Insufflation

In religious and magical practice, insufflation and exsufflation 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). 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.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.'Those who are to be baptised are insufflated by the priest of God, so that the Prince of Sinners may be put to flight from out of them, and that entry for the Lord Christ might be prepared, and that by his insufflation they might be made worthy to receive the Holy Spirit.'Those who are to be baptized should … be gathered in one place. … And should lay his hands on them and exorcize all alien spirits, that they may flee out of them and ever return into them. And when he has finished exorcizing them, he shall breathe on their faces; and when he has signed their foreheads, ears, and noses, he shall raise them up.'Concerning the renunciation of Satan and all his works and pomps, what is the renunciation? and what are the works of the devil and his pomps? why is he breathed upon? (cur exsufflatur?) why is he exorcised?''The least importance attaches to these external things, namely breathing under the eyes, signing with the cross, placing salt in the mouth, putting spittle and clay on the ears and nose, anointing with oil the breast and shoulders, and signing the top of the head with chrism, vesting in the christening robe, and giving a burning candle into the hand, and whatever else … men have added to embellish baptism. For … they are not the kind of devices that the devil shuns.''The conjuring the Devil also out of the Infant that is to be baptized would seem a frightful thing to the Infant himself, if he understood in what an ill plight the Priest supposes him, while he makes three Exsufflations upon his face, and uses an Exorcistical form for the ejecting of the foul Fiend. … And it is much if something might not appear affrightful to the Women in this approaching darkness. For though it be a gay thing for the Priest to be thought to have so much power over the Stygian Fiend, as to Exorcize him out of the Infant; yet it may be a sad consideration with some melancholick women laden with Superstition, to think they are never brought to bed, but they are delivered of a Devil and Child at once.''A Church that held the exorcismes exsufflations and renunciations, which are made in baptisme, for sacred Ceremonies, and of Apostolicall tradition.... A Church which in the Ceremonies of baptisme, vsed oyle, salte, waxe, lights, exorcismes, the signe of the Cross, the word Epheta and other thinges that accompanie it; to testifie ... by exorcismes, that baptisme puts vs out of the Diuells possession.'Sundry Ceremonies vsed in baptisme, and other Sacraments, as Exorcismes, Exsufflations, Christening, and the like mentioned by S. Augustine and by diuers other ancient Fathers ..., these being practised by the Primitiue Church (which is graunted to be the true Church) and compared to the customes of Protestants, and vs, in our Churches, will easily disclose, which of the two, they or we, do more imitate, or impugne the true Church of antiquity.''It was plain then there was no clear Tradition in the Question, possibly there might be a custome in some Churches postnate to the times of the Apostles, but nothing that was obligatory, no Tradition Apostolicall. But this was a suppletory device ready at hand when ever they needed it; and S. Austin confuted the Pelagians, in the Question of Original sinne, by the custome of exorcisme and insufflation, which S. Austin said came from the Apostles by Tradition, which yet was then, and is now so impossible to be prov'd, that he that shall affirm it, shall gaine only the reputation of a bold man and a confident.''Mystery prevail'd very little in the first Hundred or Century of Years after Christ; but in the second and third, it began to establish it self by Ceremonies. To Baptism were then added the tasting of Milk and Honey, Anointing, the Sign of the Cross, a white Garment, &c. ... But in later times there was no end of Lights, Exorcisms, Exsufflations, and many other Extravagancies of Jewish, or Heathen Original ... for there is nothing like these in the Writings of the Apostles, but they are all plainly contain'd in the Books of the Gentiles, and was the Substance of their Worship.'' ... taking it into his head that there ought to be a trine-immersion in baptism; another the signation of the cross; another an unction with oil; another milk and honey, and imposition of hands immediately after it; another insufflation or breathing upon the person's face to exorcise the Devil... Thus, I say, that inundation of abominable corruptions, which at present overwhelms both the Greek and Romish Churches, gradually came in at this very breech which you are now zealously maintaining, namely, the Bishop's Power to decree rites and ceremonies in the Church.''When he had said this he breathed upon them, and said to them, Receive the Holy Ghost....' When the Pastors of our Church use the Insufflation or Breathing upon any, for the like mystical Signification, you cry aloud, Superstition, Superstition, an apish mimical action, &c.'' signifies, To blow into, Gen. 2. 7. This sheweth mans soul not to be of the earth, as his body was, but of nothing, by the insufflation of God, and so differing from the spirit of beasts, Eccl. 3. 21. This word is used also, when Christ to make men new creatures, inspired his Apostles with the holy Ghost, Joh. 20. 21.''The Lord God, saith the Text, formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his Nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living Soul. His Body made of Earth, but his Soul the Breath of God. … We must not understand it grosly; for so Breath is not attributable unto God, who is a simple and perfect Spirit; but … as a figurative expression of God's communicating unto Man that inward Principle, whereby he lives and acts, not only in common with, but in a degree above other Animals. … The Learned P. Fagius takes notice of three things in the Text of Moses, which do conclude the Immortality of the Soul of Man. I. Insufflatio illa Dei: This Inspiration from God spoken of: For he that breaths into another, contributes unto him aliquid de suo somewhat of his own: And therefore, saith he, when our B. Saviour would communicate his Spirit to his Disciples, he did it with Insufflation, breathing on them, thereby to signifie, se Divinum & de suo quiddam illis contribuere .''The breathing of the saints and the invocation of the name of God, like fiercest flame, scorch and drive out evil spirits.''By the breath that the priest breathes into the font when he blesses it, the devil is straightway driven out from it. And when the priest dips the consecrated candle in the water, then that water forthwith becomes imbued with the Holy Ghost.'The exsufflated person is exorcised so that ... having been delivered from the power of darkness, he might be translated into the kingdom ... of God.A Syrian blows over his child to avert the evil eye. Some stillblow three times over a strange spoon before using it, and in Alaska the medicineman blows into the nose and mouth of a patient to drive out the daemon of disease. In religious and magical practice, insufflation and exsufflation 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. 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. 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. 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) an exsufflation of the candidate for baptism, right up to the 1960s: From an early period, the act had two distinct but not always distinguishable meanings: it signified on the one hand the derisive repudiation or exorcism of the devil; and, on the other, purification and consecration by and inspiration with the Holy Spirit. The former is technically 'exsufflation' ('blowing out') and the latter 'insufflation' ('blowing in'), but ancient and medieval texts (followed by modern scholarship) make no consistent distinction in usage. For example, the texts use not only Latin insufflare ('blow in') and exsufflare ('blow out'), or their Greek or vernacular equivalents, but also the simplex sufflare ('blow'), halare ('breathe'), inspirare, exspirare, etc. Typical is the 8th-century Libellus de mysterio baptismatis of Magnus of Sens, one of a number of responses to a questionnaire about baptism circulated by Charlemagne. In discussing insufflation as a means of exorcising catechumens, Magnus combines a variety of mostly exsufflation-like functions≈ This double role appears as early as Cyril of Jerusalem's 4th-century Mystagogic Catacheses; as Edward Yarnold notes, 'Cyril attributes both negative and positive effects . … The rite of breathing on the candidate has the negative effect of blowing away the devil (exsufflation) and the positive effect of breathing in grace (insufflation).' What might neutrally be called 'sufflation' is found in some of the earliest liturgies dealing with the protracted process of initiation known as the 'catechumenate,' which saw its heyday in the 4th and 5th centuries. The earliest extant liturgical use is possibly that of the Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus of Rome, from the 3rd or 4th century, and therefore contemporary with Cyril in the east: The practice entered the baptismal liturgy proper only as the catechumenate, rendered vestigial by the growth of routine infant baptism, was absorbed into the rite of baptism. Both exsufflation and insufflation are well established by the time of Augustine and in later centuries are found widely. By the Western high Middle Ages of the 12th century, sufflation was geographically widespread, and had been applied not only to sufflating catechumens and baptizands, but also to exorcism of readmitted heretics; to admission of adult converts to the catechumenate; to renunciation of the devil on the part of catechumens; to consecration and/or exorcism of the baptismal font and water; to consecration or exorcism of ashes; and to the consecration of the chrism or holy oil. Most of these variations persist in one branch or another of the hybrid Romano-Germanic rite that can be traced from 5th-century Rome through the western Middle Ages to the Council of Trent, and beyond that into modern (Tridentine) Roman Catholicism. As the 'national' rites such as the Ambrosian tradition in northern Italy and the Spanish Mozarabic rite faded away or were absorbed into international practice, it was this hybrid Roman-Gallican standard that came to dominate western Christendom, including Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, from the time of Charlemagne, and partly through his doing, through the high and late Middle Ages and into the modern period. Roman practice around the year 500 is reflected in a letter by a somewhat mysterious John the Deacon to a correspondent named Senarius. The letter discusses the exsufflation of catechumens at length. The Stowe Missal, Irish in origin but largely Gallican in form, contains a prebaptismal sufflation of unclear significance. The other Gallican rites are largely devoid of sufflation, though the so-called Missale Gothicum contains a triple exsufflation of baptismal water, and a prebaptismal insufflation of catechumens is found in the hybrid Bobbio Missal and the 10th-century Fulda sacramentary, alongside the more common baptismal exsufflation. The 11th-century North-Italian baptismal ritual in the Ambrosian Library MS. T.27.Sup. makes heavy use of the practice, requiring both insufflation and triple exsufflation of the baptismal candidates in modum crucis, and insufflation of the font as well. The 'Hadrianum' version of the Gregorian Sacramentary, sent to Charlemagne from Rome and augmented probably by Benedict of Aniane, contains an insufflation of the baptismal font, as does the mid-10th-century Ordo Romanus L, the basis of the later Roman pontifical. Ordo Romanus L also contains a triple exsufflation of the candidates for baptism, immediately preceding the baptism itself.