Forbidden History - The Devil's Bible | The Visual Edition

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

In this episode, we follow the 800-year history of a medieval Bible manuscript, famous for its giant illustration of the Devil contained within its pages. We recount its journey across Europe as it changes hands between emperors and queens and the history it sees along the way—as well as the cursed legends that follow it. Introducing Forbidden History: The Visual Edition, revisiting stories from our archive with imagery and footage that bring the people, places and mysteries to life. Now available on our main feed, it’s a richer, more immersive way to enjoy the stories you know and discover those you may have missed. Cast List: Dominic Selwood: A historian, barrister, bestselling author, novelist and frequent contributor to national newspapers including The Independent, The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph Janina Ramirez: A cultural historian, broadcaster and author based at the University of Oxford Tony McMahon: A former BBC news producer, author, print journalist and historian Elin Andersson: A specialist in ancient manuscripts and an expert on the Devil’s Bible, based at the National Library of Sweden Scott Sophos: Prague-based historian and teacher Dr Andrew Boakye: Lecturer in Religions & Theology at the University of Manchester  Peter Stanford: Writer, editor, journalist and presenter, known for his biographies and writings on religion and ethics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Devil's Bible is one of the most striking books in existence. There is a view that the Bible itself is cursed. Hidden in Northern Europe is one of the world's most mysterious artifacts. Stockholm, Sweden. The National Library houses many chronicles from this country's history. But within its treasury room sits its most prized tone. The Codex Giga, also known as the Devil. Bible's Bible.

Eelan Anderson is a specialist in ancient manuscripts and an expert on this unique book. This is definitely one of the strangest books in our collection here. Its origins are covered in mystery for whom was it made, who paid for this, why would they make such an enormous manuscript? Already in the Middle Ages, this book was known as one of the seven wonders of the world. Although it now resides in Sweden, this mammoth manuscript originated in the Czech Republic, formerly known as Bohemia.

It was plundered from Prague by the Victoria Swedes in the 1600s during the 30 years' war. Technically, the Devil's Bible, also formerly known as the Codex Jesus, is what we consider to be the largest illuminated manuscript that we have on record. An illuminated manuscript is something something that would have been worked on for decades by a series of illustrators and monks.

In terms of its size, it's three foot long, and it weighs 175 pounds. It's got 310 sheets of vellum, which may not sound like that much to contain all those texts, but of course, they're very large, so they can contain a lot of writing. And it's one of the more expensive books, and you know that because it's got pictures in it.

It actually has five pictures and 77 beautifully illustrated capital letters. In addition to containing a complete Bible, this book also holds medical texts, histories, and encyclopedias. But on page 290, there appears the image that gives this book its terrible nickname. This is an image of the devil and hell that is meant to terrify. This devil is a monster. He has two arms and legs, but four fingers and four toes on each.

He has red horns and he has two red tongues coming out of either side of his mouth, indicating his duplicity and that he is the father of lies. The image itself is very unusual. The devil is shown rather humanoid. Often when you see images of the devil that come from that period, from about the 13th century, he has a tail, he looks often scaly or furry. But in the Devil's Bible, he has a very human torso. Then you have these long claws that come out from the hands and from the feet.

You could almost feel those talons coming out of the screen, I'm to kind of pull you in. In that same way, the devil's always waiting around the corner to seize you. They're there. And then he's got his extraordinary, nasty, little, meady eyes. There's no basis for the depiction of the devil, as you see in the Devil's Bible, in the actual. biblical text itself. These notions of the devil as a demon with horns and a pitchfork

and a forked tail is really based on legend and on medieval ideas of ghouls and goblins. The library rarely removes the devil's Bible from its protective glass case. But why? Many have wondered whether or not the devil's Bible has supernatural or magical powers, particularly, because after that image of the devil, that full-page image, there are a set of spells and magical formula. What on earth are they doing inside a Bible, if not, to counteract the influence and the power of Satan? The question is that given the history of the devil's Bible and the things that it's done to people, Is it actually in that glass case to protect us? But who could have written such an extraordinary book?

The answer is toward the end of this huge manuscript. The book was written between 1204 and 1230, and most people think that one of the names in the book, Herman Inclusus, is the name of the author. He was a monk, and Inclusus means shut in, so he was some kind of recluse. Herman the recluse was a Benedictine monk in the small bohemian monastery of Padla Zichae.

As the story goes, he betrayed his vows and was condemned to death. And he was sentenced to be walled up, immured for his sins. And he begged that if he could create the most beautiful book in 24 hours, that he'd be spared this punishment. Around midnight, he realized that there was no way he was ever going to finish this book, and that is where the cursed aspect comes into it. Apparently, he called upon the devil himself. And he asks the devil, complete this manuscript for me, in return, you shall have my soul.

Miraculously, the next day the manuscript is complete. We might even suspect that that very arresting image of the devil was a kind of thank you note from Herman the recluse to his lord and master. Satan. This legend is supported by some startling facts. The book itself has been examined by experts. There is absolutely no error in the writing of the manuscript. Very often in the illuminated manuscripts, you will find blotted ink, you will find misspelled words. The handwriting in the Codex Giga is uniform and was done by the same person, which, lends a bit of credibility to the cursed legend.

Forensic handwriting experts have assessed all the pages in this manuscript and have found that it would have taken one person up to 30 years to complete. But what's so extraordinary is the handwriting doesn't change. If you or I tried to sit down and write out all of the Bible and we started when we were in our 20s and we finished when we were in our 50s, Our handwriting would change.

Why does the handwriting not change in this across the piece? The Czech Republic, formerly known as Bohemia, is the reported birthplace of the devil's Bible. This is a country where stories of the devil hide around every corner. 30 miles north of the capital Prague lies Huska Castle. This remote fortress dates from the same century as the devil's Bible.

Bible. Local historian Tori Burton has come to investigate the secrets this castle may hold. The story here at Hosco actually begins way back in about 870 when there was originally a wooden structure built in the forest. Crack started to appear underneath the wooden structure in the rock and so they built a second castle made of stone. In order to control what was coming out of the crack below it, The modern stone castle was built here around 1270, not long after the devil's Bible was written. Huska Castle is a bit of an anomaly because it doesn't have many of the features you'd expect of a castle. It's not fortified. And where you would expect all of the decoration, the protection, on the outside of a castle, in this case, it seems to be on the inside.

So instead of keeping people out, is it actually trying to keep something in? When the stone cracked, unfortunately, evil started to spill out. Winged creatures, leathery winged chimera, sulphur, gases were spewinged out of here and terrorising the surrounding area. Farmland was failing, animals were sick, animals were going missing, and it all seemed to be because of this huge fracture, which seemed to be leading directly to the gates of hell. So the second structure that was built here to serve as a plug

to what we believe could be the actual gateway to hell itself. The builders of this chapel left clues on the walls about what they had witnessed. So the chapel here was built with obviously very clear intentions and frescoes on the walls here illustrate what might happen if say this hole was to open up again. We have here a centaur. A female centaur that's left-handed pointing an arrow at a human being.

Left-handedness was associated with evil as were female centaurs. We have Archangel Michael weighing souls. The devil here trying to influence his decisions by sneakily pulling down the left side of his scale here. The gate to hell is now covered, but what did the builders of this castle see? down there. Prisoners in Huska Castle were given a rather unattractive offer. On the one hand, they could be tortured or spend a long time in a cell,

or they could commute their sentence by agreeing to be lowered into this pit. One man who was lowered down was heard screaming and wailing, brought back up within seconds, and his hair had turned white. His eyes were full of terror, and he'd gone completely insane. Whether or not they witnessed hell itself down there, I'm not sure. There's a lot of suggestion that all of this is just stories, and there are perfectly reasonable scientific explanations for all of these smells and destruction that happened

around the time of the hole being open. Either way, I would not want to open it up. I don't think there's any need to look down there. I wouldn't take any risks. The Hellgate at Huska Castle may or may not be real. But with all these reports of hellish things going on, could the devil have stalked these lands in the 13th century? It's interesting that we have these two devil stories from 13th century bohemia,

the devil's Bible and Huska Castle. But one needs to remember that the devil was one of the church's best illustrative stories of how not to live your life. The devil actually would have been quite important to people in 13th century Europe, largely because this was an era when people still believed that misfortune, any kind of bad luck, illness, disease may still have had some kind of demonic origin. So it might have been a curse or some kind of punishment for something that you'd done. So in many ways, fear of the devil was no different from fear of God.

There does seem to be some quite esoteric and distinctive things, in the architecture, the manuscript art, in Bohemia in the 13th and 14th century. It does seem to have elements of black magic perhaps, necromancy. But I think it is because of the geography of this region. It's a very wooded, forested area. Your first Spotify ad is just a few clicks away. Launch a campaign today in minutes with Spotify Ads Manager. ads manager.

The legend of Huska being a doorway to hell did not end in the Middle Ages. In 1938, with World War II looming on the horizon, this area of what was then Czechoslovakia was annexed by the Nazis. The leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, was drawn to Huska Castle and its dark tales of unnatural power. Himmler had a very big interest in the occult. He was fascinated by the power that could be harnessed from evil, and of course maybe that would help the Nazi movement.

So this castle was chosen because of its connection to the gateway to hell. They use these underground spaces for torture, human experiments, which they believed would help somehow harness this power further. rumor is that the Nazis use this place as an incubator facility for the Labensborn program. This program sought to encourage the birth of children who the Nazis considered racially pure, often at the expense of the local Slavic population. Whatever the truth, all records were destroyed in the Nazis' flight from the Soviet Red Army in 1945. But just 10 miles up the road from Huska. There lies another depiction of hell.

The devil's heads are a little unlike anything else you've seen, but in some ways they look like large, frightening, malevolent, melting faces. Gigantic limestone carvings of heads, and they're 27 feet tall. And just to put that into scale perspective, it rivals the carvings of the American presidents on Mount Rushmore. What is the true story behind these strange monuments? Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, gave the world the devil's Bible. Here too lie the grotesque devil's heads, carvings that have long towered over the local population. Mind me have the description of the devil in Dante's Inferno,

this hairy, goat-like beast of a giant that's encased in ice with this three-faced head eating sinners out of his multiple mouths. The devil's heads were carved in the 19th century, so there's no mystery about where they came from. Perhaps the mystery is what they represent. The man who carved these grotesque faces was the sculptor Watslav Levy, who worked as a chef in a nearby town. What we're seeing here is actually the artist's impression of his own tortured,

trapped in Seoul, that he was waiting to get out with all of those years working as a chef. And this is the beginning of his works. So really, these big heads are nothing more than very posh, very old graffiti. There is no doubt that the devil has maintained a firm grip on the minds of the people of this land, just as it did in the 13th century.

Written on the very first page of the devil's Bible is a list. Indicating the manuscript was created 100 miles from the devil's heads in a monastery known as Padla Zichae. Yet the very birthplace of this Bible was destroyed not long after the book was completed, furthering the legend of its curse. By the early 1400s, this region was in the midst of religious turmoil. Bohemia was one of those parts of Europe where the Catholic Church struggled to retain control.

It was a fulcrum of heresy. You have this extraordinary... ordinary figure in Bohemia, Jan Hus, who was a great reformer of the church in lots of ways. He felt it was corrupt. He felt it had lost sight of what was being written in the scriptures. The Hussites agitated among the people to reject the Catholic Church and its teachings and its priests and its pope. The monastery of Padelezié that gave the world the devil's Bible was burned during these early religious wars. But fortunately, the Pardlizsche, that gave the world the devil's Bible, was burned during these early religious wars.

But fortunately, the Pard was burned. the popularity of this book would save it from a fiery demise. The way monasteries made their money was people going on pilgrimage, walking to them. So if you had the choice between going to X monastery down the road, which had a pretty small Bible with all the familiar illustrations in it, or going to the monastery with the devil's Bible was drawn, which has this extraordinary picture of the devil in there, and it's really, really big, you know, you might be more tempted to go there.

The grand Sedlitz monastery, seeing the value of the devil's Bible, acquired it from Padla Zichae before its destruction. The Bible's new home was fantastically wealthy, but Sedlets had a macabre secret. Medieval monasteries could grow very wealthy, and one of the main ways they did this was through burying people. If a monastery could attract local wealthy people to come and be buried in their graveyard, they would require that on that person's death,

they gave their goods to the monastery. Sedlets found a particularly good way of doing this in 1270 when their abbot, Abbott Henry, went to Jerusalem and brought back some sacred holy earth from Golgotha, from where Christ was crucified, and he spread this in the monastery graveyard. After that, everybody in the region wanted to be buried at Sedlets. Death and destruction continued to follow the devil's Bible.

This time on an unprecedented scale. In the middle of the 14th century, the bubonic plague struck the kingdom and wiped out half of Europe's population. On that event, said it simply didn't have enough space for the bodies. So a decision was made to remove bodies from the existing burial ground and combine them with current ones and create an ossary, which is where the bones would be stored.

The remains of 30,000 individuals were actually thought, ought to have been deposited here. And you can imagine over the centuries, this might have gotten a little untidy. The monks of Sedlitz decided to reorganize the bones and created one of the most spectacular yet gruesome chapels in the world. The monks obviously had a lot of time on their hands,

and they rearranged human bones from the cemetery into chandeliers and one half-blind monk. Used a lot of the bones to create these kind of pyramid-like structures. And as a result of this, rather morbid labour, apparently his sight was restored. Sedlitz-Ossary is quite unlike almost anywhere else on the planet. It's a cathedral of death that's been curated for 700 years. It's quite unlike anything you'll ever see.

Osiris are a curiosity for us today, I think. We've become very disconnected in the modern age with the dead. So go back to earlier centuries, earlier millennia. it would not be uncommon to have the remains of your ancestor, for example a skull perhaps, displayed in your home. When you see them displayed in an osseury, they are acting as Memento Moris. The concept is central to Christianity.

The idea that while you are alive, be aware you will be dead and look to your soul. If you want forgiveness, if you want to be resurrected in heaven, in a wonderful state, or you want to go to heaven, you make that final decision during your life. The Devil's Bible has passed through many hands across the centuries. It was sent from Sedlitz to the famous Brevnov Monastery in the Bohemian capital of Prague. It stayed in the hands of the monks for three centuries until it came to the attention

of an important collector of the world's most significant religious artifacts. the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II. Some say that Rudolph the second was a combination of an absolutely brilliant ruler and a bit of a madman. He suffered from what was referred to then as melancholia or what we would refer to as clinical depression. Rudolph was an avid collector.

He would isolate himself among his collection. He would stare at a piece of work for hours, lost in thought and his melancholy. Rudolph was one of the most colorful rulers in Europe, and controversially moved the capital of the Holy Roman Empire from Vienna to Prague. But in his desire to make this city the cultural and scientific center of Europe, he strayed into dangerous territory. His collection consisted of telescopes, machinery, what would be considered very early computers,

but he was also incredibly fascinated by the occult sciences. He welcomed all manner of free thinkers to his court, including, which was very unusual then, rabbis, He loved Jewish mysticism. He was a magnet for alchemists, and alchemy was a very interesting discipline. It was not just about, you know, changing base metal into gold.

It was a spiritual exercise. It was about transforming the soul. Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor, is actually a really important person in European history. Because of the time he was living, his collection and the sorts of studies that were undertaken on it, formed a basis for what became the scientific revolution. Always looking for a new piece to add to his collection,

Rudolph soon turned his attention to the treasures of the nearby Brevnov Monastery. Incredibly important people wanted the Devil's Bible. Why would they want it? Well, because it is extraordinary. There is no other manuscript like it. It's size, it's wealth, its beauty, it's so beautifully illuminated. And then you've got the little aspect that may be owning this thing, having it in your collection, could act as a protection against the devil. Rudolph was determined to get his hands on the devil's Bible, and given the fact that that monastery in Bohemia was conveniently within the Holy Roman Empire, he basically bullied the monks into handing it over. Brevnov Monastery loaned the Devil's Bible to the Emperor, but since then, he was bullied the devil's Bible to the Emperor.

soon his empire would begin to crumble. The latter part of Rudolf's reign was racked with revolt and war with the Ottoman Empire. He became a paranoid recluse, and his titles were slowly stripped away by his brother, Matthias. ...blamed his downfall on many, many people. But one thing he did was to blame the people of Prague. He said to the people of Prague, I brought you this glory, and this is how you treat me.

And many, many people say that the curse against Prague upon Rudolph's deathbed is what led to the 300 years of conflict following his death, including the 30-years war. The 30-years war saw bloody warfare between most of the great powers of Europe. with up to 8 million casualties. In 1648, troops of the Swedish Empire, led by Queen Christina, besieged Prague,

and they went straight for Rudolph's treasured collection. The Swedes looted Prague, where this Bible was kept, and they sought out libraries and colleges, private collections to find books to bring back to Sweden. Sweden. It was a very planned attack. They knew exactly what they were looking for. Rudolf II and Queen Christina were essentially very modern monarchs. They were openly bisexual. They were open to all kinds of ideas. They were extremely tolerant and learned and they both wanted to get their hands on the devil's Bible.

Why? Maybe because it challenged a consensus. Maybe because it was a bit dangerous. The Devil's Bible was one of the many objects sacked by Queen Christina's army during the Thirty Years' War. And the weight of the Bible was so great that legend states that it took two of Queen Christina's soldiers to carry it back to Stockholm. But as it traveled north, many people who encountered the Devil's Bible would experience a similar fate to those who had suffered before. Why the Devil's Bible was written has confounded experts for centuries. But we do know where it has been in its life, thanks to the list of records kept in its pages. After the victorious Queen Christina took the Bible from Prague in 1648,

it was kept in the Royal Library at the Trey Cronor Castle in Stockholm. Queen Christina was an incredibly well-educated woman who had a habit of looting other people's libraries during military campaigns. And she was so clever, so wise, that she was known as the Minerva of the North after the Roman goddess of wisdom. She was what you might call a woman of power.

She was educated, and she had a mania for collecting books. But in 1654, after 22 years on the throne, Christina made a momentous decision. She was for a long time a controversial figure in Sweden because she converted to Catholicism, as Sweden was a strictly Protestant country for hundreds of years. Renouncing the throne of the staunchly Protestant nation, Christina left Sweden to live the rest of her days in Rome as the guest of the Pope. Before she left, she took many of her beloved books, but not the devil's Bible.

You might wonder why Queen Christina decided not to take the Devil's Bible with her, the very center of Christianity. But maybe that's the point that the Pope at the Catholic Church didn't want what was essentially a satanic authored Bible in the Vatican. The Devil's Bible remained in Stockholm, but the violent history of this book had followed it from Bohemia to Sweden. The Devil's Bible was kept at the Royal Library in the Royal Council of Stockholm. And in 1697 there was a huge fire breaking out, destroying the whole building. And this affected the Royal Library and the Royal Archives as well. And in that library, there were around 24,500 books and 14,000 manuscripts, and only a quarter of them survived.

The Trey Kronor Castle was destroyed and then replaced with the Baroque Stockholm Palace. The devil's Bible itself was saved, but not without cost. The story goes that stuff threw it out of the window. And unfortunately, maybe because the book is cursed, it lands on somebody's head outside, seriously injuring them. After its incredible escape from the flames, the Bible traveled between various places in Stockholm until it came to rest where it is today in the National Library. But stories of demonic possession continued into the modern era. In the 1850s, there was a story published about a caretaker at the library who fell asleep at work.

And when he woke up at midnight, he saw the devil's Bible whirling around in the air leading a crazy dance of books around it. he lost his mind and never came back to his senses. Since the devil's Bible was encased in glass in the treasury room, there have been no other reported incidents. What became of this book's author is unknown. However, legend of his making a deal with the devil is not without precedent. Over the centuries, many have felt it necessary

to call to the bowels of hell for assistance. The idea of making a pact a deal with the devil is ancient. The concept that there is good and evil, demons and angels, and that aligning yourself with one or other will empower you during your life is a tantalizing prospect for anyone. It's fascinating that there have always been stories of people selling their souls to the devil,

And this goes back right to the very earliest days of the church. We see it throughout the medieval period. Even a Pope, like Pope Sylvester II, was said to have entered a deal with the devil in order to be able to take the papal throne. Through the medieval period, the witch trials, of course, they were all claimed to be in league with the devil, right the way through to modern times.

All the legends of Pacts with the Devil raise a pertinent question. Are these merely stories, or could they be real? I think what these stories do is they They act almost like social parables. They're ways of suggesting that the pursuit of something good in life can sometimes become so all-consuming that it ends up becoming destructive. In 2007, the journey of the Devil's Bible would come full circle when it was loaned to the Czech

government and displayed in the National Library in Prague. The exhibition attracted thousands of people. history lovers have been waiting and anticipating the return of the devil's Bible literally for centuries. But visitors were only allowed to look at it for a maximum of 10 minutes. I think we're still so interested in this book because somewhere deep down in the human condition, there is always going to be this sense that there are just some things which are too terrible to contemplate having emerged from a human soul or from a human mind. It's a way of personifying our worst fears.

But over 800 years after it was written in mysterious circumstances, what is the truth behind the stories of this book's demonic curse? The human mind is incredibly fertile and loves imagining stories around unusual things. The devil's Bible is genuinely very unusual, so it should come as no surprise that there are a whole raft of stories and legends that surround it. And that may even be why it was created in the first place. One can well imagine that the illustrator who sat there with the Bible with a blank page on his scriptorium desk

thought a full-size devil will really get people talking. And it has. The idea that the devil's Bible is cursed connects to certain events that have taken place around it. But really, that it survives at all is quite a miracle. Most manuscripts are from the first. the medieval period have been lost, reused, turned into scrap. That it has survived as extraordinary,

that things will have happened around it is inevitable. Some people throughout history have claimed that this book is cursed. It's not strange when you think about this image of the devil that sets the imagination running. But I think this book has been extremely blessed, because we still have it after 800 years. Today we keep the devil's Bible in a secure case,

not because it's cursed, but because we have to monitor the environment and keep it safe. Could the purpose of the devil's Bible be similar to the ossuary at its previous home in Sedlets? Might this image of the devil be some sort of momento mori to serve as a warning to 13th century Bohemia? Bohemia would have had traditions, folk, laws, legends that go back,

into pre-Christian times connected with the natural world. Things like the Osuri, the Gates to Hell, the Devil's Bible, we're actually seeing a Christianity that is adapting earlier, older, pagan ideas and formulating them in their own specific way. If you live in a society that's wrapped by war, armies charging through your land, plagues, racking things, your children are all dying early,

you have a much more apocalyptic view of life, really. And I think in the medieval mind, the world split very easily between good and bad. You could imagine that poor people in the Middle Ages led such desperate, appalling lives that many of them actually worshipped both God and the devil. You know, they were hedging their bets in the hope that one or the other would help them out.

And this was condemned by the church as blasphemy and punishable by death, but it didn't stop people doing it. You see, people point to the picture of the devil and say, that just shows you. It is a demonic book. But on the very opposite page is a depiction of the city of God, of heaven.

Heaven on the left and the devil hell on the right. It's the core duality at the heart of Christianity. It's salvation and it's perdition. It's just served right up for the reader. What's it going to be? You can either lead the good life and go to heaven or look what waits for you in hell. So is that all this book is?

A grandiose attempt to scare medieval Christians into doing the right thing? I think the devil's Bible is extraordinary. I don't go in necessarily for this idea of a legend associated with the devil. I think there's a very obvious reason why that image occurs where it does. But I do think there is something extraordinary

about the fact this thing got made at all. It would have taken so much scholarship, so much dedication, so much patience to create it. It is an extraordinary achievement. Debate will continue over the origins of the Devil's Bible, written eight centuries ago in Bohemia. It seems this mighty book will fascinate us for many more centuries to come.