The Morning Star: Medieval Weapon with Points and Power

September 23, 2026

A morning star is a medieval percussion weapon. It consists of a wooden or metal handle with a ball attached to it, often equipped with one or more spikes. This type of weapon combined blunt force with penetrating attacks, allowing it to wound or kill an enemy.

History

The morning star came into widespread use around the beginning of the fourteenth century, especially in Germany, where it was known as Morgenstern.

The term is often confused with the military fléau or chain mace (fléau d'armes in French, Kriegsflegel in German), which consisted of a wooden shaft with a chain and one or more metal or wooden heads.

Images of such a ball-and-chain mace from that period are rare, suggesting that the use of this type of weapon was probably uncommon.

Design

The morning star consists of a spiked head mounted on a handle, similar to a mace, usually with a long spike pointing straight up and multiple smaller spikes around the head.

The relatively simple and sometimes improvised design set it apart from a flanged mace, which required a skilled blacksmith to produce. Variants were used by both infantry and cavalry; cavalry versions often had shorter or slimmer shafts for single-handed use.

There were three main types:

Professional military type: well-crafted by armorers, mass-produced for urban arsenal supplies.
Farmer/militia type: simpler, hand-carved from wood and fitted with nails by the local blacksmith. Shaft and head were usually made from a single piece, sometimes reinforced with an iron band.
Decorative type: shorter, metal versions, sometimes with gold and silver inlay, such as a 16th-century example in the Wallace Collection in London.

Holy Water Sprinkler

A special variant, the holy water sprinkler, resembled an aspergillum from the Catholic mass and was used by the English army in the 16th century.

A preserved example in the Royal Armouries has a fully steel head with six flanges forming three spikes, a thick square point on top, and a wooden shaft reinforced with four langets, totaling 189 cm long.

The name is also used for a type of military fléau (goupillon in French), which was said to be the favorite weapon of the blind King John of Bohemia.

Examples

In Vienna, two military morning stars from the 16th century are preserved. The first is 2.35 m long, with a wooden head and five metal spikes.

The second has a fully steel head with four V-shaped spikes, mounted on an almost two-meter-long shaft with twisted steel fittings.

In Graz, 183 examples from 1685 have been preserved, with three rows of spikes and metal reinforcements on the wooden shafts. Other examples can be found in Swiss arsenal collections in Lucerne and Zurich.

In Art

Morning stars also appear in medieval art. On the Caesar Tapestries in the Historical Museum of Bern, an armored knight is depicted carrying a morning star. These tapestries were woven in Tournai between 1465 and 1470 and came as spoils from Charles the Bold.

A simple morning star also appears in the poem Le Chevalier Délibéré (Olivier de la Marche, 1486), alongside a flail.

Similar Weapons: Goedendag

A goedendag was a Flemish infantry weapon, often compared to the morning star, but it is actually a thick wooden shaft of 1.2–1.8 m with an iron point on top.

It was effectively used by the guilds of Flemish cities against French knights during the Battle of the Golden Spurs (July 11, 1302). From the 15th century onward, the weapon saw limited use and was primarily wielded by Flemish citizens, especially to pierce horses or knights. Little is known with certainty about its precise manner of use.

Internal Links

Sources:

Museum Collections: The collections of the Royal Armouries in Leeds and the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum (Zurich) for original morning stars from the late Middle Ages.
Academic Literature: Classifications within European medieval percussion weapons by leading weapon experts such as Ewart Oakeshott.