Today, one of the most sinister books in the world is the Devil's Bible. This document contains various holy Christian scriptures and even, supposedly, a self-portrait of the prince of darkness.
The devil's bible - table of contents
The huge sinister book is presented in the form of an ancient manuscript. According to a widespread theory, the attribute appeared at the beginning of the 13th century in a Benedictine monastery in the Czech city of Podlazice (now Chrast).
The giant codex contains 624 pages, 89 cm high and 49 cm wide. The weight of the labor is impressive - 75 kg, according to approximate data, 167 lamb skins were spent on the manuscript.
According to one of many legends, Satan himself helped the monk in writing this book. Legend has it that in order to atone for a very grave sin, the monk had to rewrite the Bible in just one night. But starting to work, he realized that he would not succeed, decided to call on Satan and prayed for his salvation.
The codex was written in an atypical handwriting for the XIII century. The letters are very similar to printed ones. To date, scientists do not agree with the existing legend and are sure that the production time for such a book is at least 20-30 years.
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M. Gullik confirmed this assumption by the fact that, on average, the medieval arctic fox was able to copy no more than 140 lines per day. Moreover, even with non-stop work, it would take about 5 years just to rewrite the text.
The manuscript also contains the Old and New Testaments, the texts of "Etymology" by Isidore of Seville, "The Jewish War" by Josephus Flavius, a calendar showing all the days of the saints and various incantations.
The original Codex Gigas (Bible of the Devil) is on display at the Clementinum Library in Prague
Page 290 is striking. It contains both the usual biblical stories and a very strange drawing depicting a supposedly devil. Turning over the pages of the book, it is very easy to determine what exactly it differs from others: it is of a different color, the style and color of the text are clearly different. It feels like this passage was written by another person.
Secrets of the devil's bible
Of course, an artifact like the gigas codex must be shrouded in mystery. The story of a monk who made a deal with the devil also says that Satan agreed to help a man, but in return the monk had to depict a portrait of the devil on one page. Unfortunately, it is not known what fate befell the man in the future.
It is very strange that the manuscript has come down to our time, because the Inquisition was not supposed to carefully keep the book for many centuries in the libraries of different monasteries, but to destroy this satanic creation in the shortest possible time. In this case, the question arises: is it possible that the existence of the code was beneficial to someone?
In 1595, the gigas was kept in the vault of the ruler of Hungary, Rudolf III. In the second part of the 17th century, the book became the property of the Swedes and was transported to Stockholm. After that, she was taken to show in Berlin, Prague and New York. The book was kept in the Swedish Royal Museum until 2007 and after a while it was transferred to the Czech National Library.
8 pages covered with ink, after the image with the devil
Despite the availability of modern methods of analysis, even in our time it was not possible to determine what text is hidden under the inked pages and why the sheet with the face of Satan is darker than other sheets. Also, researchers cannot explain the absence of people in the image of the city of Heaven.
According to one theory, a curse will be imposed on every owner of the codex. For example, the castle in which the codex was located in Stockholm suddenly burned down after the book disappeared from there. One of the monasteries, which housed the codex, was struck by the bubonic plague. There is a belief that in order to escape from black magic, it is necessary to throw a book out of the window.
What are ad-painting icons?
Of course, one can assume that the gigantic codex is nothing more than a mockery of Christianity and religion in general. This assumption is quite reasonable, because among the sacred texts of the Christian world hidden images of the most terrible and powerful, frightening monster - the devil.
Such a theory is possible, because such a distortion of holy images has already been encountered in history. For example, the well-known ad-painting icons can also be viewed as a kind of mockery of religion. In medieval times, such terrifying relics were common, according to some sources.
Their peculiarity was that under one picture another was hiding. The first, hidden, depicted demons, devils and the Devil. After the paint dried, the usual motives were drawn from above - Jesus Christ, the saints, the apostles. Sometimes horns, tails and hooves were added under the images of the saints, but this was hidden under a layer of oil.
The first time the term "ad-painting icons" was mentioned in the sixteenth century in the Life of St. Basil the Blessed. The story says that a man approached the walls of the city, on which an icon with the face of the Mother of God was visible. People were sure that she was miraculous, the crowd prayed to her and asked for her health and strength.
However, St. Basil the Blessed stopped the pilgrims and instead of approaching the miraculous image in prayers, he began to throw stones at the image. The crowd was terrified, but Vasily addressed the crowd with a speech. He assured that a devil was drawn under a layer of paint. Removing the top layer of the icon, he confirmed his concerns.
There is another theory describing the purpose of such icons. It was believed that if a believer prays to the saint depicted in such an icon, then at the same moment he prays to Satan. After all, both images were inextricably linked with each other.
The next version says that in the Middle Ages black sorcerers could use such ad-painting icons if their purpose was to punish a deeply religious person who regularly prayed. Throwing this attribute on him, it was possible to force a person to pray to the one whom he considered his enemy - the Devil.
According to a very widespread belief, such attributes could have been created by people who opposed church reform and did not want to adhere to the set of rules adopted in the 17th century. In such a case, frightening icons could be created in order to scare people who accepted the reform.
There is a widespread belief that the Hellish images were created by those who were sacredly afraid to break the rule “do not make yourself an idol” and wanted to eliminate faith in the magic of icons. For example, there were people who opposed the worship of holy images, and they were sure that this is the same as worshiping pagan idols.
In the 20th century, it was believed that there were never really black magic icons. In fact, in our time, these are rather legendary artifacts, since we have no real surviving examples. Russian Slavic scholar Nikita Tolstoy assures that in reality these were only horror stories for superstitious citizens.
There are other, less mystifying theories about what was depicted on the first layer. The first word could be simply badly and ineptly depicted faces of saints. Due to the low quality of the materials used and the lack of experience of the craftsmen, the faces of the depicted saints could indeed seem frightening. Therefore, this layer was overlaid with a new one and the image was redone from scratch. However, fans of the supernatural are certainly not satisfied with this theory.
Today, it is impossible to say with firm certainty whether there existed ad-painting icons and why the texts of the covenant were changed in the Giant Codex. Perhaps the first was the fruit of the labor of not particularly experienced artists, the second was a stupid mockery, and in fact these artifacts are of no value. However, we can be wrong, so we can only wait for scientists to solve these mysteries.
