Review of: Young F. A History of Anglican Exorcism: Deliverance and Demonology in Church Ritual. London: I. B. Tauris, 2018. 256 p. ISBN 978-1-78831-347-6

Abstract

In the last decade and a half, the study of exorcism and the related phenomenon of possession has become one of the most developed issues in contemporary religious studies. Historians, theologians, culturologists, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists have written on this topic. One can notice that not even a year goes by when new works on the subject appear. This interest has a simple explanation: after 1970s the practice of exorcism in the western world is experiencing a second golden age (the first one fell at the beginning of the New Age), in proportion to the number of exorcists increases and media attention to them, which makes the phenomenon attractive and interesting, and this, in turn, leads to the need for its reflection in research circles. The work of Francis Young, a Cambridge historian specialising in the history of English Catholicism and magic in the early modern period, stands out among the works on the subject in recent years. In 2016. Young produced an excellent study, History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity, which for the first time painted a picture of the development of the practice in the Catholic Church.