whereof is that of Abbé E. Vacandard (1895); also in the Life of St Stephen Harding, in the English Saints. See also Henry Collins (one of the Oxford Movement, who became a Cistercian), Spirit and Mission of the Cistercian Order (1866). The facts are related in Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1792), v. cc. 33-46, vi cc. 1, 2. Useful sketches, with references to the literature, are supplied in Herzog, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3), art. “Cistercienser”; Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexikon (ed. 2), art. “Cistercienserorden”; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1896), i. §§ 33, 34. Prof. Brewer’s discriminating, yet on the whole sympathetic, Preface to vol. iv. of the Works of Giraldus Cambrensis (Rolls Series of Chronicles and Memorials) is very instructive. Denis Murphy’s Triumphalia Monasterii S. Crucis (1891) contains a general sketch, with a particular account of the Irish Cistercians. (E. C. B.)
CITATION (Lat. citare, to cite), in law, a summons to appear, more particularly applied in England to process in the probate and divorce division of the high court. In the ecclesiastical courts, citation was a method of commencing a probate suit, answering to a writ of summons at common law, and it is now in English probate practice an instrument issuing from the principal probate registry, chiefly used when a person, having the superior right to take a grant, delays or declines to do so, and another having an inferior right desires to obtain a grant; the party having the prior right is cited to appear and either to renounce the grant or show cause why it should not be decreed to the citator. In divorce practice, when a petitioner has filed his petition and affidavit, he extracts a citation, i.e. a command drawn in the name of the sovereign and signed by one of the registrars of the court, calling upon the alleged offender to appear and make answer to the petition. In Scots law, citation is used in the sense of a writ of summons. The word in its more general literary sense means the act of quoting, or the referring to an authority in support of an argument.
CÎTEAUX, a village of eastern France, in the department of
Côte d’Or, 16 m. S.S.E. of Dijon by road. It is celebrated
for the great abbey founded by Robert, abbot of Molesme,
in 1098, which became the headquarters of the Cistercian
order. The buildings which remain date chiefly from the 18th
century and are of little interest. The church, destroyed
in 1792, used to contain the tombs of the earlier dukes of
Burgundy.
CITHAERON, now called from its pine forests Elatea, a famous
mountain range (4626 ft.) in the south of Boeotia, separating
that state from Megaris and Attica. It was famous in Greek
mythology, and is frequently mentioned by the great poets,
especially by Sophocles. It was on Cithaeron that Aetaeon
was changed into a stag, that Pentheus was torn to pieces by
the Bacchantes whose orgies he had been watching, and that the
infant Oedipus was exposed. This mountain, too, was the scene
of the mystic rites of Dionysus, and the festival of the Daedala
in honour of Hera. The carriage-road from Athens to Thebes
crosses the range by a picturesque defile (the pass of Dryoscephalae,
“Oak-heads”), which was at one time guarded on the
Attic side by a strong fortress, the ruins of which are known as
Ghyphto-kastro (“Gipsy Castle”). Plataea is situated on the
north slope of the mountain, and the strategy of the battle of
479 B.C. was considerably affected by the fact that it was necessary
for the Greeks to keep their communications open by the passes
(see Plataea). The best known of these is that of Dryoscephalae,
which must then, as now, have been the direct route
from Athens to Thebes. Two other passes, farther to the west,
were crossed by the roads from Plataea to Athens and to Megara
respectively. (E. Gr.)
CITHARA (Assyrian chetarah; Gr. κιθάρα; Lat. cithara; perhaps
Heb. kinura, kinnor), one of the most ancient stringed
instruments, traced back to 1700 B.C. among the Semitic races,
in Egypt, Assyria, Asia Minor, Greece and the Roman empire,
whence the use of it spread over Europe. The main feature of
the Greek kithara, its shallow sound-chest, being the most
Fig. 1.—Nero Citharoedus (Mus.
Pio-Clementino), showing back of a
Roman Cithara.
important part of it, is also that in which developments are most
noticeable; its contour varied considerably during the many
musical ages, but the characteristic in respect of which it fore-shadowed
the precursors of the violin family, and by which they
were distinguished from other contemporary stringed instruments
of the middle ages, was preserved throughout in all European
descendants bearing derived names. This characteristic box
sound-chest (fig. 1) consisted of two resonating tables, either flat
or delicately arched, connected by ribs or sides of equal width.
The cithara may be regarded as an attempt by a more skilful
craftsman or race to improve upon the lyre (q.v.), while retaining
some of its features. The construction of the cithara can fortunately
be accurately studied from two actual specimens found in
Egypt and preserved in the
museums of Berlin and
Leiden. The Leiden cithara
(fig. 2), which forms part of
the d’Anastasy Collection in
the Museum of Antiquities,
is in a very good state of
preservation. The sound-chest,
in the form of an
irregular square (17 cm. × 17
cm.), is hollowed out of a
solid block of wood from
Fig. 2.—Ancient Egyptian Cithara from Thebes. Museum of Antiquities, Leiden.
the base, which is open;
the little bar, seen through
the open base and measuring
212 cm. (1 in.), is also of
the same piece of wood.
The arms, one short and
one long, are solid and are
fixed to the body by means
of wooden pins; they are
glued as well for greater
strength. W. Pleyte, through
whose courtesy the sketch
was revised and corrected,
states that there are no
indications on the instrument of any kind of bridge or attachment
for strings except the little half-hoop of iron wire which
passes through the base from back to front. To this the strings
were probably attached, and the little bar performed the double
duty of sound-post and support for strengthening the tail-piece
and enabling it to resist the tension of the strings. The oblique
transverse bar, rendered necessary by the increasing length of
the strings, was characteristic of the
Egyptian cithara,[1] whereas the Asiatic
and Greek instruments were generally
constructed with horizontal bars resting
on arms of equal length, the pitch of the
strings being varied by thickness and
tension, instead of by length. (For the
Berlin cithara see Lyre.)
The number of strings with which the cithara was strung varied from 4 to 19 or 20 at different times; they were added less for the purpose of increasing the compass in the modern sense than to enable the performer to play in the different modes of the Greek musical system. Terpander is credited with having increased the number of strings to seven; Euclid, quoting him as his authority, states that “loving no more the tetrachordal chant, we will sing aloud new hymns to a seven-toned phorminx.”
What has been said of the scale of the lyre applies also to the cithara, and need therefore not be repeated here. The strings were vibrated by means of the fingers or plectrum (πλῆκτρον, from πλήσσειν, to strike; Lat. plectrum, from plango, I strike). Twanging with the fingers for strings of gut, hemp or silk was undoubtedly the more artistic method, since the player was able to command various shades of expression which are impossible
- ↑ A drawing of an Egyptian cithara, similar to the Leiden specimen, may be seen in Champollion, Monuments de l’Égypte et de la Nubie, ii. pl. 175.
