Meet The Medieval Citole
What on earth is that angel playing?
It looks a bit like a tiny medieval guitar.
It isn't.
It's a citole โ a medieval stringed instrument that appears in manuscripts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
And once you know what you're looking at, you start seeing them everywhere.
This one appears in the De Lisle Psalter, made in England in the early fourteenth century. The angel is playing it with a plectrum, so this isn't simply some strange medieval artist's invention. The instrument was real.
We don't have a medieval recording, unfortunately. So we can't press play and hear what this particular angel sounded like.
But we do know that the citole was a musical instrument used in medieval Europe. It had strings, a wooden body and a shape that looks surprisingly familiar until you actually stop and look at it.
By the later fourteenth century, the citole had become much less common, and its distinctive form gradually disappeared from medieval musical life.
Which is why most of us have never heard of one.
So there you have it: a 700-year-old musical instrument, hiding in plain sight in a medieval manuscript.
Sources & Image
Images:
- Angel playing a citole, De Lisle Psalter, England, c. 1310. British Library, Arundel MS 83, f. 134v. Public domain.
- Musician playing a citole, Queen Mary Psalter, England, c. 1310โ1320. British Library, Royal MS 2 B VII. Public domain.
Further Reading:
- British Library, Arundel MS 83.
- Wikimedia Commons (image access and licensing).