrating their armor, through blunt trauma transmitted straight through the metal, making it a favored sidearm for mounted knights, who could swing a shorter mace one-handed from horseback more readily than a longer polearm, and for clergy who were formally forbidden by canon law from shedding blood with an edged weapon in battle, a restriction some accounts say led certain warrior-bishops to carry maces instead. Ceremonial maces descended from the military weapon also became, and remain, symbols of civic and parliamentary authority carried before officials in many countries today.