FOOTNOTES:
[60] Lances grew longer and stouter in the later Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century they were about fifteen feet long and were a kind of battering rams designed to dash one's opponent out of the saddle, even if his armor were not pierced.
[61] Another weapon not infrequently used was the mace, an iron-headed war club with a fairly long handle. In powerful hands such a weapon could fell the sturdiest opponent, however good his armor. The mace was somewhat the favorite of martial bishops, abbots, and other churchmen, who thus evaded the letter of the canon forbidding clerics to "smite with the edge of the sword," or to "shed blood." The mace merely smote your foe senseless or dashed out his brains, without piercing his lungs or breast!
Another weapon especially common in the early Middle Ages was the battle ax.
[62] The destrer was so called because it was supposed to be led at the knight's right hand (dexter) and ready for instant use, as he traveled on his less powerful palfrey.
[63] As chivalry took on its later and more religious cast, all the acts of an adubbement became clothed with allegorical meaning—e.g. besides the bath, the candidate must lie down (at least for a moment) upon a bed, because "it was an emblem of the rest which God grants to His followers, the brave knights." The candidate's snow-white shirt is to show that "he must keep his flesh from every stain if he would hope to reach heaven." His scarlet robe shows that he "must be ready to pour out his blood for Holy Church." His trunk hose of brown silk "remind him by their somber hue he must die." His white girdle "warns him that his soul should be stainless."