Armed
When the mace was still in actual use as a weapon, it was deemed fit for close-protection, and hence a mace-bearer could be a bodyguard.
Thus in French and Dutch, a massier (armed with a masse d'armes 'weapon-mace') could be a member of a formally so-styled guard corps, as in the court of the Dukes of Brabant.
Otherwise, a normally more domestic servant could double (arming trusted household staff was not unusual) as macebearer, as in the case of the prophet Mohammed's first muezzin, Bilal ibn Ribah
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Famous quotes containing the word armed:
“He could pause in his cross-examination, look at a man, projecting his face forward by degrees as he did so, in a manner which would crush any false witness who was not armed with triple courage at his breast,—and, alas! not unfrequently a witness who was not false.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“What man dare, I dare.
Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble. Or be alive again
And dare me to the desert with thy sword.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)