Codex Gigas

The book's calendar gives away its age. Saint Procopius, canonized in 1204, appears under July 4. Bishop Andreas of Prague, who died in 1223, is the last datable person in its list of the dead, and King Ottokar I, who died in 1230, is missing. From that, the National Library of Sweden dates the manuscript to between 1224 and 1230.

Inside are a Latin Bible, Josephus's Antiquities and Jewish War, Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, medical texts, Cosmas of Prague's Chronicle of the Bohemians, and a necrology of 1,539 names. The leaves measure 89 by 49 centimeters. The library gives the book's weight as 75 kilograms on one of its pages and 76 on another.

One scribe

The library's finding is that "virtually the entire manuscript was produced by a single scribe," who probably also did the decoration and both full-page pictures. It has worked out the time involved. At one column of 106 lines a day, 6 hours a day and 6 days a week, the writing alone would take about 5 years. With the ruling and decoration added, the library puts it at "at least 20 years," perhaps 30, "or a whole lifetime."

Posts online turn that into 30 years of nonstop writing in a hand so even it looks finished in days. The estimates run the other way, and the library's older catalog text calls the script "a little variable and irregular" and "individual and distinctive."

Nobody knows the scribe's name. The necrology lists "Hermanus monachus inclusus" under November 10, and later writers tied this Herman the Recluse to the legend. The library calls the identification speculation. An inclusus was a monk who chose to be enclosed in a cell, which the library says was not uncommon among Benedictines and Cistercians.

The Devil

The Devil fills folio 290r, facing a full-page drawing of the Heavenly City. He is drawn between two towers in an ermine loincloth, with four fingers, four toes, and two red tongues. The library reads the pair as showing "the advantages of a good life and the disadvantages of a bad one." The leaves after him hold conjurations and charms, including one against fever addressed to "the bloodthirsty 150-clawed Dino" and two formulas for catching thieves.

The legend

The earliest written versions the library has found are in inventories of Emperor Rudolf II's collection in Prague. One from 1635 says the Devil gave parchment and writing tools to a monk imprisoned at Broumov. A list made after the Swedes took Prague in 1648 calls it "a great book brought by the Devil to a walled-up monk." That is roughly 400 years after the book was made.

The full version the library tells has the walled-up monk writing the whole book in a single night with the Devil's help, the portrait as his payment, and the Virgin interceding for his soul. The library calls it a variant of the Theophilus legend, in which a cleric sells his soul and is rescued by the Virgin. When the single night entered the story is not known. The 1635 wording has the Devil supplying materials, not speed.

Owners

A note on the first leaf names the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice as the book's owner, though the library says the house was "far too small and impoverished" to have made it. Podlažice pawned it to the Cistercians of Sedlec. Czech sources date the pawn to 1245, and the Swedish library places it shortly before 1295, the year Abbot Bavor of Nečtin bought the book back for the Benedictines. His note already calls it one of the wonders of the world.

When the Hussite wars began in 1420, the monks of Břevnov took it to Broumov. In March 1594, it traveled to Prague for Emperor Rudolf II, who never returned it. On July 16, 1648, Swedish troops scaled Prague's walls and looted the city for two days, and the book reached Stockholm in 1649.

When Tre Kronor castle burned on May 7, 1697, the book was thrown from a window, which saved it and badly damaged the binding. A story printed in 1742 says it injured a bystander as it fell. The library's comment is that "one may doubt the veracity of the story." On New Year's Day 1878, librarian Gustaf Klemming walked it to the new building in Humlegården, "preceded by the caretaker, who pulled the mighty Devil's Bible along on a sleigh."

The missing leaves

Leaves have been cut out. The pawn note says the book once held the Rule of St. Benedict, and the stubs of three cut leaves remain where it was. A count of the leaves made before 1561 already found them gone. The library allows that the missing pages "can have included another text as well." Nothing documents the popular idea that they held something forbidden.

Prague, once

From September 20, 2007, to March 9, 2008, the book was on loan to the Klementinum in Prague, shown open at the Heavenly City and the Devil. Czech Television counted just over 61,000 visitors, and the book flew home on a military aircraft. The Swedish library told the broadcaster it was the very last time the book would travel.

In Stockholm, it now lies closed. The library says years of being displayed open damaged it. Its case, installed in 2018, holds it at 19°C (about 66°F) and 47 percent humidity, and a screen beside it pages through every leaf, the Devil included.

The Codex Gigas is in the Treasury Room, two floors down in the library's underground Annex. Entry is free. The library publishes no separate hours for the Treasury Room. The building opens Monday through Thursday 9am to 7pm, Friday 9am to 6pm, and Saturday 11am to 3pm, and is closed on Sundays. Hours are shorter from June through August, and holiday exceptions are posted on the library's hours page.

Because the original is closed, the Devil page can only be seen on the screen beside the case. The library runs no public guided tours and points visitors to its visitor app instead.