Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox
The oldest continuously used exorcistic material in the corpus, carried in the priest's service book and said at baptism as well as in affliction.
In its own terms
What this body is doing
The Eastern prayers reach this corpus through the Euchologion, the book a priest actually holds during a service, under the names of Basil the Great and John Chrysostom. Their manner is the first thing to notice. They are prayers, and they spend most of their length recounting what God has already done — the creation, the incarnation, the harrowing — before they say anything to a spirit at all.
That shape has a consequence the other bodies do not share. Because the text is chiefly addressed upward, there is very little in it that can be performed wrongly. There is no interrogation to mishandle and no diagnostic list to misapply. The same prayers are used at baptism, where the renunciation of the devil is part of ordinary Christian initiation rather than a response to a crisis, which places the whole subject inside the sacramental life of the church rather than in a specialism at its edge.
Where it stands in the tree
Descent
Separated from
The undivided church · 1054Papal authority, the filioque clause, and a long accumulation of language and practice. Demonology had nothing to do with it, which is the point: the different answers below are downstream of an argument about something else entirely.
The same questions asked of every body
What it holds
Are the gifts still given?
Inferred from the surrounding textsContinuing, through the sacramental life rather than as a separate category.
The exorcistic prayers sit in the priest's ordinary service book, which places the charism inside the offices.
Who may act?
Described from a text the corpus holdsA priest, within the ordinary services of the church.
The prayers are carried in the Euchologion, the priest's service book, and are used at baptism as well as in affliction.
Euchologion: the Exorcisms of St Basil and St John Chrysostom · attributed 4th c.; text as transmitted
What counts as evidence?
Described from a text the corpus holdsNo enumerated signs. The prayers presume a pastoral judgement already made.
No diagnostic list appears in the material the corpus holds.
Euchologion: the Exorcisms of St Basil and St John Chrysostom · attributed 4th c.; text as transmitted
Where is the spirit?
Described from a text the corpus holdsIn the person — and, at baptism, addressed as something renounced by everyone.
The baptismal use treats the renunciation of the devil as part of initiation rather than as a crisis.
Euchologion: the Exorcisms of St Basil and St John Chrysostom · attributed 4th c.; text as transmitted
Whom do the words address?
Described from a text the corpus holdsGod, far more than the spirit.
The prayers adjure and narrate rather than interrogate; the direction of travel is upward.
Euchologion: the Exorcisms of St Basil and St John Chrysostom · attributed 4th c.; text as transmitted
What restraint is written in?
Described from a text the corpus holdsThe form itself. A prayer asking God to act cannot be mishandled the way an interrogation can.
Deprecatory form, sacramental setting, no diagnostic step to get wrong.
Euchologion: the Exorcisms of St Basil and St John Chrysostom · attributed 4th c.; text as transmitted
What closes the matter?
Described from a text the corpus holdsThe prayer ends and the person returns to the sacramental life of the church.
No separate closing formula is needed, because the prayer was never a proceeding.
Euchologion: the Exorcisms of St Basil and St John Chrysostom · attributed 4th c.; text as transmitted
What it uses
Rites
The Exorcisms of St Basil and St John Chrysostom
In useattributed 4th c. · Greek
The Eastern prayers, still in use. They adjure and narrate rather than interrogate, and they are addressed to God far more than to the spirit.
Named and dated; not yet transcribed · on the rites page
What happened afterwards
Reception
Almost invisible in English-language popular culture, which takes its idea of exorcism from the Latin rite and from film. The Eastern material is older, in continuous use, and has never had a comparable cultural afterlife.
This page records what a body holds and where that is written down. It takes no position on whether any of it is true, and nothing here is instruction — the rites are described by what they contain, never as something to follow.