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Torteau
A roundel is a circular charge in heraldry. Roundels are among the oldest charges used in coats of arms, dating from the start of the age of heraldry in Europe, ''circa'' 1200–1215. Roundels are typically a solid colour but may be charged with an item or be any of the furs used in heraldry. Roundels are similar to the annulet, which some heralds would refer to as a ''false roundel''. Terms for roundels In some languages, the heraldic roundel has a unique name specific to its tincture, based on the Old French tradition. This is still observed in English-language heraldry, which adopted terms from Old French for specific round items. Thus, while a gold roundel may be blazoned by its tincture, e.g., ''a roundel or'', it is more often described as a ''bezant'', from the Old French term '' besant'' for a gold coin, which itself is named for the Byzantine Empire. The terms and their origin can be seen in the following table: A ''roundel vert'' ("green roundel") is known as a ' ...
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Blason Courtenay
Blason is a form of poetry. The term originally comes from the heraldic term "blazon" in French heraldry, which means either the blazon, codified description of a coat of arms or the coat of arms itself. The Dutch term is Blazoen, and in either Dutch or French, the term is often used to refer to the coat of arms of a chamber of rhetoric. History The term forms the root of the modern words "emblazon", which means to celebrate or adorn with heraldic markings, and "blazoner", one who emblazons. The terms "blason", "blasonner", "blasonneur" were used in 16th-century French literature by poets who, following Clément Marot in 1536, practised a genre of poems that praised a woman by singling out different parts of her body and finding appropriate metaphors to compare them with. It is still being used with that meaning in literature and especially in poetry. One famous example of such a celebratory poem, irony, ironically rejecting each proposed stock metaphor, is William Shakespeare's S ...
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Vert (heraldry)
In classical heraldry, vert () is the tincture equivalent to the colour "green". It is one of the five dark tinctures (''colours''). The word ''vert'' is simply the French for "green". It is used in English in the sense of a heraldic tincture since the early 16th century. In Modern French, ''vert'' is not used as a heraldic term. Instead, the French heraldic term for green tincture is ''sinople''. This has been the case since c. the 16th century. In medieval French heraldry, ''vert'' also meant "green" while ''sinople'' was a shade of red. Vert is portrayed by the conventions of heraldic "hatching" (in black and white engravings) by lines at a 45-degree angle from upper left to lower right, or indicated by the abbreviation vt. when a coat of arms is tricked. The colour green is commonly found in modern flags and coat of arms, and to a lesser extent also in the classical heraldry of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Green flags were historically carried by Ottokar ...
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Bezant
In the Middle Ages, the term bezant (Old French ''besant'', from Latin ''bizantius aureus'') was used in Western Europe to describe several gold coins of the east, all derived ultimately from the Roman ''solidus''. The word itself comes from the Greek Byzantion, ancient name of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. The original "bezants" were the gold coins produced by the government of the Byzantine Empire, first the ''nomisma'' and from the 11th century the ''hyperpyron''. Later, the term was used to cover the gold dinars produced by Islamic governments. In turn, the gold coins minted in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and County of Tripoli were termed "Saracen bezants", since they were modelled on the gold dinar. A completely different electrum coin based on Byzantine ''trachea'' was minted in the Kingdom of Cyprus and called the "white bezant". The term "bezant" in reference to coins is common in sources from the 10th through 13th centuries. Thereafter, it is mainly ...
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