Original subtitles

[narrator] The Devil's Bible,

a giant manuscript, which has evoked fear in those

who witness its power.

the Devil's Bible is one of the most striking,

unusual and memorable books in existence.

[narrator] Written in the medieval Czech Republic,

in times of plague, darkness and despair,

it features a huge picture of evil incarnate.

But the truth behind who wrote this book and why

has confounded experts for centuries.

[Tori] "A hole to hell," they call it.

Winged creatures, the smell of sulfur, obnoxious gases.

Animals were going sick, farmlands was dying.

[narrator] Terrible tragedy has followed this book

wherever it has been.

There is a view that the Bible itself is cursed.

[Andy] There is always gonna be this sense

that there are just something which are too terrible

to contemplate having emerged from a human soul.

[narrator] Is there any truth behind the stories of its malevolent power?

[narrator] Hidden in Northern Europe

is one of the world's most mysterious artefacts.

[narrator] Stockholm, Sweden.

The National Library houses many chronicles from this country's history,

but within its treasury room, sits its most prized tome...

the Codex Gigas,

also known as The Devil's Bible.

Elin Andersson is a specialist in ancient manuscripts

and an expert on this unique book.

[Elin] 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?

[Elin] Already in the middle ages, this book was known

as one of the seven wonders of the world.

[narrator] 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 victorious Swedes

in the 1600s during the Thirty Years' War.

[Scott] Technically, the Devil's Bible,

also formerly known as the Codex Gigas,

it is what we consider to be the largest

illuminated manuscript that we have on record.

[Scott] An illuminated manuscript is something

that would've been worked on for decades

by a series of illustrators and monks.

[Dominic] In terms of its size, it's 3-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.

[narrator] 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.

[Janina] 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.

[Peter] You can almost feel those talons

coming out of the screen at you

to, kind of, pull you in.

In that same way,

the devil is always waiting around the corner

to seize you.

They're there.

And then he's got his extraordinary, nasty, little beady eyes.

[Andy] 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.

[narrator] The library rarely removes The Devil's Bible

from its protective glass case.

But why?

[Tony] Many have wondered whether or not The Devil's Bible

has supernatural magical powers,

particularly because after that image of the devil,

that full page image,

there are a set of spells and magical formula.

And 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?

[narrator] 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.

[narrator] Herman the Recluse was a Benedictine monk

in the small Bohemian monastery of Podlazice.

As the story goes, he betrayed his vows

and was condemned to death.

[Dominic] 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 be spared this punishment.

[Scott] 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.

[Janina] 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.

[narrator] This legend is supported

by some startling facts.

[Scott] 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 Gigas is uniform

and was done by the same person,

which lends a bit of credibility to the cursed legend.

[narrator] Forensic handwriting experts

have assessed all the pages in this manuscript

and have found that it would've 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?

[narrator] 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.

Thirty miles north of the capital Prague

lies Houska Castle.

This remote fortress

dates from the same century as The Devil's Bible.

Local historian, Tori Burton, has come to investigate the secrets

this castle may hold.

The story here at Houska actually begins way back in about 870

when there was originally a wooden structure built in the forest here.

[Tori] Cracks 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.

[narrator] The modern stone castle was built here around 1270,

not long after The Devil's Bible was written.

Could whatever is contained in these walls

be a clue to the origin of The Devil's Bible?

[narrator] The Devil's Bible was written in 13th century Bohemia,

now part of the Czech Republic.

At the same time, in the same kingdom,

Houska Castle was constructed over a mysterious fracture

that appeared in the bedrock.

The castle's chapel was built directly over this crack.

[Janina] Houska 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.

Sulfur gases were spewing out of here

and terrorizing 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 right here.

[narrator] The builders of this chapel

left clues on the walls about what they had witnessed.

[Tori] So, the chapel here was built

with, obviously, very clear intensions

and frescos 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 a arrow at a human being.

Left-handedness was associated with evil, as was female centaurs.

And here we have Archangel Michael weighing souls.

And you can see the devil here trying to influence his decisions

by sneakily pulling down the left side of his scale here.

[narrator] The gate to hell is now covered,

but what did the builders of this castle see down there?

[Tony] Prisoners in Houska 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.

[Tori] 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 opened.

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.

[narrator] The hell gate at Houska 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?

[Dominic] It's interesting that we have these two devil stories

from 13th century Bohemia.

The Devil's Bible and Houska 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.

[Andy] The devil actually would've 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've 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 the fear of God.

[Janina] 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.

[narrator] The legend of Houska 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 Houska Castle and its dark tales of unnatural power.

[Tori] 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 with the Nazi movement.

So this castle was chosen because of its connection to the gateway to hell.

They used these underground spaces for torture, human experiments

which, they believed, would help somehow harness this power further.

[narrator] Another rumor is that the Nazi's used this place

as an incubator facility for the Lebensborn Program.

This program sought to encourage the birth of children

who the Nazi's considered racially pure,

often at the expense of the local Slavic population.

Whatever the truth,

all records were destroyed in the Nazi's flight

from the Soviet Red Army in 1945.

But just 10 miles up the road from Houska,

there lies another depiction of hell.

[Dominic] 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.

[Karen] You've got these 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.

[narrator] What is the true story behind these strange monuments?

[narrator] 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.

[Tony] They remind me of 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.

[Lynn] 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.

[Tori] These nearly 30 foot heads behind me are called the Certovy Hlavy

and that means Devil's heads.

And as you can see, they are demonic looking,

they are humongous,

and they've been looking over the people

in the villages ahead of them since 1846.

[narrator] The man who carved these grotesque faces

was the sculptor Vaclav Levy

who worked as a chef in a nearby town.

[Tori] What we're seeing here

is actually the artist's impression of his own tortured, trapped-in soul

that he was waiting to get out all of those years working as a chef.

And this is the beginning of his works, right here.

So, really, these big heads are nothing more

than very posh, very old graffiti.

[narrator] 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 Podlazice.

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 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.

[Tony] The Hussites agitated among the people

to reject the Catholic Church and its teachings, and its priests, and its pope.

[narrator] The monastery of Podlazice,

that gave the world The Devil's Bible,

was burned during these early religious wars.

But, fortunately, the popularity of this book

would save it from a fiery demise.

[Peter] 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 familiar illustrations in it,

or going to the monastery where 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.

[narrator] The grand Sedlec Monastery,

seeing the value of The Devil's Bible,

acquired it from Podlazice before its destruction.

The bible's new home was fantastically wealthy,

but Sedlec had a macabre secret.

[Dominic] 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.

Sedlec 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 Sedlec.

[narrator] 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, Sedlec 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 ossuary, which is where the bones will be stored.

[Karen] The remains of 30,000 individuals

were actually thought to have been deposited here

and you can imagine, over the centuries

this might have gotten a little untidy.

[narrator] The monks of Sedlec 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 bones to create these kind of pyramid-like structures.

And, as a result of this rather morbid labor,

apparently, his sight was restored.

[Dominic] Sedlec Ossuary 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.

[Janina] Ossuaries 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 ossuary,

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 wanna be resurrected in heaven

in a wonderful state or you want to go to hell,

you make that final decision during your life.

[narrator] Could it be that the image of the Prince of Darkness

was included in The Devil's Bible for a similar reason?

To remind people of the need to live a good life?

Whatever its purpose,

as the manuscript continued its cursed journey across Europe,

it would capture the attention of the rich and powerful.

[narrator] The Devil's Bible has passed through many hands across the centuries,

with rumors of its curse following it across Europe.

It was sent from Sedlec

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, Rudolph II.

[Scott] Some say that Rudolph II

was a combination

of a absolutely brilliant ruler

and a bit of a mad man.

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.

[narrator] 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.

[Scott] His collection consisted of

telescopes, machinery,

what would be considered very early computers.

But he was also incredibly fascinated by the occult sciences.

[Lynn] 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 about... It was a spiritual exercise.

It was about transforming the soul.

[Dominic] Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor

is actually a really important person in European history

because at the time he was living

his collection and the sorts of studies

that were undertaken on it,

formed the basis for what became

the scientific revolution.

[narrator] Always looking for a new piece to add to his collection,

Rudolph soon turned his attention

to the treasures of the nearby Brevnov Monastery.

[Janina] 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.

Its size, its wealth, its beauty,

it's so beautifully illuminated.

And then you've got the little aspect

that maybe owning this thing, having it in your collection,

could act as a protection against the devil.

[Tony] 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.

[narrator] Brevnov Monastery loaned The Devil's Bible to the Emperor.

But soon, his empire would begin to crumble.

The latter part of Rudolph'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.

Rudolph 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 death bed is what led to the 300 years of conflict

following his death, including the Thirty Years' War.

[narrator] The Thirty Years' War saw bloody warfare

between most of the great powers of Europe,

with up to eight million casualties.

In 1648, troops of the Swedish Empire, led by Queen Christina,

besieged Prague.

And they went straight for Rudolph's treasured collection.

[Elin] 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.

It was a very planned attack. They knew exactly what they were looking for.

Rudolph 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 the consensus.

Maybe because it was a bit dangerous.

[Scott] 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.

[narrator] But as it traveled north,

many people who encountered The Devil's Bible

would experience a similar fate

to those who had suffered before.

[narrator] 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 Tre Kronor Castle in Stockholm.

[Tony] 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,

and so wise that she was known as the Minerva of the North

after the Roman goddess of wisdom.

[Lynn] She was what you might call a woman of power.

She was almost certainly gay.

She dressed in drag,

she dressed as a man from an early age.

She was educated and she had a mania for collecting books.

[narrator] But in 1654, after 22 years on the throne,

Christina made a momentous decision.

[Elin] She was for a long time a controversial figure in Sweden

because she converted to Catholicism,

and Sweden was a strictly Protestant country

for hundreds of years.

[Eric] 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.

[Tony] You might wonder why Queen Christina

decided not to take The Devil's Bible with her

to the very center of Christianity.

But maybe that's the point, that the Pope, that the Catholic church

didn't want, what was essentially a satanic-authored bible

in the Vatican.

[narrator] The Devil's Bible remained in Stockholm,

but the violent history of this book

had followed it from Bohemia to Sweden.

[Elin] 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.

[narrator] The Tre 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 staff threw it out of the window.

[Tony] And, unfortunately, maybe because the book is cursed

it lands on somebody's head outside, seriously injuring them.

[narrator] 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.

[narrator] 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.

[Janina] 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.

[Dominic] 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.

[narrator] All the legends of pacts with the devil raise a pertinent question.

Are these merely stories or could they be real?

[Andy] I think what these stories do is 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.

[narrator] We may never know the truth of what happened

between Herman the Recluse and the devil in the 13th century.

But in the 21st century, the product of this diabolical pact

would return to its homeland.

[narrator] From the Czech countryside,

The Devil's Bible has passed through the hands of different holy orders,

emperors, kings, and queens across Europe.

But 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.

[Tony] Czech 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 ten minutes.

[Andy] I think we're still so interested in this book

because somewhere deep down in the human condition,

there is always gonna be this sense

that there are just some things

which are too terrible to contemplate,

having emerged from a human soul, from a human mind.

It's a way of personifying our worst fears.

[narrator] But over 800 years after it was written in mysterious circumstances,

what is the truth behind the stories of this book's demonic curse?

[Dominic] 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 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-sized devil will really get people talking."

And it has.

[Janina] 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 from the medieval period

have been lost, reused, turned into scrap.

That it has survived is extraordinary,

that things will have happened around it is inevitable.

[Elin] 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.

[narrator] Could the purpose of The Devil's Bible

be similar to the ossuary at its previous home in Sedlec?

Might this image of the devil be some sort of memento mori

to serve as a warning to 13th century Bohemia?

Bohemia would have had traditions, folk lores, legends,

that go back into pre-Christian times,

connected with the natural world.

Things like the ossuary, 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.

[Peter] If you live in a society that's wrapped by war,

armies charging through your land,

plagues racking things, your children all dying early, you have a much more

apocalyptic view of life, really.

And I think in the medieval mind,

the world's split very easily between good and bad.

[Tony] You got to 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.

[Lynn] 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.

[Dominic] 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.

[Karen] It's just served right up for the reader. "What's it gonna be?"

You can either lead the good life

and go to heaven,

or look what waits for you in hell.

[narrator] So, is that all this book is?

A grandiose attempt to scare medieval Christians into doing the right thing?

[Janina] 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.

[narrator] 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.