What is a bible? A book that guides mortals about how they can live their lives in a way God wants them to. It provides complete guidance over life and dictates each and every notion that fulfills a person’s life. In this context, the bible is a kind of sacred book that provides sanctity and perfection. But unlike the holy bible of Christians, another bible exists that extensively differs from our general belief.
In July 1648, it was the end of thirty years of war, when the Swedish army looted the city of Prague. Among the fortune looted, was a book 36 inches tall, 20 inches wide, and 8.7 inches thick. The book was called Codex Gigas, it is the largest medieval book in the world. Yet despite that due to the content of the book it came to be recognized as The Devil’s Bible. The manuscript is now preserved at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm.
The story of Devil’s bible
According to the legend, in the early 13th century east of Prague, a monk from Benedictine monastery named Hermannus committed an atrocity that not only broke his monk vows but also warranted a death sentence. His punishment was to bury him alive behind the brick walls and let him starve to death. Before the last brick was placed, to humor him, Abbot struck an impossible task. He asked Hermannus to write the largest book the world has ever seen, containing all human knowledge of this world and beyond. However, he needs to complete the task in one night.
Out of desperation, Hermannus agreed. The materials required to write the book were shoved in from the small opening of the wall and Hermannus wasted no time to start. But as the night passed, he realized that his doom was about to come as the task was impossible. Thus, he asked the devil for help. In return, the monk would offer him his soul and draw a fanciful image of the devil in the book, which is why the book today is called ‘The Devil’s bible’.
The monumental tomb of knowledge was completed and Hermannus’s life was spared. This legend has been popular since not long after the book’s creation and still leaves modern archeologists baffled about the book was even written in the first place. In addition, there are legends about the curse affiliated with the Devil’s Bible.
In 1477, almost two centuries after its creation, the Benedictine monastery in Bohemia experienced some terrible financial woes. To pay the bills, the monks decided to sell the Codex Gigas to the Benedictine monastery in Brevnov. Soon after that, the Bohemian monastery was destroyed during the Hussite revolution. The book was kept in Brevnov in 1593 when they lent the book to the Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. But the king never returned it and people argue that he was even obsessed with it. Over the years, the king’s rule became more and more paranoid and erratic. His family noticed this behavior and therefore expelled him from King’s position.
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The Codex’s bookbinding is a wooden board covered completely in leather with ornate metal fittings. Weighing about 74.8 kg, the monumental work is composed of 310 pages made out of vellum made from the skin of donkeys or calfskin. The book weighs as much as a person and requires two people to lift it up. The illuminations in the book include red, blue, yellow, green, and gold color. Inside the Codex Gigas, every page is composed meticulously with absolute mastery. As described in the legend, the bible contains the complete Latin Bible, Isidore of Seville’s encyclopedia Etymologiae, Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, a list of the monks in the monastery, mystical incantations of curing illness, penitence, and exorcism.
Based on the number of texts and details curved inside the illuminations of the book, it is estimated that it took as long as 25 years to complete the masterpiece. In other words, a monk of the 13th century living in Prague could have dedicated his life writing the book in isolation, and that is how probably the legend got fueled.
The Devil’s Bible is given its name because of a full-sized portrait of the devil which was common during the Middle ages but this particular portrait is different in each aspect. Here, the devil is depicted on a big page- 19 inches tall, he is crouching and facing forward. The devil is naked apart from ermine loincloth which was historically worn by royalties. It is believed that the image demonstrated the devil as the Prince of Darkness. Opposite to this page is the image of Heavenly City. The city is interpreted as Jerusalem mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
Like any other mystery of history, 10 pages of the Codex Gigas are missing. No one is sure what these pages contained and why they were removed. They were never recovered. However, the one mystery that troubles the experts the most is the book’s uniformity. The writing in the book is uniformly highly detailed from start to end and there are no noticeable signs of change. This means that whether the book was written in a single scribe or it may have been written in a very short amount of time.
The skepticism is that experts say the book would have taken 5 years alone to only scribble all the texts in the book- all night, all day. This is impossible for anyone in this world to write continuously for 5 years in complete uniformity without a single break. The immense level of details in the manuscript would have taken about 25 years to complete. How can someone write for 30 years without wavering in nature? This question is still shrouded in mystery and remains unsolved to date.
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