Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/136

the recognized insignia of military rank. The mace was the peculiar emblem carried by the King's Sergeants-at-arms both on the continent and in England. The Sergeants-at-arms, or -at-mace, were the peculiar body-*guard of a King: as a mark of royal favour the privilege of having one or more Sergeants-at-mace was occasionally granted to mayors and others. The civic mace, according to a very concise statement by the late Mr. R. S. Ferguson, "is nothing but the military one turned upside down." We are able to illustrate this point by the representation of a mace which figures on an incised slab, which was formerly in the Church of Culture-Sainte Cathérine in Paris (Fig. 884). The evolution of this mace seems to have come about as follows: The flange-headed mace had no available space on which to place the royal arms. So the war mace was reversed and the flange head held downwards, which by degrees gradually dwindled, until it survived alone in a meaningless scrollwork; while the pommel end of the mace by being flattened out formed a convenient disk on which to engrave a coat of arms. In this form we find the silver civic maces of to-day. In the jousts of peace fought early in the XVIth century a particular course was fought with heavy wooden maces, when a head-piece was worn such as we see depicted in our illustration (Vol. ii, p. 161, Figs. 501 and 502). M. Viollet-le-Duc in his Dictionaire (Vol. ii, pl. liii) gives a drawing of a knight so armed for the tournament. In earlier times, even in the more serious tournaments à outrance, the mace was used; for in "The Knightes Tale" (l. 1700) of Chaucer, the proclamation of the herald ends:

                    goth forth and ley on faste
With longe swerd and with masse fighteth your fille.

Also (l. 1753):

With mighty maces the bones thay to-breste.

Fig. 885. Mace

Italian, about 1520. Collection: Viscount Astor

With the advent of the XVIth century the mace becomes altogether more robust in proportions—its head bigger, and the haft thicker. Many and