Monday, April 23, 2007

Codex Gigas - the Devil's Bible


More than 350 years after it was looted from Prague by the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years' War, a famous medieval text will return to its native land, though only temporarily.
The Codex Gigas often referred to by its sexier name, the Devil's Bible should be on display to the public in the National Library by early 2007, according to library director Vlastimil Jezek. The text is aptly, if uncreatively, named Codex Gigas (Giant Book) for its sheer immensity in size. "The manuscript is enormous the biggest medieval book known," says Miroslava Hejnová, director of the department of historical and music resources at the National Library. "It is called the eighth wonder of the world."
While eighth wonder may be a bit of an overstatement, the text was not conveniently designed for the modern reader on the go. The Codex Gigas is roughly 90 by 50 by 22 centimeters in size (a whopping 36 by 20 by 9 inches). Moreover, it was written on donkey hides 160, to be exact so it weighs in at 75 kilograms (about 165 pounds). The text is said to take two men to lift not what you would call a light read. ( more... )

1 comment:

  1. DER SPIEGEL 17/2007 - April 23, 2007
    URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,479791,00.html
    Parts of the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus -- which includes the world's earliest complete New Testament -- are scattered between Leipzig, London and St. Petersburg. Now researchers want to digitize the fragments and publish the whole volume on the Internet. But controversy still rages over the proper ownership of the relic.

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