Definition
Sacrilege, in legal usage, carries two distinct meanings depending on the period and legal system in question.
1. In English criminal law (the more technically precise legal sense): The crime of breaking into a church or chapel and stealing therefrom. This is essentially an aggravated form of larceny defined by the sacred character of the place violated, not merely by the nature of the object taken.
2. In old English law (the broader, earlier sense): The desecration of anything consecrated or set apart as holy, including the alienation of property dedicated to religious persons or pious uses into lay or secular hands. This encompassed acts by officials and landholders who diverted church property to common purposes, not only thieves who broke and entered.
A parallel concept appears in Roman civil law under the term SACRILEGIUM, which denoted the theft of sacred things — objects formally dedicated to divine use — and was treated as a distinct and aggravated offense from ordinary theft.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Desecration, profanation, misuse, or violation of something regarded as sacred.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The sin or crime of violating or profaning sacred things; the alienating to laymen, or to common purposes, what has been appropriated or consecrated to religious persons or uses.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is one of precision rather than reversal. Ordinary usage treats sacrilege as any violation of the sacred — a broad moral or religious concept that can apply to speech, conduct, or attitude. Legal usage, particularly in English criminal law, narrows this sharply: the legally operative form of sacrilege is a property crime requiring a specific act (breaking and entering) in a specific type of place (a church or chapel) coupled with theft. Moral outrage alone does not constitute the offense. A researcher encountering "sacrilege" in a criminal pleading should expect a charge closer in structure to burglary than to blasphemy.
Common Confusion
Sacrilege is sometimes conflated with BLASPHEMY and PROFANATION, but the distinctions matter for research. Blasphemy concerns spoken or written offense against God or religion and was prosecuted as a separate crime at common law. Profanation is the broader desecration concept with no fixed criminal definition in English law. Sacrilege, in its criminal law sense, is distinguishable from both by its requirement of a taking — it is theft aggravated by the sanctity of the location, not a purely expressive or ceremonial wrong. The older English law usage of sacrilege (alienation of church property) more closely overlaps with what later sources might call simony or ecclesiastical dilapidation, and researchers should not assume the term carries its criminal law definition when encountered in ecclesiastical or equity proceedings.
Why It Matters in Research
The term's legal meaning shifted significantly across periods and jurisdictions, which creates real traps for researchers working in historical sources.
Period sensitivity is essential. In pre-Reformation and early post-Reformation English sources, sacrilege frequently appears in the context of the dissolution of the monasteries and the transfer of church lands to lay owners — a political and ecclesiastical controversy that generated substantial legal and polemical literature. In that context, sacrilege is not a criminal charge but a rhetorical and canonical accusation. Researchers working in Tudor and early Stuart materials must read the term contextually, not as a technical criminal law descriptor.
In later common law sources — Blackstone, Stephen, Russell — sacrilege settles into the criminal law category of aggravated larceny. Stephen's Commentaries and Russell on Crimes (both cited in the Black's entries) treat it as a defined offense distinct from simple church robbery by the element of breaking. Researchers tracing criminal indictments should check whether the specific jurisdiction distinguished sacrilege from ordinary theft by the breaking requirement or treated any church theft as sacrilege.
The Roman law counterpart, SACRILEGIUM, is important for researchers working in civil law jurisdictions or in comparative legal history. The civil law concept was broader than the English criminal law definition and included defilement of sacred objects even without theft. Burrill's entry opens this comparative dimension but does not develop it fully.
Ecclesiastical court records present a third research environment. Church courts exercised jurisdiction over offenses against sacred persons and places, and sacrilege-adjacent conduct might appear under different headings in those records than in the common law courts. Cross-referencing ecclesiastical and common law sources is advisable when the offense involves property of the church rather than breaking and theft.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) are nearly identical on this term, both citing Stephen's Commentaries (4 Steph. Comm. 164) for the criminal law definition and Russell on Crimes (1 Russ. Crimes, 843) for the breaking-and-stealing formulation. Both editions also cite Cowell for the older English law meaning — the desecration and alienation of holy things to lay purposes. The consistency across editions reflects that the term's legal contours were not contested between those printings.
Burrill's entry begins with the Latin derivation (sacrilegium, from sacra and legere — sacred things, and to steal), which illuminates the concept's core: the original offense was understood as a theft of sacred things, with the "theft" framing doing important work in distinguishing sacrilege from purely ceremonial or moral violations. Burrill's entry, though partially truncated in available form, supports the conclusion that the stealing element was definitionally embedded from the term's earliest legal usage.
Webster's 1913 aligns closely with the older English law sense rather than the criminal law sense — emphasizing profanation and alienation to lay purposes without foregrounding the breaking-and-stealing requirement. This reinforces the point that non-legal sources of the period were working with a broader, more moralized understanding of the term.
None of the historical legal dictionaries substantively address the Roman law version of sacrilegium, leaving that dimension underdeveloped. Researchers needing the civil law treatment should consult Digest sources directly.
Jurisdictional Note
Sacrilege as a defined criminal offense is primarily an English common law concept and does not appear as a discrete statutory offense in most American jurisdictions, where church theft is typically prosecuted under general larceny or burglary statutes. Civil law jurisdictions address analogous conduct under different doctrinal categories. Researchers working in American sources after the colonial period should not expect to find sacrilege as a charged offense in indictments; the conduct will appear under burglary or theft headings instead.