Latin West
Roman Catholic
The most precisely specified exorcism in Christian history, and the one most misrepresented in popular accounts — most of its length is instructions not to proceed.
In its own terms
What this body is doing
Title X of the Rituale Romanum is the only rite in this corpus transcribed clause by clause, and what the transcription shows is the opposite of the popular picture. The rite opens with rubrics of restraint: the priest requires the bishop's express permission, must satisfy himself that the person is genuinely possessed rather than ill, and is warned in the text itself against believing readily. Three signs are given as evidence, and no more.
What follows is imperative and juridical. God is invoked, the spirit is adjured, then commanded, and finally dismissed — an order the transcribed clauses make plain. The 1999 revision keeps that shape while tightening the signs, adding an explicit instruction that medical and psychiatric judgement be sought first, and supplying a deprecatory form — a prayer asking God to act — beside the imperative one, which moves it a step toward the Eastern manner.
Where it stands in the tree
Descent
Separated from
The Latin West · 1614Standardisation rather than separation. Trent set in motion the replacement of local uses with one book, and Title X of the 1614 Rituale is what the many Western forms were consolidated into.
The same questions asked of every body
What it holds
Are the gifts still given?
Inferred from the surrounding textsContinuing, but ordered through the offices and requiring permission to exercise.
The 1614 rite's requirement of express episcopal licence is this position applied to exorcism specifically.
Who may act?
Read from a transcribed textA priest, and only with the bishop's express permission.
Title X opens by requiring the bishop's licence and the priest's own conviction that possession is genuine.
Rituale Romanum, Titulus X: De exorcizandis obsessis a daemonio · 1614
What counts as evidence?
Read from a transcribed textThree signs, with a rubric warning against believing them readily.
Speech in unknown tongues, knowledge of hidden and distant things, strength beyond the person's condition.
Rituale Romanum, Titulus X: De exorcizandis obsessis a daemonio · 1614
Where is the spirit?
Read from a transcribed textIn the person, and treated as a distinct occupant that can be addressed and dismissed.
The rite asks the spirit its name and number, which presumes a countable occupant with an identity.
Rituale Romanum, Titulus X: De exorcizandis obsessis a daemonio · 1614
Whom do the words address?
Read from a transcribed textBoth, in a fixed order: God first, then the spirit, imperatively.
The transcribed clauses run invocation, adjuration, command, in that sequence.
Rituale Romanum, Titulus X: De exorcizandis obsessis a daemonio · 1614
What restraint is written in?
Read from a transcribed textExplicit and extensive: permission, scepticism, and a caution about illness.
The 1614 rubrics warn against credulity; the 1999 revision adds that medical and psychiatric judgement be sought first.
Rituale Romanum, Titulus X: De exorcizandis obsessis a daemonio · 1614
What closes the matter?
Read from a transcribed textA dismissal. The spirit is commanded to depart and give place.
The final transcribed clauses command departure and name where the spirit is to go.
Rituale Romanum, Titulus X: De exorcizandis obsessis a daemonio · 1614
What it uses
Rites
The Roman Rite of Exorcism
Superseded1614 · Latin
The Western rite of exorcism as fixed in 1614: twenty-one rubrics of restraint, three signs of possession, and a sequence of adjurations that names, commands and dismisses. Used essentially unchanged until 1999.
11 clauses transcribed · on the rites page
De exorcismis et supplicationibus quibusdam
In use1999; emended 2004 · Latin
The rite that replaced the 1614 text. Tighter signs, an explicit caution about psychiatric illness, and a deprecatory form of prayer alongside the imperative one. In copyright: described here, never quoted.
Named and dated; not yet transcribed · on the rites page
What happened afterwards
Reception
Film has supplied the version most people know, including a much longer list of signs than the book gives. The corpus keeps the three the 1614 text actually prints, and records the rest as reception.
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.