This book fills a scholarly void. Until this study, no single volume in English has attempted to trace the entire history of Catholic exorcism, perhaps because this is such an ambitious undertaking. In no-nonsense British fashion, Francis Young tackles this intimidating task and acquits himself admirably with seven chapters plus an introduction, logically laid out in chronological order: “Exorcism in the Early Christian West, 300–900,” “Exorcism in Crisis: The Middle Ages, 900–1500,” “Exorcism in Counter-Reformation Europe,” “Catholic Exorcism beyond Catholic Europe,” “Exorcism in the Age of Reason,” “Exorcism in an Age of Doubt: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” and “The Return of Exorcism.” As announced in the preface, the methodology employed here is to approach the topic of exorcism from a “procedural” point of view. This means reading the actual exorcism manuals and comparing the steps they recommend taking to cast out demons. The chapters of greatest interest for readers of this journal are clustered in the middle. Young defines the Middle Ages broadly, to encompass part of the time period we often refer to as Renaissance, and Counter-Reformation of course falls squarely within our purview. The chapter “Catholic Exorcism beyond Catholic Europe” also contains valuable material for scholars of the Renaissance, treating New World colonial as well as Chinese and Dutch exorcistic practice.

Despite its overall virtues, I do have one fairly major quibble with this book: its author insists on conflating exorcism with magic in a way that confuses (in book historians’ language) the production of texts with the circumstances surrounding their consumption. Here we find such statements as “exorcisms are by their very nature a form of magic” (17), “ritual magic is unauthorized exorcism” (16), and “assurances from the church that exorcism is not magic cannot be taken at face value” (18). This overt practice of what Paul Ricœur has termed a “hermeneutics of suspicion” belies the book’s claims to objectivity and its assertions that it aims to privilege neither the perspective of the exorcist nor that of the demoniac (26). While it is undeniable that rituals for conjuring spirits versus those for casting them out bore certain formal—including linguistic and grammatical—similarities, the crucial difference lies in the intent or purpose behind the formula. When examined from this perspective, it is apparent that exorcism and magic are in fact opposite practices, the purpose of magic being to summon evil spirits and the purpose of exorcism being to drive them away. No one would deny that some exorcistic formulas and even manuals were (mis)used toward magical ends by some of their consumers, but the church’s disavowal of these practices can and should be believed. This book’s Achilles’ heel is its determination to second-guess the very practitioners of the phenomenon it purports to study.

Novel features of this book include a chart comparing the 1614 authorized Catholic rite of exorcism, the Rituale Romanum, to the 1999 revised version, titled De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam, which is still not available in English. The author also had the opportunity to interview a practicing exorcist of the archdiocese of Westminster who was a founding member of the still-active International Association of Exorcists. The book develops a strong thesis: that throughout its long history, exorcism has grown organically and proven flexible and adaptive enough to reinvent itself with each new age to address that particular era’s unique preoccupations. This study traces a jagged line on the graph where exorcism has ebbed and waned, becoming more prominent during certain time periods in response to a perceived crisis of faith. For example, a resurgence of demonology occurred in the thirteenth century in response to the Cathar heresy; likewise, a renewed interest in exorcism sprang up under Pope Leo XIII, who felt threatened by a Satanist global conspiracy orchestrated by Freemasons, in the nineteenth century.

The introduction acknowledges a plurality of available perspectives on this material other than the one employed here, namely that of church history. It would be possible to write a history of exorcism from a medical perspective, from an anthropological or sociological viewpoint or with an eye toward gender studies. But these are not the goals of this volume. The introduction contains a separate section on gender and status, perhaps in response to marketing pressures. But this is not the book’s focus. What it sets out to do, it accomplishes well and in a remarkably clear, concise, readable format. Almost like magic—which, I still maintain, exorcism isn’t.