Oxygen and hydrogen isotope analyses have been made of mineral separates from eclogites, glaucophanites and glaucophane schists from the eastern Sesia zone (Italian Western Alps). Regularities in (1) hydrogen isotope compositions, (2) order of 18O enrichment among coexisting minerals, and (3) ?? 18O (quartz-rutile) and ?? 18O (quartz-phengite) imply attainment of a high degree of isotopic equilibrium. However, some scattering of ??18O values of individual minerals indicates that the eclogitic assemblage did not form in the presence of a thoroughly pervasive fluid. Minerals from an eclogitic lens enclosed in marble have ??18O values distinctly different from those measured in the other rocks. The ??18O values are high in comparison with other type C eclogites of the world, and it is proposed that the fluid present during the high pressure metamorphism has to a large extent been inherited from the precursor rocks of amphibolite facies. An average formation temperature of 540 ?? C is inferred from the oxygen isotope fractionations between quartz and rutile and between quartz and white mica. This temperature is in accordance with petrologic considerations and implies subduction of the precursor rocks into the upper mantle to achieve the high pressures required. ?? 1978 Springer-Verlag.