The Devil Book

"Even hell has its heroes, Mr. Corso."

nataS pihsrow I

Kindle, right, there is a love/hate relationship there.  On one hand you can have all of Doyle, Sabatini, Dumas, & Cooper all in one edition that's smaller than your average paperback.  On the other hand it makes you feel really horribly dirty.  It makes you feel like you are sinning against God & nature.

Books are my favorite things on earth & if I had the money I would own a shit-ton of massively old first editions & legendary prints by Joaquin Ibarra, Steve Gutenberg, & Francesco Colonna.  Vellum or cloth?  How big are the margins?  You have to be on the look out for things like that.

One of my best friend's got me a first edition Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 & it's still the prize of my collection.  I certainly found rarer books in the years that passed, but that was the first real collectors edition.  That is the one that got me hooked.  It was probably the most important gift anyone gave me.  It cemented the bibliophile part of me in carbonite.

The most useful gift I ever got was a GPS machine. 

I want to kill every one

Satan is good

Satan is our pal

This is the story about a book that some people, including John Calvin, claimed was written by the Devil himself.

Satan!

But in order to get to that story, we have to start off in the modern day, so you can better understand the reason why the Devil Book was created, why only three copies exist today, & why the writer was burned at the stake on a pile of his own books.

So we are going to start in America with the 1st Amendment.

The 1st Amendment is my absolute most favorite thing in the entire world, it comes with being a bibliophile.  I honestly believe that it is man's greatest invention & the one shinning contribution that the United States made to civilization.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There are certain things that I'm used to having a fringe minority view on.  Globalization is one of them.  One is the 1st Amendment.  I have extremely strong views about the 1st Amendment that I know puts me in the minority.

But that love puts me at odds with most Americans.

For instance, liberals in America tend to falsely believe that hate speech should be illegal.  That somehow speech that instigates violence should be wrong, especially when that speech is against a particular group of people.

And I think that is insane.  Positively insane.  Hate speech should be legal.  Otherwise you do not have freedom of speech.  I mean, even Goebbles was in favor of speech he agreed with.

You can only have one stance on the Freedom of Speech & that means, if you are going to support it, you have to support ALL of it.  Even the shit you don't agree with.

And then the conservative argument is that free speech should be legal, unless it is in the form of protests, assembly & the petitioning of government for a redress of grievances, that is that things like Occupy Wall Street, anti-War protests, strikes, anything that supports the environment, anything supported by Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Code Pink, The Black Panthers, Human Rights Watch, the Sierra Club, the GLBTA, the ISO, anything anti-gun, anything aired on Democracy Now! & absolutely everything Noam Chomsky says should all be illegal under their very limited view of free speech.

But that is an attitude born from the belief that the 2nd Amendment is more important that all the others combined.

Outside of all of that they support Free Speech, in fact, Conservatives are the prime example of a people that only believe that you have the freedom of speech if it is speech they agree with.

I want to kill every one

Satan is good

Satan is our pal

And then there is the religion thing.  You've seen these bumper stickers.

Generally it's another conservative thing.

And, in all honesty, this movement is based on the teachings of a man named John Calvin, who is sort of the bad guy in the story you are about to read.

Satan!

It's the belief that in order to support "Religious Freedom" America has to have laws that make everyone White Anglo-Saxon Protestants & make Christianity the official state religion.  Laws that force one religion, their religion on everyone which really sucks for all of us that like to burn incense in front of our HST altars & dance naked in the fields on Betty White's birthday.

You know, it is the exact opposite of "Religious Freedom."  The people  that support that whole movement really want Religious Oppression.  They want a Theocracy, like Israel & Saudi Arabia.

But you know, propaganda works.

And this is a lot less of a political rant than it is an explanation of the events that created the rarest book in the world.

There are only three in existence & the story behind it inspired a novel that inspired a really awesome Johnny Depp movie:

The novel was written by Arturo Perez Reverte, it was called The Club Dumas & is a total work of fiction.

It is also highly recommended by this humble blogger.  Especially if you are into books & really want to read a horror-adventure book about books.  Book.  Book.  Book.

nataS pihsrow I

And like all good works of fiction, the concept came from real life.  It came from a man by the name of Miguel Serveto Conesa a man better known in English as Michael Servetus & if you are working in medicine you know him as the man that discovered pulmonary circulation. 

Actually, you probably don't.  They tend not to teach you biographies when you are getting a degree in medicine & if you are familiar with him it's because of the footnotes in your text book.

And the footnotes in history are what you seriously need to pay attention to, because the footnotes are where the best stories are.

You don't find shit about Devil books in the overview of the Reformation, you find it referenced as an aside in the footnotes.  Then you have to piece the story together on your own from information in a whole bunch of other books not directly dealing with what you want & hopefully, maybe, find a rare single print book on the subject.

It's a HELL of a lot of fun.  It is a fiery burning inferno of fun.

Miguel was a Spaniard & born in a region that was as Jewish as it was Muslim as it was Christian.  He was raised a Catholic, but because of where he lived he ended up learning Hebrew & read the Torah & he ended up learning Arabic & read the Koran.

This already put him at odds with the rest of the Christian world, who didn't believe that things like the Torah & the Koran should actually be read, especially in Spain where....

....Wait for it....

....Wait for it....

But Python was wrong, Miguel totally expected the Spanish Inquisition & gradually moved to France for an education & a new life where they weren't killing people for learning how to speak Hebrew & Arabic & for reading the religious texts of the OTHER Abrahamic religions.

I want to kill every one

Satan is good

Satan is our pal

France was a fairly safe place to live, it had less of a Spanish Inquisition than Spain & less of a Reformation than the Germanic states that were kill crazy.  Spain was killing people for not being Catholic & the Germanic States were all killing one another for no good reason whatsoever. Switzerland was killing people for not believing that they were preordained to die. 

So what now?

His name is John Calvin, he was the founder of Calvinism, which is followed by the Presbyterians, the father of American Evangelicalism, the new Religious Right movement in America, & set out the law for just about every Christian that could label themselves as "Born Again."

He was also the most blood thirsty religious leader in the history of Christianity & like the "Support Religious Freedom Crowd" that follows his brand of Christianity, he was also the most intolerant religious leader the world has ever seen.

The Catholics were honestly far more tolerant than old John Calvin.

But you might know him better as:

The only reason why the Spanish Inquisition was more of a show is because it lasted a lot longer & it occurred in an area with Jews & Muslims & tortured confessions out of people in an effort to convert them & save their souls.

Calvin really wasn't into saving people's souls.  He wasn't into torturing confessions out of people & he wasn't exactly targeting Muslims & Jews.

Calvin was targeting anyone that didn't 100% agree with him, regardless of their religious views & he didn't give them a trial like they did in Spain, he just sort of burned you at the stake for not believing everything he said.

Most of the time when John Calvin killed you, he did it because you were a "witch, or wizard."

Now we all know there is a proven & fool-proof scientific method of determining if someone is a witch.

Basically, if she weighs as much as a duck than she is made of wood & that makes her a witch.  We've used it countless times in history & we know that it works.  In fact, it is still used in court of laws today.

John Calvin, however, wasn't trying to smoke out real witches, he was trying to silence opposition politics so when he burned you at the stake he made sure that no one checked to see if you weighed as much as a duck.

Savvy?

Moving on.

Miguel moved to France to teach medicine but before he moved he published a series of books, Dialogorum de Trinitate, De Trinitatis Erroribus, & De Iustitia Regni Christi.  He published them individually & all in the same volume.

In English:  On the Errors of the Trinity, Dialogues on the Trinity, & On the Justice of Christ's Reign.  

With titles like that it was almost like he was looking to die.  Suicide by the Inquisition.It's like suicide by cop...if you are from Spain, where the cops are less likely to shoot you for being Black.

But the thing is, they were still extremely Catholic works.  They were works of the Reformation, but they were still Catholic & Miguel wasn't looking to say that his religion, the Catholic religion, was hogwash, what he really said in those three books was how all the religions could coexist peacefully without the need for the Catholic Inquisition in Spain, the Muslim massacre of the Zoroastrians in Persia, the Massacre of the Jews all through Europe of the battles between the Catholic church & the splinter religions of the Reformation.

You know what he essentially said was:

And the problem was, even in he Reformation controlled areas, that Coexist bend on Christian Theology ran directly contrary to the 16th Century equivalent of the modern:

Which is a movement based on John Calvin & yes we will return to him.

Meanwhile, while Jon Calvin is busy formulating a model of Christianity that sort of says the complete opposite of all of Christ's teachings, & while the Spanish are busy killing all the Jews & Muslims, Miguel sneaks his way back into Paris.

Satan!

He had originally attended the University of Paris as a student under his real name, & then returned to Spain & published as series of books that put a pretty hefty price on his head.

So in order to disguise himself, he goes back to his old university & predicted an occultation of Mars by the Moon, which landed him a job teaching Mathematics & Astrology at the very university that he graduated from...under an assumed name.

Because even then, in Academia you are relatively safe to say whatever the fuck you want.

This is also the reason that these people demonize intellectuals & academics:

Because true freedom of speech allows you the ability to say, "you're doing it wrong."

And it allowed Miguel to say that "Jews, Muslims, & Christians can all get along."

Which didn't fit with any of the other Reformation rhetoric so everyone kept saying that his books were written by the Devil himself:

Actually, what they said was that the Devil came to Miguel & told him the secrets on how to summon him & that Miguel wrote his books in a single night using the blood of new born babies & bound the book with human flesh & if you read it Satan will enter your body, burn your soul from the inside & condemn you for ever in a pit of fiery hell.

That's one hell of an accusation about one little book.

Satan!

And it wasn't just the Catholics that were saying this.  The whole Coexist theory sort of rubbed everyone the wrong way & it wasn't long before the entire world of the Reformation started coming up with equally horrible stories about Miguel's theological books.

Did I ever tell you that I read 50 Shades of Grey?

You see as a patriotic American I believe that it is my civic duty to take the time to read the books that the fascist take the time to ban.  As a bibliophile I find it extremely disgusting that anyone would ban any type of book.  As a human being I'm curious about EVERYTHING that people say should be made illegal because the content is too horrible for the general population.

So of course I read 50 Shades of Grey.  It was a banned book.

As a teacher, when I wanted my students to do some reading on the side on a book that I felt was extremely important, I'd tell them that they were not allowed to bring it into my classroom, I'd tell them that I believed it was a dangerous book to read,  & put them under threaten with detention if they did read it

It pretty much guaranteed that they would read the book.

The same thing happened with Miguel's book.

Because when you tell people that a book is dangerous & written by Satan & that they cannot read it, yeah, you are guaranteeing that the book becomes a best seller.

Dialogorum de Trinitate became a runaway best seller & the book's popularity forced it's author to go into hiding.

 And while Miguel was doing his best to keep a low profile, he took the time to discover pulmonary circulation & make some pretty serious breakthroughs in the fields of medicine, mathematics, astrology, & science.

And even though he was hiding out in academia, where the people don't care what you say you can't go ahead & make all of those discoveries & still keep a low profile.

Meanwhile...

Thanks to all the negative publicity more people were reading his book than ever before.  In Spain, they went door-to-door searching for every last copy, but most of them ended up getting smuggled through Catholic Spain & through Catholic France, & landed in Switzerland which was gripped by the Reformation & the people were open to new interpretations of their old religion.  

The thing is, this guy was in Switzerland:

And old John Calvin was pushing through a new brand of "morality" that was picking up a lot of followers because it allowed very wealthy people to do just about anything they wanted & commit as many sins as they possibly could & still get into Heaven.

Calvin's Christianity was all about predestination.   Everything that happened was already going to happen & there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

You kicked that dog because God had written it out in the book of your life & you had no choice but to kick that dog.

You raped that little girl, brutally murdered her & dumped her in the river because that was God's plan for you.  

But God also predetermined if you were going to Heaven or not so it didn't matter what you did, you were already saved or damned well before you were even born.

It sort of goes against absolutely everything you believe if you are Catholic.  In fact it ran so counter to what Catholics believed that they started to think that John Calvin was...

Satan!

But wait, there's more.  There is always more.

John Calvin got a lot of very wealthy & powerful people to back his new version of Christianity.  

You see Jesus Christ said:

"It's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of Heaven."

And things like that don't sit too well if you are rich.

But John Calvin said that ALL rich people are going to Heaven because everyone was preordained to do everything long before they were even born & the only way to tell who is preordained & who is not is by the life that God planned out for you in this world.

Basically what he said is that rich & powerful people are rich & powerful because they were preordained to get into Heaven & that they can do absolutely whatever they want because God is making all the decisions for them.

And all the poor people are going to hell because they are poor & thus the souls that are preordained to suffer.

So what John Calvin did was open the door for everyone to do whatever the hell they wanted without fear of a punishment in the hereafter.  It is awesome if you are a murdering rapist, Satan worshiping pedophile because you are not responsible for your own actions & if you are rich you get to do all of that & still get that reward for being a good little boy.

But the poor people are getting the shaft & Switzerland was one of the most literate counties.

nataS pihsrow I

And we already know that Miguel wrote a best seller based entirely on the Catholic churches' claims that it was written by the Devil himself.

All those literate people that John Calvin damned to hell for being poor took to Miguel's books on peace & coexistence like a Jesus fish takes to water.  They absolutely loved it.

So Miguel fled to Switzerland where he had a ready-made following & hopefully a population that would protect him & keep him hidden from the Catholic Church that wants to sent him to Spain where a whole bunch of people in red robes are waiting to torture him until they save his soul.

Remember this guy?

"I drank too much, now I must take a piss."

He believed in cause & effect...so  did Miguel.  The good things you do are what cause you to go to Heaven.  The bad things you do are what cause you to go to Hell.

And to top it off, Miguel believed that Jesus & God wanted you to do what was in the Bible, & the Torah, & the Koran, & not the complete opposite of what those texts say.  Which was what Calvin was saying.

Suddenly there was a problem.  But Calvin has something that Miguel didn't have.

Money.  Calvin has a shit ton of money & he has a shit ton of friends with a shit ton of money & power.

They ALL want to go to Heaven & they know as well as you & I do that it's not what the Bible says that matters in the real world, it's what you can convince people of what the Bible says that really matters.

Because people don't read & they certainly don't read that Bible. People claim to read the Bible.

So they use that money & power to track down Miguel & all of his books.

They find every copy that they can.

They make an enormous stack in the middle of Geneva.

They find Miguel, at prayer in a Catholic church &, well...

Miguel is burned alive, on top of his books, without anyone even bothering to check & see if he weighed as much as a duck.

Three copies survived. Copies that were banned until the 20th century.  Three copies that had to remain hidden until pain of death.

Times change & now those three copies are the rarest & three of the most valuable books in the world.

I'll Leave you with this: