Precisely because of this tension, everyone loves the Codex Gigas – or, the Devil’s Bible, if you prefer. The manuscript originally travelled to Stockholm in the late 16th century, plundered from the Holy Roman Emperor’s castle by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years War. Speculation, plausible and otherwise, abounds as to how the unholiest feature possible made its way into this most sacred text, but answers remain elusive. Spanning nearly the entire face of a page is a full-color rendering of the Dark Lord himself. Yet the most bewitching element of the Codex Gigas is a single page of illumination that defies explanation, tucked away within the tome. These elements alone are enough to qualify the stunning manuscript as a wonder of the world.

The scribe also decorated the manuscript, so this all means that the manuscript probably took at least 20 years to finish, and could even have taken 30.” As the scribe may also have ruled the lines to guide the writing before he began to write (it probably took several hours to rule one leaf), this extends the period it took to complete the manuscript. If the scribe was a monk he may only have been able to work for about three hours a day, and this means that the manuscript could have taken ten years to write. “If the scribe worked for six hours a day and wrote six days a week this means that the manuscript could have taken about five years to complete. The National Library of Sweden puts this massive undertaking into perspective: The manuscript contains not only the New and Old Testaments but also an assortment of other shorter texts addressing matters of extreme practicality for the time: exorcism, grammar, a calendar, and medical works, to name a few.Įverything within the book was handwritten by a single, anonymous monk.

Literally meaning “giant book,” the Codex Gigas was created in the 13th century and originally stored in the Benedictine monastery at Podlažice. Nevertheless, it’s not its 620 pages at three-feet in size that makes it remarkable it’s the Devil contained therein. The largest Medieval manuscript in the world is believed to have been the work of a single monk in Bohemia (in modern Czechia).

Codex gigas translated to english pdf