What the Hell Is That Medieval Angel Playing?
What the hell 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 turns up 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 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 the citole was a proper musical instrument, played in medieval Europe. It had strings, a wooden body and a shape that looks surprisingly familiar until you actually stop and look at it.
And then, at some point, the citole largely disappeared and other instruments took its place.
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.
Medieval musicians were considerably stranger-looking than advertised.
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).