"No musical instrument has suffered so grievously from changes in social status as the vielle. In eleventh-century Germany the vielle was associated with church music. By the twelfth century it was associated with music performed in the courts of nobility. By the fourteenth century it had become associated with the lower classes and, eventually, by the fifteenth century, it became associated with blind beggars. Blindness was regarded as a physical manifestation of inner or moral blindness, and, therefore, the very appearance of the instrument in a painting suggested sin." (Greene, 2016)