Giant Manuscript Of Codex Gigas Or Devil Bible
Codex Gigas is a medieval giant manuscript that exists. This book was written at the beginning of the 13th century in the monastery of the benedict order at Podlazice in Bohemia. Currently, the book is stored at the Swedish Royal Library in Stockholm. This giant book is often called the "bible of the devil" because of large size illustration of satanic images in it. The codex has the height of 92 cm, the width of 50 cm, the thickness of 22 cm, and weight of nearly 75 kg. In the beginning, the codex has 320 transcript pages, but 8 sheets are discarded and it is not known who discarded it and for what purpose.
The Giant Manuscript of Codex Gigas
There are allegations that the discarded pieces contain the rules of the Benedictine monastery. The sheets that are used to write this codex are skins of 160 calves. The monastery where this codex was made was destroyed in the 15th century. After its writing, the codex was transferred Monastery of the Sedlec Cistercians and finally was bought by Benedict Abbey in Byoevnov. From 1477 to 1593, the codex was kept in the library at Broumov. Then on September 24, 2007, Codex Gigas was brought back to Prague after 359 years.
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| Codex Gigas |
The content of this codex is "a sum of the Benedictine order's knowledge", “The War of the Jews”, lists of saints, methods for determining the date of the Easter celebration, all of the pre-vulgate Latin bible, and others. The entire contents were written in Latin and decorated with colors like red, blue, yellow, green, and gold. The remarkable thing is that the entire contents of this codex were written with great relevance between pages.
On page 290, there is a demonic image of about 50cm high. Some pages before this image were written on blackened leather sheets and made with dark characters which made different from the entire contents of the codex. According to Legend, the author of the codex was a monk who violated the rules of the monastery and punished by being tied in the standing position to the wall for his lifetime. This monk begged the forgiveness of his punishment and as a replacement, he promised to make a book that would glorify the monasteries and knowledge of mankind forever in just one night.
By midnight, the monk had doubts whether he could finish it or not. So, he sold his soul to the devil for help. The Devil then completed the manuscript. As a tribute to the devil that helped him, the monk added the demon image into the codex. Despite the legend involving the devil, this codex is still kept by the monastery and studied by many scholars to this day.