Insufflation

In religious and magical practice, insufflation and exsufflation^[1] are ritual acts of blowing, breathing, hissing, or puffing that signify variously expulsion or renunciation of evil or of the devil (the Evil One), or infilling or blessing with good (especially, in religious use, with the Spirit or grace of God).

In historical Christian practice, such blowing appears most prominently in the liturgy, and is connected almost exclusively with baptism and other ceremonies of Christian initiation, achieving its greatest popularity during periods in which such ceremonies were given a prophylactic or exorcistic significance, and were viewed as essential to the defeat of the devil or to the removal of the taint of original sin.^[2]

Ritual blowing occurs in the liturgies of catechumenate and baptism from a very early period and survives into the modern Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Maronite, and Coptic rites.^[3] Catholic liturgy post-Vatican II (the so-called novus ordo 1969) has largely done away with insufflation, except in a special rite for the consecration of chrism on Maundy Thursday.^[4] Protestant liturgies typically abandoned it very early on. The Tridentine Catholic liturgy retained both an insufflation of the baptismal water and (like the present-day Orthodox and Maronite rites)^[5] an exsufflation of the candidate for baptism, right up to the 1960s:

[THE INSUFFLATION] He breathes thrice upon the waters in the form of a cross, saying: Do You with Your mouth bless these pure waters: that besides their natural virtue of cleansing the body, they may also be effectual for purifying the soul.^[6]

THE EXSUFFLATION. The priest breathes three times on the child in the form of a cross, saying: Go out of him...you unclean spirit and give place to the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.^[7]

^ Insufflation (from Latin word elements meaning "a blowing on") and exsufflation ("a blowing out") often cannot be distinguished in usage, and so are considered together in this article.
^ See Franz Josef Dölger, Der Exorzismus im altchristlichen Taufrituel, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums 3 (Paderborn, 1909), chap. 7 "Die Exsufflatio" (pp. 118-130); Edmond Martène, De antiquis ecclesiae ritibus libri tres (Venice, 1763), I.1.viii-xiv ("Ritus instituendi catechumeni"); Rudolf Suntrup, Die Bedeutung der liturgischen Gebärden und Bewegungen in lateinischen und deutschen Auslegungen des 9. bis 13. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1978), pp. 307-310; and Henry A. Kelly, The Devil at Baptism: Ritual, Theology, and Drama (Ithaca, 1985).
^ Alongside Martène and Suntrup (cited above), convenient collections of illustrative material include W. G. Henderson, ed., Manuale et Processionale ad usum insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis, Surtees Society Publications 63 (Durham, 1875 for 1874), especially Appendix III "Ordines Baptismi" [cited below as York Manual]; Joseph Aloysius Assemanus, Codex liturgicus ecclesiae universae, I: De Catechumenis and II: De Baptismo (Rome, 1749; reprinted Paris and Leipzig, 1902); J. M. Neale, ed., The Ancient Liturgies of the Gallican Church...together with Parallel Passages from the Roman, Ambrosian, and Mozarabic Rites (London, 1855; rpt. New York, 1970); Enzo Lodi, Enchiridion euchologicum fontium liturgicorum (Rome, 1978); Johannes Quaesten, ed., Monumenta eucharistica et liturgica vetustissima, Florilegium Patristicum tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens, ed. Bernhard Geyer and Johan Zellinger, fasc. 7 in 7 parts (Bonn, 1935-1937); E. C. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, 2nd ed. (London, 1970); and Thomas M. Finn, Early Christian Baptism and the Catechumenate: Italy, North Africa, and Egypt (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992).
^ F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., rev. by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford, 1998), s.v. "insufflation," p. 839.
^ The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., 840. For the Maronite rite, derived from the ancient Syriac liturgy, see Mysteries of Initiation, Baptism, Confirmation, Communion according to the Maronite Antiochene Church, (Washington, DC, 1987); summarized by Bryan D. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism..., (Aldershot, Hants., 2006), 89-91.
^ Saint Andrew Daily Missal..., by Dom Gaspar Lefebvre (Bruges [Belgium]: Biblica, 1962), 492 [liturgy for the Easter vigil].
^ Saint Andrew Missal (Bruges, 1962), 1768 [ceremonies of baptism].

[1] Insufflation (from Latin word elements meaning "a blowing on") and exsufflation ("a blowing out") often cannot be distinguished in usage, and so are considered together in this article.

[2] See Franz Josef Dölger, Der Exorzismus im altchristlichen Taufrituel, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums 3 (Paderborn, 1909), chap. 7 "Die Exsufflatio" (pp. 118-130); Edmond Martène, De antiquis ecclesiae ritibus libri tres (Venice, 1763), I.1.viii-xiv ("Ritus instituendi catechumeni"); Rudolf Suntrup, Die Bedeutung der liturgischen Gebärden und Bewegungen in lateinischen und deutschen Auslegungen des 9. bis 13. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1978), pp. 307-310; and Henry A. Kelly, The Devil at Baptism: Ritual, Theology, and Drama (Ithaca, 1985).

[3] Alongside Martène and Suntrup (cited above), convenient collections of illustrative material include W. G. Henderson, ed., Manuale et Processionale ad usum insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis, Surtees Society Publications 63 (Durham, 1875 for 1874), especially Appendix III "Ordines Baptismi" [cited below as York Manual]; Joseph Aloysius Assemanus, Codex liturgicus ecclesiae universae, I: De Catechumenis and II: De Baptismo (Rome, 1749; reprinted Paris and Leipzig, 1902); J. M. Neale, ed., The Ancient Liturgies of the Gallican Church...together with Parallel Passages from the Roman, Ambrosian, and Mozarabic Rites (London, 1855; rpt. New York, 1970); Enzo Lodi, Enchiridion euchologicum fontium liturgicorum (Rome, 1978); Johannes Quaesten, ed., Monumenta eucharistica et liturgica vetustissima, Florilegium Patristicum tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens, ed. Bernhard Geyer and Johan Zellinger, fasc. 7 in 7 parts (Bonn, 1935-1937); E. C. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, 2nd ed. (London, 1970); and Thomas M. Finn, Early Christian Baptism and the Catechumenate: Italy, North Africa, and Egypt (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992).

[4] F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., rev. by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Oxford, 1998), s.v. "insufflation," p. 839.

[5] The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., 840. For the Maronite rite, derived from the ancient Syriac liturgy, see Mysteries of Initiation, Baptism, Confirmation, Communion according to the Maronite Antiochene Church, (Washington, DC, 1987); summarized by Bryan D. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism..., (Aldershot, Hants., 2006), 89-91.

[6] Saint Andrew Daily Missal..., by Dom Gaspar Lefebvre (Bruges [Belgium]: Biblica, 1962), 492 [liturgy for the Easter vigil].

[7] Saint Andrew Missal (Bruges, 1962), 1768 [ceremonies of baptism].

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