Hello all,

Does anyone have any info on any historical maces from 1250-1500? I know in the later periods metal maces became more common, but what about earlier periods? Were they just branches cut down or was there some genral layout to them?

There have been some discussions of pre 1200 A.D. maces already. Some good pictures of metal heads for wooden shafted maces can be seen at http://otlichnik.tripod.com/medmace2.html

Pictures of some mace heads from the center of the period you requested can be found by following links at the site or by just jumping straight to here; http://otlichnik.tripod.com/medmace3.html

Not necessarily a great source for historical info, but MRL has two maces that date from that era, the Maciejowski and River Thames mace. A&A's Iberian mace is also from that period. Two books show the River Thames mace, but neither describe it at all, which is too bad.

Based on those and on what Jared linked to, it appears that mounting them on wood hafts was more common than metal ones. The heads appear to have either small pyramid-shaped spikes and simple flanges.

I'm under the impression that early maces had longer, wooden hafts, and the later short metal maces are an adaptation to plate armour.

I've personally found that the distinction that the author raises between knobbed and flanged maces is a very good general guideline: if the mace is knobbed, chances are it's an earlier type of mace whereas if it's flanged, it's much more likely to be from the late Middle Ages onward. As Elling noted, earlier medieval maces seemed to be mounted on wood shafts, rather than being made entirely from metal. You'll notice that the heads of these maces are generally not a whole lot wider in diameter than the wood they'd be mounted on. And typically, though not always, there would be but a two rows of staggered knobs on the mace head, rather than three or four rows.

My guess is that Medieval maces are eminently easier to wield as weapons compared to their Renaissance counterparts in terms of distrubtion of mass. However, it would also appear that later maces could probably inflict significantly more grievous wounds and were much better equipped to deal with heavier armour.

Judging by the photos on those excellent links provided by Jared Smith, Flanged heads are not solely a characteristic of late medieval maces, as many maces from the 12th-14th centuries also seem to have flanged heads.

I think wooden as opposed to metal hafts are more common on the earlier maces. This is a trend that also seems to have occured further east as well. Many Turkish and Persian maces from the 15th century onwards have metal hafts.

:)

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Thanks Jared,

ThaT link was what I was looking for. Now does anyone have an idea on haft length or material?