These legends were inspired bl' the
single most striking feature of the Coda
Codex Gigas
The Devil's Bible
THE LARGEST MEDIEVAL booK
ever wdffen weighs an astonishing 165
pounds. It stands 36 inches tall and is 20
inches wide. It is almost nine inches thick.
No wonder it is known as Codex Gigas,
which is Latin for "The Giant Book." It
was written in a monastery in Bohemia
(now the Czech Republic) in the early
i200s CE. Except for a few later notes,
every word in this gigantic manuscript
was written by the hand of one and the
same scribe, who was surely a monk. It
has been estimated that this monk spent
some twenty orthirty years of his life writ-
ing out the Codex Gigasby hand, from its
first page to its last.
The Codex Gigashas another name as
well The Devil's Bible. Since it seemed
an almost superhuman task for a single
monk to have written every word of so
gigantic a book by hand, people who
wondered at its size it began to ask
themselves whether that monk might
have had supematural help from God...
or, just maybe, from someone el,se.
And so legends gathered around
the Giant Book. In their flnal form,
they told of a monk, a scribe, who had
committed some very great sin, and
had been sentenced to be walled up
alive. He bargained with his judges:
"Will you spare me if in a single night
I write a manuscript containing all
knowledge, to glorify our monastery
forever?" Thinking this impossible, his
judges agreed. Alone in his prison cell
that night, the monk called on the Prince
of Hell and made a pact. With Lucifer's
aid, the monk wrote out the entire Giant
Book by hand in the course of a single
night. Thereby he escaped punishment,
but lost his sou1.
Gigas. If, by accident or design. tbe
book falls open at a certain place. the ruo
facing pages will show a pair of unerll
compelling, full-page illustrations.
On the left-hand page is a _crezf,
walled city-the New Jerusalem-rhe
Heavenly City that will descend frcm
God at the end of time, according lo
the Revelation of St. John. On the riehr-
hand page crouches the Prince of HelI
himself, poised to leap right out oi the
page and seize the reader. That dread
being is clad only in a loincloth made of
royal ermine fur. His long, sharp horns
and claws are red with blood. His eles
are beady and their pupils, too. are red.
His face is green. He bares his teeth. and
from his mouth protrude two long red
tongues. Surely the Devil had a hand in
the Giant Book's making and placed hi_r
frightening portrait there as a signarure.
The flve pages directly before rtre
illustration of New Jerusalem conrain
a detailed ritual for a monk to contess
all his sins, written in letters much
larger than the rest of the manuscript,
The six pages directly following ttre
illustration of the Devil, also wrirten in
large letters, contain five magic spells.
The first three spells are for healing-
the other two are for identiff in_s a
thief (by scrying in the first spell and
revelatory dreaming in the second l.
Apart from these pages, the Code-r
Gigas contains the following. all in
Latin: (1) the Old Testament, Q) Tht
Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus
Flavius, (3) The History of the Jarish
War, also by Josephus Flavius. r4r
Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae. a l-ar-
 6II
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