ABSTRACT
The first lasted from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century when, largely owing to the literary and exorcist activity of the Jesuits, the religious rite of exorcism was entirely renewed and shifted in the direction of becoming routine, professional and systematic. The subject of exorcism and its research by the specialist disciplines of scholarship have yielded a large body of rich and multilayered results on the international level. It is hard even to inventory the disciplines whose representatives have regularly touched on the historical aspects of this area. The fact that data from Hungary’s early modern period are scarce or absent has several possible explanations. One part of this is that a “normal” pastoral practice leaves far fewer traces than abuses and anomalies. The various mediaeval texts and ceremonial orders of exorcism aimed against demonic possession were unified, formalized and regulated in the Roman Catholic Church in line with the tendencies defined by the synod of Trident.
