'Varios egnimas [enigmas] de los dislates mundanos', a manuscript of Spanish poetry

A volume of paper leaves in a vellum binding, containing the manuscript of a poem of 546 stanzas entitled 'Varios egnimas [enigmas] de los dislates mundanos'. The text of this poem appears to be a unique exemplar. The poem has a conventional theme of moral folly and wordly absurdities, but one which is developed in the specific context of the Spain of Philip II.

There is a strong probability that the text was composed by a Spanish soldier in the Netherlands about 1578. This copy dates from the late sixteenth century and was made, according to a note at the end, by 'le secretaire Jan Fernando de Woorsboelx', who may also have been a native of the Spanish Netherlands. The manuscript was purchased in 1967 from B.L.Gilbert, a Southampton bookseller.

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Although there are two manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, entitled 'Varios enigmas' and 'Varias enigmas y versos' (MS 2244 and 4046: Inventario general de manuscritos de la Biblioteca Nacional (1953-) vi, pp. 142-52; x, pp. 252-3), the contents of these are very different.

The text has been edited, with a critical introduction, by M.P.Gorman, 'A critical edition of 'Varios enigmas de los dislates mundanos' (Southampton University Library MS A106), with a study of politico-religious poetry in sixteenth-century Spain' (Univ. of Southampton Ph.D. thesis, 1973).