The brothers agreed and the monk set about his herculean task. It wasn’t long, however, before he realized its impossibility. With midnight approaching and the prospect of his horrendous execution looming ever nearer, the monk bowed his head and prayed for some divine assistance. But instead of addressing God, this lapsed monk called out to Satan, offering him his soul in exchange for the completion of the manuscript.
The Antichrist duly obliged. Snapping his clawed fingers, he instantaneously filled the manuscript with over 620 pages of excellent Vulgate Latin and ornate illustrations, saving the monk’s (mortal) life. According to one legend, the monk then inserted the portrait of his Lord and helper as a token of eternal gratitude. According to another, the portrait was the illustrative signature of the Devil himself.
The devil we see in the manuscript is portrayed completely naked apart from an ermine loincloth. While to us the loincloth may resemble a diaper, medieval audiences would have more easily understood its significance: ermine represented royalty, clearly identifying the figure as the prince of darkness. On the other side of the page from the Devil is an illustration of the Heavenly City.
Because it was practice for manuscripts to be left open, it would have been visible to anybody passing by. Scholars believe that even the illiterate would have been able to take something from the simplicity of this message: live a pious Christian life and the rewards of the Eternal City await you; stray from the righteous path and you’ll be with the Antichrist and his minions on the right. There’s something disconcerting about this interpretation though. As some people have pointed out over the ages, the Heavenly City is conspicuously empty.
The Contents of the Devil’s Bible
So what was the “sum of human knowledge” that the monk (or indeed the devil) chose to enclose within the manuscript? Because this was the Middle Ages, it inevitably began with the Bible. The beginning of the manuscript starts with Latin translations of the entire Old and New Testament—admittedly strange choices, you must admit, if the tome was indeed composed by Satan. In addition to scripture, the Devil’s Bible also contains a number of Christian-friendly secular works.
Immediately following the New Testament are Flavius Josephus’s Jewish History and Jewish Wars: two first century AD texts that provide independent accounts of Jesus’s existence. After Josephus comes the encyclopedia of St. Isidor of Seville (560 – 636 AD), known to some as the patron saint of the Internet because of the extensive information he pooled together, and Cosmas’s work of local history, the “Chronicle of Bohemia” (1045 – 1125).
Alongside these major texts are a number of minor ones. These include medical treatise from Hippocrates (from whom medical professionals get the Hippocratic Oath) and Theophilus, as well as subjects ranging from “how to perform an exorcism” and “how to do penitence” to “how to perform a list of magic spells”. In fact, the manuscript even includes two eternally useful spells for how to identify and catch a thief.