as the Etrusco-Roman instrument. In the early 15th century, Jean de Gerson listed the lituus among those string instruments that were sounded by beating or striking, either with the fingernails, a plectrum, or a stick. Other instruments Gerson names in this category are the cythara, guiterna, psalterium, timpanum, and campanula. Modern era Throughout the postclassical era the name lituus continued to be used when discussing ancient and Biblical instruments, but with reference to contemporary musical practice in the Renaissance it usually referred to "bent horns" made of wood, particularly the crumhorn and the cornett. The crumhorn was especially associated with the lituus because of the similarity of its shape. The equation of the crumhorn with the lituus was especially strong among German writers. A 1585 English translation of Hadrianus Junius's Nomenclator defines lituus as "a writhen or crooked trumpet winding in and out; a shaulme" (i.e., shawm), but a polyglot edition of the same book published in 1606 demonstrates how differently the term might have been understood in various languages at that time: German Schalmey, Krumme Trommeten, Krumhorn; Dutch Schalmeye; French Claron, ou cleron; Italian Trombetta bastarda; Spanish Trompeta curua, ò bastarda. The early Baroque composer and author Michael Praetorius used the word as a Latin equivalent of the German "Schallmeye" (shawm) or for the "Krumbhoerner" (crumhorns)—in the latter case also offering the Italian translations storti, and cornamuti torti. A more particular term, lituus alpinus, was used in 1555 by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner when he published the earliest detailed description of the Alphorn: "nearly eleven feet long, made from two pieces of wood slightly curved and hollowed out, fitted together and skillfully bound with osiers". A study made of Swedish dictionaries found that during the seventeenth century lituus was variously translated as sinka (= German Zink, cornett), krumhorn, krum trometa (curved trumpet), claret, or horn. In the eighteenth century the word once again came to describe contemporary brass instruments, such as in a 1706 inventory from the Ossegg monastery in Bohemia, which equates it with the hunting horn: "litui vulgo Waldhörner duo ex tono G". Nevertheless, in 1732 Johann Gottfried Walther referred back to Renaissance and Medieval definitions, defining lituus as "a cornett, formerly it also signified a shawm or, in Italian tubam curvam, a HeerHorn". (Heerhorn or Herhorn was a Middle High German name for a metal, slightly curved military signal horn, approximately five feet long, played