Codex Gigas

The Codex Gigas

The Codex Gigas,ever heard of it? I think not.

Commonly known as the Devils Bible,the codex gigas contains a large and incredibly bizarre illustration of the fallen angel Satan.  

The Codex Gigas is the largest discovered manuscript of the Medieval times. It is also known as the Devil's Bible because of a large illustration of the devil on the inside and the legend surrounding its creation. It is thought to have been created in the early 13th century in the Benedictine Monastry of Podlazice in Bohemia(present day Czech Republic). The manuscript originally had 320 pages, of which, 7 pages have since been removed with no trace.
Now it is preserved at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm, on display for the general public.

Codex Gigas

Written in Latin around 1210 AD, the Codex Gigas has brought disaster and pain to all who have possessed it and many others around them, including plague, mental illness, fire and destruction, the story of it's life is filled with mystery and evil. 

The origins of the book is as mysterious as the book itself.

Experts have determined that at a writing speed of 20 seconds per line, and many hours of illustration it would have taken close to 30 years to have created the text with a single scribe. 
A complete Old Testament and New Testament, and a collection of a number of secular works besides, the Devil’s Bible is an encyclopedia of medieval knowledge. But it has also been haunted by dark speculation, including that its writing was guided by the devil’s hand.
Legend has it that once a monk was found guilty of praising the devil and was thus sentence to "INCLUSION" which means to brick a person alive! So he pleaded that he be given only one night to write a book that would contain all knowledge ever known to mankind. The monastry agreed and granted him a night. He started to write but eventually realised it was an impossible task. Then he prayed..not to God..but to the fallen one..Lucifer. It was believed that the book was completed in that single night and the monk was spared.

The book has been the cause of several deaths and strange incidents throughout history. In Prague(1648), after the fall of Rudolf the Second, Swedish troops looted Bohemia and took various valuable antiques as trophies including the Codex Gigas. The Codex was presented to Chrstina, Europe's first female monarch. After reading the complete manuscript she leaves her kingdom and vanishes. Years later the book was thrown in the river during a catastrophic fire. But the book survived. The fire causes devastation all around.

Queen Christina

The Swedish Fire

The whole manuscript has several depictions and references to the devil than seeking for God. It contains tails of bloody wars, hidden secrets and holy exorcism rituals which are sinister, bizzare and unexplainable !

THE PORTRAIT OF THE DEVIL is the most infamous picture of the Codex and most probably the cause of its name-the devil's bible.

First documented pictorization of The Fallen Angel-Satan in the Codex gigas

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 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. 

It is a squatting Half-humanoid figure with hybrid traits such as red horns and tallons, reptilian halo, green face,  and two snakes coming out of its mouth. The halo like figure is probably a stylised halo, as the halo used to be a symbol of power rather than divinity.  An interesting physical trait of the parchment on which the devil is depicted and the near lying pages is that it has black shadows and dislocations  The superstitious saw this as 'the satanic influence' and reinforced the demonic connection. As it turned out the dark shades are pigmentation patches caused by sunlight  Other pages didn't have them because they were not viewed as often as the Devil's page.

 I love the thought of a universal scripture, held within the bindings of a single book approaching the subjects of historic fact, magic and religion all together, and all in line. 

And to actually see this aged historic record (although just from Hi-Res photographs) and contemplate its meaning and the secrets and stories it tells, sends a chill down my spine.
 

Make's me want to believe the diabolical legend of the doomed monk's pact with the devil !!

I wonder what intrigue the missing pages hold?

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                                                                         --Judhajit