Wonderfully Weird & Ingenious Medieval BooksĪyun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. How Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beautiful, Centuries-Old Craftīehold the Beautiful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketchbook: A Window Into How Illuminated Manuscripts Were Made (1494) You’ll also find a lot of interesting historical detail: relocations resulting from the Hussite Wars and the Thirty Years’ War, a close call with fire, and of course the attendant legends.īegin your explorations of the Codex Gigas here. You can have a look for yourself on the Library’s website, where the entire work is viewable in digitized form.Ĭertainly the devil is a great place to start, though his appearance may strike you as a bit comical, given all the fuss.įor viewers unsure of where to start, the library has compiled a guide to the highlights. Its uniform size would’ve required the scribe to rule each page before forming the letters, after which 100 lines a day would have been a reasonable goal. Experts at National Library of Sweden, where the Codex Gigas has come to a rest after centuries of adventures and misadventures, identify it as carolingian minuscule, a popular and highly legible style of medieval script. The actual lettering does seem to come down to a single scribe with very neat handwriting. In addition to a complete Bible, the “Devil’s Bible” includes an encyclopedia, medical information, a calendar of saints’ days, Flavius Josephus’ histories The Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities and some practical advice on exorcising evil spirits. More likely, the work was spread out over 25 to 30 years, with various authors contributing to the different sections.
Benedict’s rules for monastic life were literally cut from the manuscript at an unknown date.)Ī National Geographic documentary concluded that the sprawling manuscript would’ve required a minimum of 5 years of full-time, single-minded labor. It is believed that the message intended here is to show the rewards of a God-fearing life on one page and the horrors of a sinful life on the other.Weighing in at 165 lbs, this 3-foot tall bound whale required the skins of 160 donkeys, at the rate of two pages per donkey. It was common in the Middle Ages to leave book spreads on display to convey a message to those who saw it. This has been interpreted as the Heavenly Jerusalem mentioned in the Book of Revelation. One of the most famous myths is that the scribe traded his soul to the Prince of Darkness so that he could complete the book in one night.ġ0) On the opposite page of the portrait of the Devil is an image of the Heavenly City. It is believed that the Devil wears ermine in this image to demonstrate that he is the Prince of Darkness.ĩ) There are several myths surrounding the creation of The Devil’s Bible, and they all involve the Devil. He is naked apart from an ermine loincloth. The Devil is crouching and facing forward. The image is very big-nineteen inches tall.
Here, the Devil is portrayed alone on the page. Portraits of the Devil were common during the Middle Ages but this particular portrait is unique. National Library of Sweden, Codex Gigas, or The Devil’s Bible, The Devil, 290 r.Ĩ) The Devil’s Bible has been given its name because of a full-size portrait of the Devil.