bezant
.
Searchable Lemmata: byzantus (L), besant (AF), besaunt (ME), bysant (W), besawnt (W), besant (OScots), bezant (MdE), byzant (MdE).
Alternate Forms: beisaunt, besand, besans, besaunce, besaund, besauns, besaunt, besauntes, besauntz, besaunz, bessant, bessauns, bessaunt, bezauns, bysaundes, byzanta, byzantia, byzantinus, byzantium, byzantius.
Definitions and Defining Citations:
1(n.)
Jewellery;
thin gold or silver gilt ornament, made in a variety of shapes and pattern. Bezants could be stitched loosely to cloaks and hats so that they dangled, or they could be integral to embroidered ornament. Most surviving examples, including a mould for making bezants, appear to be continental. In Early Modern English, an heraldic bezant, a representation of a gold coin or roundel (apparently originally a sign of pilgrimage to the Holy Land).(post 1250 - circa 1450)
4. Than discendis ... down fra þe clowddez A duches dereworthily dyghte in dyaperde wedis In a surcott of sylke full selkouthely hewede ... all redily reuersside with rebanes of golde, Bruchez and besauntez and oþer bryghte stonys. ... All with loyotour ouerlaide lowe to þe hemmes, And with ladily lappes the lenghe of a 3erde ...
Arthurian, Heroic, Romance.
[MED Morte Arth.(1) ((Thrn) 3252-3256) circa 1440]
Sex: Male, Female, Infant Use: n/a Ceremonial: No
Body Parts: N/A.
Etymological Evidence:
Definite, From Old French besan, (plural) besanz, brom Latin buzantius.
Named after the gold coin of Byzantium. In later medieval England, valued between a sovereign and an half-sovereign or less. The coin was common in the British Isles from the 9th century, supersede by the noble during Edward III's reign, and could be gold or (less often) silver. Wycliffite writings translate talentum and drachma with byzant.
WF:
Etym Cog: bísundr (Ice).
References:
Archaeological Evidence:
See Newton, S.M. 1980 p. 25.
