Sam, Mystifying Artist đŒïžA Brief (and Chilling) History of Catholic Exorcism
21 minutosHello frens! It might be a bit of time since my newest blog entry but thatâs because instead of creating a new one, I updated two: Beltane đ„ and Crows đŠâ⏠. I highly recommend you take a peek.
Though if youâre on the southern hemisphere, you might be more interested in Mabon đ or Samhain đ» or maybe something spooky like reading about the Archons and the Garden of Eden or Baphomet. Thereâs a lot to read and discover about in the company of my illustrations.
Which is your favourite?On my end Iâve been building a thing or two. You may have caught me assembling my Game Boy DMG x Raspberry pi pico 2W , which I adore. Or maybe you peeked at my Raspberrarium đ« đ±, I absolutely love just staring at it, and then bam! the LEDs have changed again.
How it looks at night đ±So Iâve been busy with these and many other things. You can catch the in-between stuff over at my Ko-fi shop đŹ (where you can follow me if you wish) or over on Stacker News đ€ .
What has it been on your end? Whatâs kept you busy? Maybe a new project youâve been hesitating about beginning or continuing? Maybe youâre taking a pause and getting yourself back on your feet? Whatever it is youâve been doing lately, I hope itâs been in your best interest and that youâve been taking care of yourself along the way, being kind to yourself and the people around you. It can be daunting in times like these, but itâs worth trying, or so I think.
While thinking between projects and the books Iâve been reading, I was mulling over what I should write and illustrate next. There are so many topics Iâd like to explore, but this time something just popped into my head, and I knew that was the one.
Iâve talked in the past about the Spanish Inquisition and Holy Week, so this one seemed like a logical next step: Exorcisms.
When we think about exorcisms, lots of images come to mind, things like The Exorcist, possessed children, priests commanding demons in Latin. Letâs be honest, popular culture has given us a very specific picture.
Exorcist from the movie portrait I did it circa may 2024But exorcism goes far beyond all that jazz. Today weâre going to dip our toes into the chilling history of Catholic exorcism.
What is Exorcism?
Francis Young, in A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity, raises a fascinating «chicken and egg» question:
Did magicians draw on the Churchâs exorcisms, or did exorcists draw on magical material first? The relationship between magic and exorcism has always been blurry.
The Encyclopedia of World Religions traces the word to Greek roots meaning âto swear outâ and defines exorcism as a religious, not magical, rite aimed at freeing people from demonic or oppressive spiritual influences. It also notes that, very early on, exorcism slipped into the ordinary baptismal routine rather than being a rare emergency ritual.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops offers a simpler definition: «Exorcism is a specific form of prayer that the Church uses against the power of the devil.»
Throughout exorcismâs history, thereâs been a constant effort to distinguish it from magic. Even when lay exorcists borrowed from magical practices, the Church insisted exorcism was fundamentally different, a religious act, not a magical one. This distinction matters because exorcism defines itself in opposition to everything outside Godâs authority, defined from the «other». It polarizes people to this day, much like the early polemics used to differentiate Christianity from all the streams of Gnosticism.
As historian Ramsay MacMullen argued, doubting what ancient people believed they saw isnât history, itâs theology.
We have to take their worldview seriously to understand exorcism.
My orange as a priest, doubting about everything. Who wouldnât?Catholic vs. Protestant Exorcism
Before diving deeper, letâs clarify: Iâll be focusing primarily on Catholic exorcism, with some comparisons to Protestant practices.
Catholic exorcism is overseen and authorized by a bishop. A specially trained priest (an exorcist) conducts the rite following formal protocols with diocesan oversight. Itâs highly structured and rooted in centuries of liturgical tradition.
Protestant exorcism (often called «deliverance ministry») is typically led by pastors, evangelists, or trained deliverance ministers. Charismatic and Pentecostal communities are most likely to practice it. It tends to be less formalized, relying more on direct prayer and scriptural authority rather than liturgical ritual.
Francis Young makes an important point that might have seen obvious but it is crucial: «Possession has not always resulted in exorcism. However, there is no exorcism without possession.»
How true is that! Demonology can exist as an abstract theological concept without ever mentioning exorcism. We often conflate demons, possession, and exorcism when they donât necessarily need to be mingled.
A Brief History of Catholic Exorcism
To understand why exorcism has made a successful comeback in recent decades, we need to examine its entire history within Catholic Christianity.
As Young notes in A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity:
«Any attempt to deal with Christian exorcisms before around 150 CE runs into the debate about when Christianity became differentiated from Judaism as a distinct religion.«
Early Christianityâs boundaries were fuzzy. Before the fourth century, when the concept of «orthodoxy» was established, itâs too easy to impose anachronistic ideas onto the material.
From Baptism to Baptism + Exorcism
According to The Encyclopedia of World Religions, «Exorcism of evil spirits became a preliminary rite to baptism among early Christians.»
This is key to understanding exorcismâs evolution. It didnât start as the dramatic demon-expulsion we picture in pop culture. It began as part of preparing someone to join the Christian community, a spiritual cleansing before baptism.
One of the earliest âhow-toâ guides we have comes from the Traditio apostolica (Apostolic Tradition), a late fourthâcentury Roman collection of liturgical rules. This Roman text describes a three-stage exorcism process:
First, for several days, different ministers of the community (presbyters, deacons, ordained exorcists or even laymen) performed daily exorcisms on the catechumens, at dawn.
Then, the bishop himself made the famous exsufflatio: he «blowed» them to expel any evil influence, using the image of the breath of God that cleans and vivifies.
Finally, a priest anointed them with an oil that the bishop had blessed and exorcised before (the so-called catechumen oil), with formulas such as «that every spirit should turn away from you.» Between ritual nudity, exorcised bread and the use of the sign of the cross, the whole montage underlined a very strong idea: you are crossing a threshold, leaving behind the world where demons have power.
It seems my grey cat is not on board with exorcism, who could blame him?Candidates were required to be completely nude and eat only exorcized bread, reflecting their complete separation from all possible demonic influence. The Traditio apostolica was also the first text to establish the significance of anointing and the sign of the cross in exorcism, symbols that would define Catholic exorcism for centuries to come.
Augustine Comes Along
Augustineâs emphasis on Original Sin redefined the entire purpose of pre-baptismal exorcism. In earlier rites, the catechumen was considered vulnerable to demonic attack perhaps because they had chosen the Christian path. But by the middle of the fourth century, many Roman and North African Christians believed that an evil spirit actually lived inside the unbaptized person and had to be expelled before baptism could take place.
This shift was enormous, it transformed exorcism from protection against external attack to expulsion of internal invasion.
The Seven Scrutinies
By the late fifth century, baptism had become a small liturgical «drama». John the Deacon describes a ritual with several layers: previous catechesis, exorcistic murmur, blessing of salt, renunciation of the devil, Creed profession, scrutiny, various unointings, the time to undress, the baptismal bath and, at the end, the dressing again.
Itâs sort of a complete choreography of death and spiritual rebirth, sprinkled with micro-exorcisms
But the most fascinating development came with the Ordo Romanus XI, the earliest complete liturgy for pre-baptismal exorcism in the West, dating from the seventh century (possibly late sixth). This became the basis for the eighth-century Romano-Frankish Gelasian Sacramentary that dominated medieval Europe.
The liturgy consisted of seven dramatic scrutinies beginning on the Wednesday after the Third Sunday of Lent. Scholars believe these scrutinies were deliberately designed to reflect the liturgical drama of Holy Week, «culminating in Christâs defeat of Satan.»
The scheme combines several elements: first the salt that will be used as a weapon against the «enemy» is exorcised; then the catechumens of the church are made to enter and exit to symbolize the passage from the demonic «outside» to the protected «inside»; then come the impositions of hands, the crosses drawn on the forehead and a battery of prayers where the demon is directly challenged («damn devil, withdraw», «hey, Satan», etc.).
More than a physical fight, the sources describe it as a «batle of words»: solemn orders that the evil spirit must obey. Over time, the number seven of the scrutinities was read in a symbolic key, putting it in parallel with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Interestingly, the multiplication of scrutinies from three (in the fifth century) to seven (in the seventh century) wasnât primarily about fear of demons. Rather, it came from a desire for the symbolism to correspond with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Form and theology working together.
Exorcizing Pagans
Although the Ordo Romanus XI ritual was intended for infants, it was clearly derived from formulas for adult baptism. As Christianity advanced into pagan northern Europe, adult baptism became urgently necessary once again.
The Gelasian Sacramentary contained a special rite «Ad catechumenum ex pagano faciendum»(«for making a catechumen from a pagan») in which the catechumen was explicitly instructed to «be in horror of idols [and] despise images» (horresce idola, respue simulacra).
This wasnât just about spiritual cleansing: it was about cultural conquest. Converting pagans meant making them ritually renounce and fear their old gods, now rebranded as demons. It sounds familiar, does it?
The Evolution of Authority
The Catholic exorcistâs claim to authority isnât grounded in personal charisma or self-assurance: itâs grounded in legal fact. In contemporary Catholicism, exorcists confront the devil with both Godâs authority and the Churchâs authority, received through explicit license from a diocesan bishop within Canon Law.
Catholic theology presents exorcism as a political act in the invisible realm: the kingdom of Jesus Christ confronting and overthrowing the devilâs kingdom of darkness.
The Middle Ages were a period of crisis and transition for exorcism. It went through a transformation: from the charismatic, saint-focused practice of late antiquity into a liturgical rite invoking priestly authority.
There was tension, for centuries, between two conflicting ideas: exorcism as a way to persevere holy men and women (or even their relics) versus the belief that any priest could command a demon.
By the late Middle Ages, exorcism was identified as a sacramental rather than a sacrament. Meaning that unlike baptismâs regenerative grace or the transubstantiation of bread and wine in Mass, the success of a priestly exorcism wasnât guaranteed. The success of the exorcism also depended partly on the piety and holiness of the exorcist. Thatâs a lot of responsibility.
The First Exorcism Manual
Centuries later in the 1500s, Pedro Ciruelo, a Spanish Franciscan reformer, would write: «In order to create greater confusion, the devil has invented certain exorcisms quite similar to those used by the Holy Catholic Church against demons who are reluctant to abandon human bodies.»
My grey cat knows something isnât rightHe understood the problems that having an actual manual (a real body of work with detailed exorcism procedures) posed.
Without Godâs supervision and blessing, so to speak, the opponent (the devil) could go ahead and make devious changes, confusing people and giving him the opportunity to «imitate holiness,» as Sara Ferber put it.
Thankfully, written manuals for these kinds of situations already existed, and the Gregorian Sacramentary was one of them.
The earliest reference to a written rite of extra-baptismal exorcism (meaning exorcism performed outside of baptism, on people already baptized) occurs in the Gregorian Sacramentary. During the ordination service of an exorcist, a libellus («little book») was placed in the exorcistâs hands with these words:
«Receive this and commit it to memory, and have the power of laying hands upon an energumen, whether baptized or catechumen.»
This implies that the libellus contained rites for exorcizing both the unbaptized and the baptized: meaning exorcism had officially expanded beyond baptismal preparation to addressing possession in baptized Christians.
A letter from Pope Innocent I to the Bishop of Gubbio already hints that exorcisms over the baptized needed the bishopâs approval: caring for the possessed was a duty, but the rite itself could not be performed without episcopal permission.
This set the precedent for episcopal jurisdiction over exorcisms that became critically important during the Counter-Reformation.
In the Council of Carthage (398), it couldnât be expressed enough how the rites of exorcism should be followed exactly as instructed and not improvised along the way. Exorcists should commit these rites to memory, and they were supposed to be given directly from the hands of the bishop.
There was a written formula that should be followed strictly. In this way, strict procedures were stuck to, nothing was left to luck.
Understanding Possession: Disambiguating Terms
As Sara Ferber points out, when you read these treatises you do not find a perfect and uniform system, but rather a general «climate»: an obsession to discern well, to draw limits and say «this does come from God, this does not.» The contradictions between authors are not so much failures of the system as the reflection of a Church trying to manage its own historical tensions.
My orange demands to know who dares to wake him up!As for scholar Andrea Nicolotti pointed out: we tend to think of «demonic possession» as one phenomenon, but medieval theologians distinguished between different types of demonic affliction. Nicolotti identified four Latin terms describing different kinds of possession phenomena:
Circumsessio: A persistent negative action against a person that manifests as a «true and proper siege.» Think of it as demonic harassment or stalking.
Infestatio: Vexatious activity explained with reference to cursed persons or things, like witchcraft or cursed objects. The demon isnât in the person; itâs working through something else.
Obsessio and Possessio: These are used so interchangeably in theological sources that defining their precise meanings is nearly impossible. Generally, they refer to varying degrees of demonic control.
Insessio: Nicolotti coined this term to specifically mean the bodily possession of a human body by an evil spirit, what we typically think of as «possession» today.
Medieval texts also used different words to describe the victims of these afflictions:
Daemoniacus: Someone completely under the domination of a demon.
Energumenus: A demoniac who manifests the powers (energeia) of the demon possessing them (think: supernatural strength, speaking unknown languages).
Arrepticus: From the Latin Vulgateâs description of the Gerasene demoniac (Luke 8:29), meaning a person «torn away» from their right mind.
This nuanced vocabulary shows that medieval people understood demonic affliction as a spectrum, not a twofold state.
Exorcism vs. Magic: A Linguistic Problem
Christian exorcism, like Christian prayer, is founded on belief in an omnipotent God. But unlike prayer, exorcism involves adjuration, direct imperative speech directed at spiritual beings other than God, saints, and angels. Where prayer is supplicatory (asking), exorcism is imperative (commanding).
Scholar Graham Twelftree goes so far as to say that, in practice, the difference between early Christian exorcism and magic was more of form than substantive: Christians left behind the direct charismatic style of Jesus and increasingly relied on «authorized external power» (the name of Christ, the Church, the formulas) to cast demons, something that is very similar to how ritual magic works.
And it gets even more linguistically interesting: Remember at the beginning when we were trying to understand what exorcism means? Well, to exorcize in Greek and Latin originally meant «to swear an oath.» In Latin, it became almost synonymous with coniuro, «to take an oath together.» Over time, coniuro was used as an intensified form of iuro («I swear»), and in late Latin it came to mean «beg» or «implore.»
This medieval Latin coniuro produced the English word «conjure,» whose original legal and religious sense has now been almost completely replaced by its magical sense (which always existed alongside the other meanings).
The difficulty of separating exorcism from magic therefore occurs at the linguistic level, «conjuration» is an activity of both magician and exorcist alike. The words themselves betray the blurry boundary the Church worked so hard to maintain.
Why Is It Mostly Women?
That demon knows whoâs in charge and so should youHereâs something we canât ignore: for at least a thousand years, between the ninth and nineteenth centuries, most recorded exorcisms were performed on women.
Historian Nancy Caciola has argued that Catholic exorcism in medieval and early modern periods was a gendered activity that involved the male-led church designating women as demonic. Based on the frequent use of feminine grammatical endings in late medieval exorcism manuals, Caciola suggests that women were thought of as the exclusive subjects of exorcism.
Caciola suggests that, in many cases, the rite itself pushed women to «incarnate» the devil: by forcing them to respond as if they were the evil spirit, the identity of the woman and that of the demon ended up mixing dangerously in the gaze of the community.
However, the picture is more complex. The medieval exorcist believed he was addressing a demon, not a woman. And some women genuinely believed themselves to be possessed by the devil, it wasnât always external imposition.
Itâs certainly true that women were frequently blamed for the Fall and associated with the devil by medieval theologians, but interpretations other than active hatred of women can be applied to the overwhelming number of exorcisms performed on women. This remains one of the most debated aspects of exorcism history. If youâre interested in reading another perspective on the story of Adam and Eve from the Gnostic perspective, check out my Archons and the Garden of Eden entry.
Witchcraft: Exorcism as a âSolutionâ
When talking about exorcism, weâre mostly talking about women being exorcised, as explained beautifully by Nancy Caciola. As youâll see, women were persecuted for witchcraft, and exorcism was one of the «solutions» for it in the fifteenth century.
The Dominican Johannes Niderâs Formicarius («Ant Hill») of 1431 was among the first texts to deal with witchcraft, going as far as labeling women like Joan of Arc as witches.
Niderâs Formicarius was a precursor of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum (1486), mostly authored by the German Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer (otherwise known as Institoris).
But Kramer saw things differently. For him, the main «solution» was not the exorcism, but the court: the witches had to be eliminated by the judges. In one of his examples, he talks about the case of a nun harassed by an incube and admits that neither the sign of the cross nor the holy water were enough. From there he insists that there are no guaranteed remedies: what helps one person may not be useful for another.
In practice, Kramer relegates exorcism to an unreliable last resort. As exorcism is a sacramental and not a sacrament, its effectiveness is never assured. That allows him to justify that, in the face of witchcraft, the «serious» response is the judicial punishment, not the liturgical rite.
Kramer insisted that exorcism was a last resort to free someone from bewitchment, but even then success was not guaranteed. He insisted throughly how it didnât work in order to favor judicial remedies agains witches, as portrayed in «Malleus Maleficaurm».
Kramer was a real piece of work, he believed women were more prone to heresy.
Strangely enough, Kramer along with other Catholic clergymen were hostile to exorcism in the early sixteenth century, including Pedro Ciruelo and MartĂn de Castañega.
They showed a concern for apostolic authenticity by drawing on evidence such as the decrees of the Council of Carthage in 398.
How it translated in reality is that not only did they want bishops to adhere strictly to the formula, but they were more outraged about exorcizing animals or objects than actual peopleâŠ
You may wonder: how is it they were skeptical and at the same time believers of the faith? Easy. They used skepticism as a tool to discern between the divine, the human, and the diabolical sources of things. Because at the end of the day, the fact that exorcism could just be magic and sorcery was right there around the corner, so procedures should be respected.
Historian Lactantius suggested that evil spirits wonât try to possess someoneâs body «for as long as there is peace in the people of God,» implying that the prevalence of demonic activity is a sign of theological and political division between Christians. So if you truly believed, you were okay, right? Right?
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As you may have noticed, my furry kids were the protagonists of this blog entry. I wanted to play around with it a bit since the nature of the topic (exorcism) can be heavy and dense.
As I researched, I thought Iâd lean into my goofy self while painting, taking lots of inspiration from medieval illustrations and, of course, my beloved Hieronymus Bosch. I went wild with it.
We might giggle with those medieval illustrations now, but in times when 99.9% of people didnât know how to read or write, these images backed up with sermons at church were pretty much convincing proof that evil could just knock on your neighborâs door and bewitch them⊠or worse, knock on your door. So truly believing in God and being pious was their only haven besides church. That said, to be honest, after a mass of that sort I would be more spooked out than anything, but also more prone to point my finger at others. And that, letâs be honest, the Church did very well.
Fear and ignorance can be so much more evil, harmful, and dangerous than any demon could be. Or heck, maybe thatâs what demons are in the end, all that lack of knowledge and a personal belief of oneself lurking in the back of our mind, playing tricks on us. Who knows? But it is very important to be mindful and respectful of what people truly believed as the truth, their reality. To people in the present, it may sound «bananas» or just «whackadoodle» to think there are little devils going around town having a field day. But to be fair, even though science and the Age of Reason are here, can we really be so sure those little devils arenât going around town with everything happening now? *sigh*
Either way, now and back then, people have to be held accountable for their actions. Everyone has to be responsible for what they do, and in that, be a little more empathetic with thy neighbor, more thoughtful, and more gentle to oneself and others.
Even more then than now, due to fears of possession, exorcism has tended to surface at times of crisis in Church history, serving as a means of establishing authority and identity. This also means, the information available is nuanced.
So quoting JC (hehe), weâre in an invisible war⊠Perhaps, but we have to keep our minds open to knowledge and gratefulness.
What good would it be to have all this reason and science without some gentleness? And what good would it be to be good, kind, and curious without some common sense and reason? Balance is the key. So it might sound wild, but why not be a little more forgiving and genuinely understanding about other peopleâs beliefs? And maybe, just maybe, what seems ridiculous or impossible today might just be another door opening with better possibilities tomorrow.
#CatholicExorcism #catholicism #cats #dog #Exorcism #kramer #priest #procreate #samhainsam #satan
