Demonic Possession and the Practice of Exorcism: An exploration of the Franciscan legacy

Abstract

Early 2018, while trying to address one of the many deficiencies in the Franciscan Authors internet catalogue,2 my attention was drawn towards a peculiar English study and source translation of the Flagellum daemonum, a treatise written by the sixteenth-century Observant Franciscan Girolamo Menghi.3 Almost immediately afterwards, I came across a German translation of and commentary on both the Flagellum daemonum and the Fustis daemonum by the same author.4 According to the makers of these modern translations, they aim to make the works of one of Europe’s most famous sixteenth-century exorcists and possibly the most successful writer of exorcism manuals who ever existed, available for a wider scholarly audience. Looking for corroboration of this verdict in a number of modern studies on demonic possession and exorcism, it quickly became apparent that Girolamo Menghi figures prominently in the present-day scholarly discourse on the development of exorcism and demonology during the late medieval, renaissance and early modern period.5 Moreover, alongside