Citole

The Warwick Castle remodeled citole (British Museum)

Citole, also spelled Sytole, Cytiole, Gytolle, etc. (probably a French diminutive form of cithara, and not from Latin cista, a box), an archaic musical instrument of which the exact form is uncertain. It is generally shown as a four-string instrument, with a body generally referred to as "holly-leaf" shaped. There is a surviving instrument from around 1300 from Warwick Castle which is now in the British Museum, albeit at some point, probably in the sixteenth century, it was converted into a violin with tall bridge, 'f'-holes and angled fingerboard; thus the image below of the instrument's top is not representative of its original appearance.

British Museum example, from side

The citole is frequently mentioned by poets of the 13th to the 15th centuries, and is found in Wycliffe's Bible (1360) in 2 Samuel vi. 5: "Harpis and sitols and tympane". The Authorized Version has psaltiries, and the Vulgate lyrae. It has been supposed to be^{[citation needed]} another name for the psaltery, a box-shaped instrument often seen in the illuminated missals of the Middle Ages.

External links

• Gittern
• Research on the citole and its development.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.