Content of the Codex Gigas

Half of the Codex Gigas is made up of the Old and New Testaments. The rest of the manuscript is made up of other writings.

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The long texts:
History and medicine

The short texts:
Magic and scribblings

 

A bible full of knowledge

Christianity's most important book is the Bible. The other texts in the Codex Gigas were carefully selected to complement it. Together they offered knowledge of Jewish history, the world, the art of healing and the history of Bohemia.

The medieval Bible

The medieval Latin Bible was not standardised, and its contents differed from that of a modern Bible in several respects. Some versions consisted of several volumes, others of a single volume. Some were very large, others very small. The Latin translation of the books of the Bible was sometimes the same as that found in today's Bible, but was in some cases of an older type. The order in which the books were arranged varied as well.

Missing pages

One part of the Codex Gigas has been lost because the pages were cut out of the manuscript: The Holy Rule of Saint Benedict, a tutorial on the basics of monastic life written in the 6th century.

Bibles that contained all the books of the Bible in a single volume were rare, and did not become the norm until the 13th century.
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