Collection ID: 0023 | Metadata type: TEI | TEI XML | Data

Title

Oedipi et Sphingis dialogus (Dialogues between Oedipus and the Sphinx); Le Sphinx

Other related names

• Lewis, John Frederick, 1860-1932, former owner (http://viaf.org/viaf/63874811/)
• Lewis, Anne Baker, former owner

Funders

• Council on Library and Information Resources

Call number

Lewis E 164
(Philadelphia, United States, Free Library of Philadelphia, John Frederick Lewis Collection of European Manuscripts)

Alternate identifiers

• https://know.freelibrary.org/Record/1583571
• deRicci: 180

Publisher

Free Library of Philadelphia

Language

Latin; Ancient Greek (to 1453); Middle French (ca. 1400-1600)

Origin

Place

France

Summary

This manuscript is a humanistic emblem book made in France in the late sixteenth century. The text, written in Latin and Greek, relates enigmas offered by the Sphinx and interpreted by Oedipus, with some French translations added later. The watercolor illustrations are allegorical scenes incorporating both Christian and classical imagery. A leaf with a rough draft of an eighteenth-century French translation of the first enigma is bound in as the fourth front flyleaf. The first two leaves (pages 3-6) are replacements for a missing first leaf, supplying the Latin text of the first dialogue accompanied by a French translation, with the original first watercolor illustration of the manuscript cut out and pasted to the first of the newer leaves (page 3). The extant original text begins on the third leaf (page 7), in the middle of the first dialogue. Leaves may also be missing within volume, such as before page 37, which is a single leaf from the end of a Latin dialogue (or the leaf may be out of place). Eighteenth-century children have written letters of the alphabet, calculations, names (including Morelloet, page 73), and an inscription (page 157) in the margins.

Notes

• Five front flyleaves, all late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century except for the fourth, which is eighteenth-century, with French text on the Sphinx and Oedipus; four end flyleaves, all late nineteenth or early twentieth-century
   
• Leaves at the end of the volume have been repaired; the end of the book is damaged and the last leaves are missing
   
• Quire 11 is an artificial quire consisting of the leaves at the end of the volume where the collation cannot be determined
   

Extent

V+97+iv; 270 x 190 mm bound to 275 x 205 mm

Foliation

Modern pagination in pencil, upper right recto

Collation

1 (2), 2 (8, -1), 3 (8), 4 (8, +1 +2), 5-8 (8), 9 (7, +1), 10 (7, +7), 11 (8), 12 (8, -1), 13 (11, +11)

Signatures

Quires 1-11 signed A-I, K-L, with roman numeral for leaf of quire, in the form AI-AIIII, lower right recto of leaves 1-4 in quire

Support

Paper

Binding

Late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century green morocco, gilt-tooled, Lakeside Press, Chicago (inside front cover, lower edge); gilt spine title, Oedipus Manuscript

Layout

One column of varying line counts; frame-ruled in lead; written area: 225 x 115 mm

Decoration

Fifty-eight watercolor illustrations of allegorical scenes, one at the beginning of each dialogue

Script

Humanistic Cursive

Provenance

• Final illustration is of a coat of arms, damaged so that all that remains is the hind legs of three animals such as wolves or wolfhounds (page 196); De Foudras family, Bayère, 1747 (child's inscription, "J'aimerois bien ma petite soeur si elle n'etoit pas si sotte, 20 8bre 1747, de foudras, bayere," page 157); John Frederick Lewis, Philadelphia; given by his widow, Anne Baker Lewis, to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1936
   

Related resources

• De Ricci, Seymour, with the assistance of W.J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, vol. 2 (New York,: H. W. Wilson, 1935-40), p. 2058, no. 180.
• Free Library of Philadelphia, A Descriptive Catalogue of the John Frederick Lewis Collection of European Manuscripts in the Free Library of Philadelphia, compiled by Edwin Wolf, 2nd, with an introduction by Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach (Philadelphia: The Library, 1937), p. 178, no. 164.
• Sider, Sandra, and Barbara Obrist, eds. Bibliography of Emblematic Manuscripts (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992), no. 331.
• Rinalli, Tina-Marie, "Oedipi et Sphingi Dialogus, MS FLP Lewis E 164, An Unknown Rendering of the Oedipus Legend and a New Dynamic Between Oedipus and the Sphinx" in Imagining the Self, Constructing the Past: Selected Proceedings from the 36th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum (Newcastle-upon-Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), pp. 90-107.

Keywords

• 16th century
• French
• Illustration
• France
• Allegory
• Heraldry

Licenses

• Text

  These images and the content of Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E 164: Oedipi et Sphingis dialogus (Dialogues between Oedipus and the Sphinx); Le Sphinx are free of known copyright restrictions and in the public domain. See the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark page for usage details, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/.

  URL

  http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

• Text

  To the extent possible under law, Free Library of Philadelphia, Special Collections has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this metadata about Free Library of Philadelphia Lewis E 164: Oedipi et Sphingis dialogus (Dialogues between Oedipus and the Sphinx); Le Sphinx. This work is published from: United States. For a summary of CC0, see https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Legal code: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.

  URL

  https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

Table of contents

• 1 — [Later French translation of first dialogue]

Decorations

• 3 — Large illustration, Sphinx and Oedipus
• 10 — Large illustration, Allegory with shepherd
• 14 — Large illustration, Allegory with motto Prope et Longe
• 18 — Large illustration, Allegory with four men, rooster, goat, and well
• 20 — Large illustration, Allegory with sleeping king and trap for birds
• 24 — Large illustration, Allegory with king in dining hall
• 28 — Large illustration, Allegory with angel and two skeletons
• 30 — Large illustration, Allegory with three female figures
• 32 — Large illustration, Allegory with winged figure holding scythe and man holding cross
• 38 — Large illustration, Allegory with man, house, walled garden, and rainbow
• 40 — Large illustration, Allegory with old man with staff and Eros shooting bow at young man
• 44 — Large illustration, Allegory with man, open chest, monstrous woman, lizard, and snake
• 48 — Large illustration, Allegory with Jesus and four other men, griffin, camel, and altar
• 50 — Large illustration, Allegory with destructive female figure, two men, and snake
• 56 — Large illustration, Allegory with man at table, man standing with several boys, and caged bird
• 60 — Large illustration, Allegory with construction scene
• 62 — Large illustration, Allegory with three echidnas and crowd running for caves
• 64 — Large illustration, Allegory with three men with measuring instruments at a triangular table
• 66 — Large illustration, Allegory with man holding a gnarled grapevine and a root growing from a fountain
• 68 — Large illustration, Allegory with five figures, some armed, and three pairs of animals in conflict
• 70 — Large illustration, Allegory with three female figures and two male figures
• 74 — Large illustration, Allegory with four men and a painting
• 80 — Large illustration, Allegory with siege scene
• 84 — Large illustration, Allegory with torture scene
• 88 — Large illustration, Allegory with female figure holding an anchor and standing on a Dionysian figure
• 92 — Large illustration, Allegory with masked male figure, rhinoceros, and bird
• 94 — Large illustration, Allegory with four winged figures, one headless
• 96 — Large illustration, Allegory with man, snail, and man with donkey
• 100 — Large illustration, Allegory with female figure with man's head, nursing an infant, holding a trombone, and standing on a turtle
• 102 — Large illustration, Allegory with peddler holding snake and scales
• 104 — Large illustration, Allegory with chimera, winged figure (Fortune?), and woman
• 106 — Large illustration, Allegory with three skeletons and several corpses
• 108 — Large illustration, Allegory with Jesus and several haloed figures and a man with a marbled column and anvil
• 112 — Large illustration, Allegory with man carrying crosses on his shoulders on a road outside a burning house
• 114 — Large illustration, Allegory with man holding a dove and man and woman in a river
• 116 — Large illustration, Allegory with peacock and lion pulling a monster's chariot
• 120 — Large illustration, Allegory with a tall candle, a man holding a pot and an apple, and a skeleton
• 124 — Large illustration, Allegory with four men, a church, and a burning house
• 128 — Large illustration, Allegory with two men, a pilgrim, and ants
• 130 — Large illustration, Allegory with two figures standing on the gates of a city
• 134 — Large illustration, Allegory with several people outside a building
• 138 — Large illustration, Allegory with female figure holding snake and scales, and families of people and birds
• 142 — Large illustration, Allegory with female figure standing on ball and broken cross, shepherd, and man pursuing beaver
• 146 — Large illustration, Allegory with one man with lute standing on skeleton and tablets and another holding crown and tablets
• 150 — Large illustration, Allegory with various animals resting together peacefully and crowned figure in loincloth
• 154 — Large illustration, Allegory with a man with a mirror and a female figure threatening a man with a stick
• 158 — Large illustration, Allegory with two couples, one holding a bone between them
• 162 — Large illustration, Allegory with figure watering a garden maze
• 164 — Large illustration, Allegory with large bell, man with an anchor, and winged figure with a staff
• 166 — Large illustration, Allegory with ship of armed men approaching a city with two female figures on the gates, one with a horn, the other with scales and snake
• 170 — Large illustration, Allegory with sleeping man and skeleton, a man arriving by boat, and a wounded man
• 172 — Large illustration, Allegory with three men around a tall candle, one holding a mirror and one holding two books
• 176 — Large illustration, Allegory with Jesus and the sacraments, Samaritan woman at the well, a man, a skeleton, and Adam, Eve, and the serpent
• 180 — Large illustration, Allegory with two female figures on either side of a male figure
• 184 — Large illustration, Allegory with large figure holding the Earth
• 186 — Large illustration, Allegory with two pairs of men exchanging money, five men drawn in a chariot, and crowned figure rising from a river
• 188 — Large illustration, Allegory with the Trinity, a man praying at the foot of the Cross, a large key, a demon with horns, wings, and manacles, and a skeleton
• 192 — Large illustration, Allegory with scene of Jesus carrying the Cross
• 196 — Large illustration, fragment of damaged coat of arms