May 7, 1697

Posted on May 7, 2019 by Joel Byers

On May 7, 1697, the royal castle in Stockholm, Sweden was destroyed by fire. Inside that castle’s large library resided the Codex Gigas, which was at that time and still is the world’s largest medieval illuminated manuscript. The Codex Gigas is also known as the “Devil’s Bible’. This hand written and hand illustrated book weighs 165 lbs. An unknown person threw this extremely heavy book out of one of the libraries windows, thereby preserving it and saving it from destruction. The book initially contained 320 vellum sheets, but after it was recovered, it was found that ten of the sheets were missing. No one knows what information or history those sheets contained, but it is speculated that those sheets contained the only written example of the apocalyptic text known as ‘The Devil’s Prayer’.

[Facebook] [MySpace] [Twitter] More »

About Joel Byers

Born in North Georgia and educated at some very fine public institutions. Real education started after graduating from college and then getting married and raising two boys. Has the ability to see the funny and absurd in most things and will always remark on it, even if it means getting the stink-eye from his victims.
This entry was posted in 17th Century, Historical Facts and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *