Today the book weighs around 75 kilograms, the average of a human.Īn actual size replica of the original Codex Gigas (Source: Wikimedia Commons) A legend says that when the book was thrown out of the castle’s window, it had crushed a man to death as the book was said to weigh originally 100 kilograms, but due to the many pages that it had lost over time it also lost in weight. Someone managed to pick up Codex Gigas and throw it out of the burning castle. This was one of the rarest collections, containing many original manuscripts from ancient history. Over 18,000 books and 1,100 manuscripts had been burned. Sometime later the book was moved to Castle Tre Kronor which sadly ended up burning on the 7th of May 1697. The book ended up in Queen Christina’s collection and was placed in the library at Stockholm Palace. His intentions were never to return the manuscript and keep it in his personal collection.ĭuring the Thirty Year’s War (1318–1648) the manuscript was taken to Stockholm when the Swedish Army invaded Prague. Emperor Rudolf II was interested in occultism, collecting everything from dead animals, paintings, sculptures, and trinkets associated with the devil.
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WHOLE CODEX GIGAS TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH PDF ARCHIVE
The book had been kept for almost 200 years in the archive of the monastery until 1594 when Emperor Rudolf II removed the manuscript from the archive and took it to his castle as a loan because of a financial altercation with the head of the monastery. That same year, the manuscript is repurchased for the Benedictine Order of Břevno Monastery. Image representing the note written by Podlažic monastery, showing that they have been the first owners (Source: National Library of Sweden) This is known as a note on the first page that had been scribbled by another monk stating that it is being pledged to the monastery in Sedlec. Herman was freed as promised and the book was left within the Podlažic monastery. The book originally contained around 620 pages, but within the original copy, only 310 are still intact. The next morning everyone was astonished at the massive accomplishment Herman had managed. Lucifer accepted and Herman, out of gratitude, painted Lucifer’s appearance on a page of the book. Herman offered his soul in exchange for Lucifer to help him write the book by the morning. As a monk he saw that the best option was to pray, but not to God, he made a special prayer that could only be heard by the fallen angel Lucifer (Satan). Whilst in his cell, Herman started writing the manuscript and once the clock hit noon he realized that it would be impossible to write it. The drawing of Lucifer within an actual size replica of the Codex Gigas (Source: National Library of Sweden) Heads of the monastery knew that such a task was simply impossible so they accepted it. He made a pact with the monastery, if he was able to write a book including all human knowledge by the next morning they would let him live.
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One day he had broken his monastic vows and for this, he was going to be walled to death, according to Christian politics at the time. Herman the Recluse was a monk at the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice near Chrudim in the Czech Republic during the early 13th century. Some of you may think it took between 12 (26 years) to write the book, but the book was actually written only in a couple of hours.īefore getting into details about the book, here is the story behind the author who had done the impossible to save his own life. The title Codex Gigas can be translated from Latin to “Giant Book”, representing this monster. However, there is one book that had been written for a very specific reason and which is still making experts scratch their heads.Ĭodex Gigas is the name given to a manuscript that had been written by a monk from the Kingdom of Bohemia (now western part of Czechoslovakia) during 12. Most historical books have been written to enclose and transmit knowledge to others, knowledge which was very valuable in medieval times as education was still not a priority.
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The Codex Gigas, captured in a stereoscopic image in 1906 (Source: National Library of Sweden)īooks have played a major role within human history, being the main and in some instances only way of recording events for future generations.