It was written in the early 13th century in a monastery in what is now the Czech Republic and is called The Devils Bible because of two things, one is that it contains an illustration of a Devil
a devil
And the other reason is the myth of it's creation.The Myth
The Codex Gigas is rumoured to have been written by a doomed monk in the Podlažice Monastery that was sentenced to death for a crime too heinous to even be written down. Pleading for his life he promised the other monks that he would write one book celebrating the monastery and containing the answer to life, the universe and everything (which we all know now is 42 but they didn't back then). The other monks naturally scoffed and told him - "Okay, you have one night to finish it but if it's finished in the morning, we will wall your ass" Knowing that walling actually meant being built into a wall with bricks and mortar, the monk got work writing at a speed that would make Ryoki Inoues jealous. When it became midnight, it was pretty obvious to the doomed monk that it would take a miracle for him to finish the book, he did what everybody in Hollywood does when the deadline is creeping up. He asked the Satan for help.
Satan being a pretty decent chap, showed up and finished the book wanting nothing more than 10% of all future revenues and the monks soul. A deal still regarded in showbiz today, as the best ever struck by any artist. So after Satan finished the book, our monk rose from his bath (probably, historians disagree) and added a picture of Satan in a sudden outburst of bromance.
The next morning the other monks came a-knocking, spatulas ready for some old fashion wall-in, but was met a by a beaming (and probably rose-scented, again historians disagree) monk with a finished Giant Book (Codex Gigas).
The History
It is still a great debate around how this enormous manuscript ever got written but we are fairly certain that it was written by one single monk called Herman the Recluse (cool but not as cool as Stephen the King, you do understand the "recluse" part) and that it was written in a Benedictine Monastery called Podlažice and that it was finished 1229AD. After changing owners frequently, once being owned by Rudolf II, it was taken by the glorious Swedish Army in 1648 (during the 30 year war) and since then it has resided in the National Library of Sweden.
Yes, that is a matchbox
Why it's awesome
It's absolutely massive, almost a metre high and half a meter wide. It's 22 cm thick and weighs in at around 75 Kg. The book weighs as much as me! (after I shed this holiday weight I'm carrying since x-mas).Back then when you wrote a book, you wrote it by hand, dipping your quill in ink (which consisted of crushed insect nests) and continued to write. They haven't found a single mistake in the entire book and the ink and style is the same through it all.
New tests has shown that it would take about an hour to write one page, the decorated initials would take a couple of days each. And this is in a monastery life where you had lot's of other duties so you maybe had two-three hours a day at best, to write. Careful guesses approximate that it would take 20 years to finish it, but prefer to believe it to have taken between 25-30 years.
A big decorated initial
The Codex Gigas is the largest medieval manuscript. It's written flawlessly by one man over close to 3 decades. It combines parts of different scriptures not ever combined anywhere else. It has survived fires, wars, plunders and whatnots. It is mad and fantastic and awesome.
Links
Scanned Copy
NG documentary on Youtube
Hubpages
No comments:
Post a Comment