tion, which ended in his entering a convent and becoming a monk. A short experience convinced him that this was not for him the ideal Christian life (“amisi monachum, inveni Christianum”), and in February 1522 he made his way to Ebernburg, near Creuznach, where he acted as chaplain to the little group of men holding the new opinions who had settled there under the leadership of Franz von Sickingen.
The second period of Oecolampadius’s life opens with his return to Basel in November 1522, as vicar of St Martin’s and (in 1523) reader of the Holy Scripture at the university. Lecturing on Isaiah he condemned current ecclesiastical abuses, and in a public disputation (20th of August 1523) was so successful that Erasmus writing to Zürich said “Oecolampadius has the upper hand amongst us.” He became Zwingli’s best helper, and after more than a year of earnest preaching and four public disputations in which the popular verdict had been given in favour of Oecolampadius and his friends, the authorities of Basel began to see the necessity of some reformation. They began with the convents, and Oecolampadius was able to refrain in public worship on certain festival days from some practices he believed to be superstitious. Basel was slow to accept the Reformation; the news of the Peasants’ War and the inroads of Anabaptists prevented progress; but at last, in 1525, it seemed as if the authorities were resolved to listen to schemes for restoring the purity of worship and teaching. In the midst of these hopes and difficulties Oecolampadius married, in the beginning of 1528, Wilibrandis Rosenblatt, the widow of Ludwig Keller, who proved to be non rixosa vel garrula vel vaga, he says, and made him a good wife. After his death she married Capito, and, when Capito died, Bucer. She died in 1564. In January 1528 Oecolampadius and Zwingli took part in the disputation at Berne which led to the adoption of the new faith in that canton, and in the following year to the discontinuance of the mass at Basel. The Anabaptists claimed Oecolampadius for their views, but in a disputation with them he dissociated himself from most of their positions. He died on the 24th of November 1531.
Oecolampadius was not a great theologian, like Luther, Zwingli or Calvin, and yet he was a trusted theological leader. With Zwingli he represented the Swiss views at the unfortunate conference at Marburg. His views on the Eucharist upheld the metaphorical against the literal interpretation of the word “body,” but he asserted that believers partook of the sacrament more for the sake of others than for their own, though later he emphasized it as a means of grace for the Christian life. To Luther’s doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s body he opposed that of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit in the church. He did not minutely analyse the doctrine of predestination as Luther, Calvin and Zwingli did, contenting himself with the summary “Our Salvation is of God, our perdition of ourselves.”
See J. J. Herzog, Leben Joh. Oecolampads u. die Reformation der Kirche zu Basel (1843); K. R. Hagenbach, Johann Oecolampad u. Oswald Myconius, die Reformatoren Basels (1859). For other literature see W. Hadorn’s art. in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie für prot. Rel. u. Kirche.
OECOLOGY, or Ecology (from Gr. οἶκος, house, and λόγος, department of science), that part of the science of biology which treats of the adaptation of plants or animals to their environment (see Plants: Ecology).
OECUMENICAL (through the Lat. from Gr. οἰκουμενικός,
universal, belonging to the whole inhabited world, ἡ οἰκουμένη
sc. γῆ, οἰκεῖν, to dwell), a word chiefly used in the sense of
belonging to the universal Christian Church. It is thus specifically
applied to the general councils of the early church (see
Council). In the Roman Church a council is regarded as
oecumenical when it has been summoned from the whole church
under the presidency of the pope or his legates; the decrees
confirmed by the pope are binding. The word has also been
applied to assemblies of other religious bodies, such as the
Oecumenical Methodist Conferences, which met for the first
time in 1881. “Oecumenical” has also been the title of the
patriarch of Constantinople since the 6th century (see Orthodox Eastern Church).
OECUS, the Latinized form of Gr. οἶκος, house, used by Vitruvius for the principal hall or saloon in a Roman house, which was used occasionally as a triclinium for banquets. When of great size it became necessary to support its ceiling with columns; thus, according to Vitruvius the tetrastyle oecus had four columns; in the Corinthian oecus there was a row of columns on each side, virtually therefore dividing the room into nave and aisles, the former being covered over with a semicircular ceiling. The Egyptian oecus had a similar plan, but the aisles were of less height, so that clerestory windows were introduced to light the room, which, as Vitruvius states, presents more the appearance of a basilica than of a triclinium.
OEDIPUS (Οἰδίπους, Οἰδιπόδης, Οἰδίπος, from Gr. ὀδεῖν swell, and πούς foot, i.e. “the swollen-footed”)[1] in Greek legend, son of Laïus, king of Thebes, and Jocasta (Iocastē). Laïus, having been warned by an oracle that he would be killed by his son, ordered him to be exposed, with his feet pierced, immediately after his birth. Thus Oedipus grew up ignorant of his parentage, and, meeting Laïus in a narrow way, quarrelled with him and slew him. The country was ravaged by a monster, the Sphinx; Oedipus solved the riddle which it proposed to its victims, freed the country, and married his own mother. In the Odyssey it is said that the gods disclosed the impiety. Epicastē (as Jocasta is called in Homer) hanged herself, and Oedipus lived as king in Thebes tormented by the Erinyes of his mother. In the tragic poets the tale takes a different form. Oedipus fulfils an ancient prophecy in killing his father; he is the blind instrument in the hands of fate. The further treatment of the tale by Aeschylus is unknown. Sophocles describes in his Oedipus Tyrannus how Oedipus was resolved to pursue to the end the mystery of the death of Laïus, and thus unravelled the dark tale, and in horror put out his own eyes. The sequel of the tale is told in the Oedipus Coloneus. Banished by his sons, he is tended by the loving care of his daughters. He comes to Attica and dies in the grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, in his death welcomed and pardoned by the fate which had pursued him throughout his life. In addition to the two tragedies of Sophocles, the legend formed the subject of a trilogy by Aeschylus, of which only the Seven against Thebes is extant; of the Phoenissae of Euripides; and of the Oedipus and Phoenissae of Seneca.
See A. Höfer’s exhaustive article in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; F. W. Schneidewin, Die Sage von Oedipus (1852); D. Comparetti, Edipo e la mitologia comparata (1867); M. Bréal, “Le Mythe d’Œdipe,” in Mélanges de mythologie (1878), who explains Oedipus as a personification of light, and his blinding as the disappearance of the sun at the end of the day; J. Paulson in Eranos. Acta philologica Suecana, i. (Upsala, 1896) places the original home of the legend in Egyptian Thebes, and identifies Oedipus with the Egyptian god Seth, represented as the hippopotamus "with swollen foot," which was said to kill its father in order to take its place with the mother. O. Crusius (Beiträge zur griechischen Mythologie, 1886, p. 21) sees in the marriage of Oedipus with his mother an agrarian myth (with special reference to Oed. Tyr. 1497), while Höfer (in Roscher’s Lexikon) suggests that the episodes of the murder of his father and of his marriage are reminiscences of the overthrow of Cronus by Zeus and of the union of Zeus with his own sister.
Medieval Legends.—In the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine (13th century) and the Mystère de la Passion of Jean Michel (15th century) and Arnoul Gréban (15th century), the story of Oedipus is associated with the name of Judas. The main idea is the same as in the classical account. The Judas legend, however, never really became popular, whereas that of Oedipus was handed down both orally and in written national tales (Albanian, Finnish, Cypriote). One incident (the incest unwittingly committed) frequently recurs in connexion with the life of Gregory the Great. The Theban legend, which reached its fullest development in the Thebaïs of Statius and in Seneca, reappeared in the Roman de Thèbes (the work of an unknown imitator of Benoît de Sainte-More). Oedipus is also the subject of an anonymous medieval romance (15th century), Le Roman d’Œdipus, fils de Layus, in which the sphinx is depicted as a cunning and ferocious giant. The Oedipus legend was handed down to the period of the Renaissance by the Roman and its imitations, which then fell into oblivion. Even to the present day the legend has
- ↑ It is probable that the story of the piercing of his feet is a subsequent invention to explain the name, or is due to a false etymology (from οἰδέω), οἰδίπους in reality meaning the “wise” (from οἶδα), chiefly in reference to his having solved the riddle, the syllable -πους having no significance.
