The Devil's Bible

The Devil's Bible

Today's blog is about a book but it is not any normal book it's very special and unique. We all read books regularly or once in a while but have you ever heard of any book called 'The Devil's Bible'? So without wasting any other time let's hop into the topic.

                  So, in my second blog name  'The Origin of Lucifer', I mentioned 'If Gods exist in this World then so are Devils'. And this leads me to today's topic of thinking if Bible exists which represents God, is there any book that exists that represents Devils? So, as you see the heading, today we blog about The Devil's bible which is also known as Codex Gigas.

Description

According to the legends, In 1648 when the Swedish robbed Prague after 30 years of war. In the robbery, The Swedish got quite a treasure but among all, they got a huge book named Codex Gigas. This book is about 92cm(36 inches) long, 50cm(20 inches) wide, 22co(8.7 inches) thick. The outer binding of this book is made of wood and leather and there are some metal guards fitted in the corner of the book. This is the largest known manuscript from the medieval age and its weight is around 75 kg. It is composed of 310 pages of vellum claimed to be made from 160 donkeys' skin. But this book used to be 320 pages. But at present, it has 310 pages. No one knows about what happened to the last ten pages. But I am going to share with you some interesting facts related to that ahead in this blog.

Why did People call it Devil's Bible?

Now possibly the first question that could arise in our mind that Why people called this mythological manuscript The Devil's Bible? Well because there is a picture of a devil 19inches long on a page in this book. And this picture is really weird. As you can see from the picture on the right side The devil sitting leanly and his face is in the front. His horns and nails are red and he is mostly naked except for an Armenian loincloth that covered his private parts. This cloth symbolizes Royalty and it is believed that the devil only wore this loincloth when he is the prince of Darkness.

 

Now on the opposite page, we see another picture of a heavenly city that probably represents Heavenly Jerusalem which is mentioned in the 'Book of Revelation'. It is believed that the picture represents two sides of people's lives. They are -

• God fearing Life and
• Horrors of a Simple Life

HISTORY

Now the question that pops into our mind is who is the writer of this mysterious book? and how long did it take to write this book?

To answer these questions I'll have two perspectives, the first one is scientific, and the second one is passed down from predecessors.

                Now according to the second one, this book was written by a monk in the Middle Ages. This monk broke all the vows of the monastery he served and as a punishment, he was sentenced to walled up alive and starved to death. In a plea for his life, the monk convinced the Abbot to let him live and in exchange, he write a book that contains all earthly knowledge in one night. And that book also glorifies the monastery. The Abbot finally accepted his proposal. When the monk starts writing the book, he soon realizes that it is impossible to complete it in a single night. So, he sold his soul to Lucifer in exchange for the ability to finish Codex Gigas. And the devil completed this book in a single night. Probably that's why the monk draws a devil's picture in the book which is a way of gratitude. Now I know all these things seem hard to believe so let's move on to the scientific perspective.

This book also has a lot of artwork and illustrations. If someone continuously works only on text to write this book on the same scale it will take at least 5 years to complete. Not only that someone tries to copy the artwork and illustrations along with text on the same scale, then it will take at least 30 years to complete. So, completing this book in one night for a normal man is beyond anyone's imagination. But the twist came when scientists analyze the handwriting. Because the handwriting throughout the book is exactly the same. Some people claimed that the writer spent half his life writing this book. But there's a small problem with this theory. Because it proved that people's handwriting changes over time with age. And no one's handwriting can remain the same for thirty years. Other than this, people go through different states of mind at different times and someone fell sick at least a couple of times in thirty years. And that can affect the handwriting. So, if someone wrote this book for thirty years, then it showed in the handwriting but surprisingly the handwriting pattern is exactly the same throughout the book. That suggests that this book was written in a short period of time.

CONTENT

Now the next question which could arise in our minds is in which language is the book written and what is written in this book?

So, the devil's bible is written in the Latin language, along with some Hebrew text. About half the book consists of the entire Vulgate Bible. Other than these Jewish wars, Jewish Antiquities, The chronicles of Bohemia, Medical practices, Exorcism, and A calender with Necrology e.t.c are described in detail in this book. For the bold letters, the writer used Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and Golden colors, and most of the pages of this book are well-decorated.

LEGEND

Now digging a bit deeper into its history, then we have some more interesting facts regarding this book and about those last 10 missing pages of this book. So, following the legends, the name of the writer of this book is 'Herman the Recluse'. This is the monk whom I mentioned, The monk who broke the vows and was sentenced to death.

The monastery where the monk served was in Bohemia(Now known as the Czech Republic), and the monastery was completely destroyed in the 15th century during Hussite Revolution. Then this book was placed in several monasteries. Finally, it sends to Prague, where Emperor borrows this book to read. Then The Swedish army robbed Prague and then placed it in the Royal Library in Sweden. On 7th May 1657, the library caught on fire and the book was thrown down to save it from the fire. Due to falling from such a height, the bindings of this book were broken. Few people believed, in the meantime during that incident the last 10 pages of this book were lost. Other than this few people believed that the last 10 pages were deliberately removed because some such methods were written in those pages by which a person can call Satan into our World. 

Now no one knows how true these things are. Coming back to the present day then The devil's Bibel is kept on display in the National Library of Sweden. Many scientists and researchers are still researching this book. Even National Geographic also did a documentary about this book, which you can see by clicking the link. 

So, that's it for this blog. If someone of having any other thing or topic, and you think I am capable enough to write a blog then please add your suggestion in the comment section. 

Come with another blog really soon till then Bye.