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Many games and stories that draw upon medieval history tend to claim that priests use maces because they do not spill blood.

Wikipedia provides a citation for this on the Mace page, as does the page on the Cleric class (uncited):

It is popularly believed that maces were employed by the clergy in warfare to avoid shedding blood 2 (sine effusione sanguinis). The evidence for this is sparse and appears to derive almost entirely from the depiction of Bishop Odo of Bayeux wielding a club-like mace at the Battle of Hastings in the Bayeux Tapestry, the idea being that he did so to avoid either shedding blood or bearing the arms of war.

Is it true that priests or other members of the clergy used maces and other blunt weapons in combat, as opposed to edged weapons, for this specific reason?

user5341
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March Ho
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    @Ebenezer - this is a pretty notable claim (among the sources, widely known Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin). The question is, is this justification historically based (e.g. there are historical sources quoting this as a reason) or made up. – user5341 Dec 25 '14 at 15:17
  • I don't think there's a notable claim here, but if there is, this question is unclear (which priests, when...). Clearly priests did not use weapons in general – Sklivvz Dec 25 '14 at 15:17
  • @EbenezerSklivvze - the context is usually priests who enlisted in military endeavours (crusades, typically, as well as other Frankish-influenced early restoration of Western Roman empire, where Christianity underwent a major transformation under Frank influence). The claim is 100% sure notable, though whether it's narrow enough to be well formulated is more questionable – user5341 Dec 25 '14 at 15:21
  • I thought it was obvious that the question applied to ALL priests and at all times. I am asking if any priest or clerical member in history ever did that. Since militant priests were far more likely to use weapons, they would undoubtedly make up the majority of weapon-wielding clergy, but any clergy would apply. – March Ho Dec 25 '14 at 15:21
  • @DVK I was actually intending to ask, if the claim cited on Wikipedia was invalid, whether they wielded maces for another justification on not shedding blood, but in the absence of an alternative the edit is acceptable as well. – March Ho Dec 25 '14 at 15:25
  • @EbenezerSklivvze - just to stress, the core of the question isn't the use of the mace itself, but the stated reason for choosing the mace over the edged weapon being "no shedding of blood" rule. – user5341 Dec 25 '14 at 15:25
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    Better but not enough yet to answer. The missing bit of information is: which priests are believed to have done so and when? Templars? Franciscan monks? Spanish inquisition? The pope? In 800? 1000? 1300? In which country China? Africa? Otherwise it's trivially false to find a counterexample and finding one positive example does not answer the question. – Sklivvz Dec 25 '14 at 15:27
  • Why is it trivial to find a counterexample? I am asking for any cases in history, as I am skeptical of the claim that any clergy have ever done so. – March Ho Dec 25 '14 at 15:30
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    @MarchHo you can find a counterexample right in the quoted wikipedia passage. You seem to be mostly interested in the origin and history of "sine effusione sanguinis" -- I think [history.se] is appropriate to ask about it, not here. We need a specific enough claim in order to be able to answer on this site, instead. But I can't honestly understand what you are skeptical about *exactly*. – Sklivvz Dec 25 '14 at 15:37
  • @EbenezerSklivvze The whole point of posting the question here is because the claim in the article was uncited and unreliable, and the claim, as read, appears to imply that it was a guess by interpretation, and not a primary source. If your argument on closing it (the question was answered by a single, poorly sourced quote) is applied to other skeptical questions, it would warrant closing a large proportion of this site's questions. – March Ho Dec 25 '14 at 15:44
  • @MarchHo An uncited and unreliable article may not be clear or specific enough to support an answerable question. There is no claim that this was common. There is a claim that there is only one source, but that's hardly notable – Sklivvz Dec 25 '14 at 16:11
  • @EbenezerSklivvze So what is your rationale for closing it then? Notability of the belief that clergymen used maces due to them not causing bleeding has already been established by DVK above. I am asking if there are any well-cited examples to refute this notable claim, as I have not found any. I am not restricting these examples to any time period or group of clergymen. – March Ho Dec 25 '14 at 16:20
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/19729/discussion-between-ebenezer-sklivvze-and-march-ho). – Sklivvz Dec 25 '14 at 17:31
  • @EbenezerSklivvze - the claim is VERY specific - that there existed **at least some priests** who explicitly claimed to carry mace in battle to avoid spilling blood with non-mace weapon. The claim isn't that all of them did, but that more than one did since this is plural. – user5341 Dec 26 '14 at 15:08
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    Sanity check: doesn't getting hit with blunt weapons still make you bleed? – user2752467 Jan 19 '17 at 18:21
  • @JustinLardinois sanity check: are beavers fish? No. Yet... (IOW, I don't think sanity checks work on religious dogma). – SQB Aug 26 '18 at 17:58

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