Dan Harlow

Known officially as the Codex Gigas (Latin for The Giant Book) this 624 page, 165 pound tome is more commonly referred to as the Devil’s Bible. Legend has it that “a monk of Podlažice [was] walled up alive for his sins … He attempted to expiate his guilt by writing the world’s biggest book in a single night. Realising [sic] the task to be beyond his powers, he invoked the aid of the Devil. The Devil aided him, had his portrait painted in the book and demanded the monk’s soul as payment. The monk was rescued but lost his peace of mind, until finally he turned to the Holy Virgin, beseeching her to save him. She agreed to help but the penitent died on the very point of being absolved from his pact with the Devil.”

From The National Library Of Sweden:

The Devil is shown alone, in an empty landscape, within a frame formed by two large towers. He is crouching with his arms held up (he has only four fingers and toes) and wears an ermine loin cloth. Ermine is usually associated with royalty, and its use here is to emphasise [sic] the position of the Devil as the prince of darkness.

The portrait was intended to remind the viewer of sin and evil. It is opposite a page with a representation of the Heavenly City and the two pages were deliberately planned to show the advantages of a good life and the disadvantages of a bad one.

Portraits of the Devil are common in medieval art, but this one in the Codex Gigas may be unique in books for showing him alone and occupying a whole page.

This story may sound familiar to some of you since it bears a striking resemblance the the plot of the Faust legend. “The legend also underscores the medieval belief that it was possible to atone for one’s sins by copying the texts. In his Historia ecclesiastica, Orderic Vitalis (1075-1142) relates a tale told by Abbot Thierry about a monk with a proclivity to sin who was an accomplished and devoted scribe. After his death, the work which he copied was used as evidence to save him from eternal damnation. When each and every letter in his text was weighed against his sins, it turned out that he had formed one letter more than the number of his sins. His soul was permitted to reunite with its body and atone for his sinful ways.”

Weather or not one chooses to believe the legend, it is believed by scholars that the Codex was written by one individual and in a fairly short amount of time. Evidence pointing to a single author is that the style of script does not change throughout the manuscript. As for the amount of time taken to complete the work it is apparent that this single author does not grow ill during the process since his scribe work shows no deterioration whatsoever. As for the time it took to complete, scholars seem to agree on a six year window in the early 13th century:

The manuscript has been dated to between 1204 and 1230 on the strength of the following circumstantial evidence. The Bohemian Saint Procopius, canonised [sic] in 1204, occurs on 4th July in the calendar, which tells us that the manuscript cannot have been written earlier than that year.

At the same time, the manuscript must have been written after 1223, because Bishop Andreas of Prague (1214-23) is mentioned on 30th July in the necrology. He died in 1223 and he is the last in a succession of historically identifiable personages between the late tenth and early thirteenth centuries whose names are mentioned in the necrology. On the other hand, the name of the Bohemian King Ottokar I of the Přemysl dynasty, is not listed. As he died in 1230, Codex Gigas must have been completed some time between 1224 and 1230.

“The name of the scribe of Codex Gigas is not known, but it has been conjectured that he was the monk Herman, whose name, with the cognomen inclusus, confined (Hermanus monachus inclusus), appears on 10th November in the [Codex’s] necrology.”

Given the rich history of this work and the legends which surround it, it is no wonder then that it has been a highly sought after work of art for nearly 800 years. Beyond it’s mere beauty though is also the content of the Codex. More than just a bible, the Codex is an undertaking to collect in one book all of mans knowledge. The Codex contains extensive translations of medical books, the writings of Josephus Flavius whose “writings are now an important source of knowledge concerning the history of Judaism and the Jews in the centuries immediately preceding and following the birth of Christ, and also concerning the topography of ancient Palestine”.

As a bible the Codex is also unique in that the order of the books is uncommon; for example “the books of Samuel and Kings come in between Job and the Psalms”. Another highlight is in regards to an illustrated depiction of heaven and earth before the final creation. “Heaven is at the top, blue with stars, the sun and the moon. Earth is below shown as green oceans before the earth was formed. Between the two the red capital letters are for the opening of Josephus, In principio (In the beginning), but the first letter (I) was not made.”

Over the centuries the book has changed hands several times and even survived a fierce fire which broke out at the Stockholm Castle in 1697. As the story goes the book was rescued from the fire by being tossed out the window. Because of it’s enormous bulk it injured a bystander below, or so Johann Erichsons, vicar of the German Church in Stockholm told the story.

Having remained in the hands (and out the windows) of the Swedes for nearly 360 years and “after lengthy negotiations, the tome is now on loan to the Klementinum for a four-month exhibition, offering Czechs their first home glimpse of the ancient text” since the end of the Thirty Years War when Swedish soldiers took the book as war booty. The exhibition begins September 20th, and will run to January 6th 2008.

Popularity: 6% [?]