The Codex Gigas is the largest extant medieval (1200~) illuminated manuscript in the world, at a length of 92 cm (36 in). Very large illuminated bibles were a typical feature of Romanesque monastic book production, but even within this group, the page-size of the Codex Gigas is noted as exceptional. The manuscript is also known as the Devil's Bible, due to its highly unusual full-page portrait of Satan, and the "legend" surrounding its creation.
According to legend, the Codex was created by Herman the Recluse in the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice near Chrudim in the Czech Republic.
A National Geographic documentary included interviews with manuscript experts who argued that certain evidence (handwriting analysis and a credit to Hermann Inclusus – "Herman the Recluse") indicates the manuscript was the work of a single scribe.
According to one version of a legend that was already recorded in the Middle Ages, the scribe was a monk who broke his monastic vows and was sentenced to be walled up alive. In order to avoid this harsh penalty he promised to create in one night a book to glorify the monastery forever, including all human knowledge. Near midnight, he became sure that he could not complete this task alone so he made a special prayer, not addressed to God but to the fallen angel Lucifer, asking him to help him finish the book in exchange for his soul. The devil completed the manuscript and the monk added the devil's picture out of gratitude for his aid.
Another version of the story (and more likely in my opinion but it's a bit of both) says that yes, Herman had committed outrageous sins (again not specified) and yes, he was walled up, but this time the punishment was simply that he starve to death. However, Herman persuaded the abbot to keep him alive for a year and promised that in that time he would create a book that would glorify the monastery for ever. If Herman did so, said the abbot, he could live.
Herman the Recluse wrote day after day, night after night. As midnight of the last night of the year approached, he realised he was nowhere near the end of the book. Death at dawn awaited. So the enterprising monk blazed a trail others would later follow (Faust, Robert Leroy Johnson, etc) and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a finished book.
In tests to recreate the work, it is estimated that reproducing only the calligraphy, without the illustrations or embellishments, would have taken twenty years of non-stop writing.
This in my opinion is one of the evidence of the works of Lucifer/ satan.
