# The exorcists’ manuals

**Flagellum Daemonum*, *Fustis Daemonum*, *Thesaurus exorcismorum**

**Known today as.** The handbooks of the exorcist’s art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, above all those of the Franciscan Girolamo Menghi.

Kind: Sacramental

## What was it used for?

Carried and read at the rite: prayers, adjurations, blessings of herbs and objects, and the signs by which to tell the possessed from the sick.

## What does modern science say?

The press’s [Cudgel of Demons](https://thethinkingpress.org/project/fustis-daemonum) is the first English translation of the *Fustis*.

## What lore surrounds it?

Menghi’s *Flagellum Daemonum* (1576) and *Fustis Daemonum* (1584) were reprinted many times and gathered into the great compilation *Thesaurus exorcismorum* (Cologne, 1608).

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia summarises the Roman Ritual's instructions for the exorcist: “Possession is not lightly to be taken for granted. Each case is to be carefully examined and great caution to be used in distinguishing genuine possession from certain forms of disease.” The priest “should avoid in the a course of the rite everything that savours of superstition, and should leave the medical aspects of the case to qualified physicians,” “all idle and curious questioning of the demon should be avoided,” and when the rite is held in a house “witnesses (preferably members of the family) should be present: this is specially enjoined, as a measure of precaution, in case the subject is a woman.” In the early centuries, by Origen's account, “even the simplest and rudest of the faithful sometimes cast out demons, by a mere prayer or adjuration.”

## Sources

- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Exorcist.” newadvent.org/cathen/05711a.htm

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*The exorcists’ manuals.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/exorcists-manuals

Historical description, not medical advice.