15th-century English pontificals, in the Sarum Missal, and in the 13th-century Roman pontifical. Extra-liturgical (hagiographic and magical) use Patristic period There are hints in some of the Church Fathers that Christians had a habit of breathing (or hissing) at evil spirits as a recognized act of revulsion or repulsion, even apart from the ceremonies of the church. Tertullian is perhaps the best witness. He seems to be talking about an extra-liturgical casting out of demons by means of exsufflation and signing when he declares that gods rejected by Christians are driven from the bodies of men "by our touch and by our breath," and are thus "carried away by the thought and vision of the fire [of judgment]." He is talking about an ordinary gesture of aversion when he asks a Christian incense-dealer (regarded as hypocritical because he sells incense for polytheistic altars), "with what mouth, I ask, will he spit and blow before the fuming altars for which he himself provided? with what constancy will he [thus] exorcise his foster children?" And his remarks to his wife about the dangers of mixed marriage suggest that exsufflation was a distinctively Christian practice: "[If you marry again, to a non-Christian,] shall you escape notice when you sign your bed or your body? when you blow away some impurity? When even by night you rise to pray?" If such a custom did exist, it would clarify certain remarks by other Fathers, which might otherwise seem merely metaphorical. Eusebius, for example, says of the saints that they were men "who though they only breathed and spoke, were able to scatter the counsels of evil demons." Irenaeus describes the right response to Gnostic doctrine as "reviling" (καταφυσησαντας; literally exsufflantes). Cyril of Jerusalem, speaking of resisting temptation, not of baptism, says that "the mere breathing of the exorcist becomes as a fire to that unseen foe." And Augustine's remarks about blowing on images of the emperor suggest that the significance of the gesture was well enough established to be actionable: "Of the great crime of lese majesty ... is he held guilty, according to the laws of this world, who blows upon an image ... of the emperor." Even as late as Bede, we may suspect that "exsufflate" in the sense of "revile" or "cast off" may be a living metaphor. Hagiography The extremely influential Life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus seems to have