The Codex Gigas is the largest surviving medieval manuscript in the world, a metre tall, weighing 75 kilograms, and it takes two people to lift. Legend says a monk of Bohemia, walled up alive for breaking his vows, promised to write a book containing all human knowledge in a single night, and finished it only with the Devil’s help, which is why a full-page portrait of the Devil stares out of it. Handwriting analysis suggests one scribe worked twenty-odd years. Swedish troops looted it in 1648 and it is in Stockholm today. PUBLIC, National Library of Sweden.
The National Library, Stockholm (Sweden)
See it on the map