Use a parent constraint so you have the option of turning it off. That way, you can animate your model picking up or putting down the mace...

Remember; a parent constraint is different than parenting. Parenting adds the child to the heirarchy and it stays there. With a parent constraint, the child is not part of the parents heirarchy. It is simply attached to it plus you can turn off the constriant by choosing the object then go to the attribute editor and look at the inputs. You will see the constraint. I can't remember the actual name of the attribute but it will be set to 1 if the constraint is on and if you set it to 0 then the constraint will be off. You can keyframe the constraint value..