1. The crime of violating or profaning sacred things; or the alienating to laymen or to common purposes what has been appropriated or consecrated to religious persons or uses.
Word of the Day: Catachrestical
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.
Sacrilege
Encyclopedia Britannica
SACRILEGE. The robbery of churches was in Roman law punishable with death. There are early instances of persons having suffered death for this offence in Scotland. In England at common law benefit of clergy was denied to robbers of churches. The tendency of the later law has been to put the offence of sacrilege in the same position as if the offence had not been committed in a sacred building.
Thus breaking into a place of worship at night, says Lord Coke, is burglary, for the church is the mansionhouse of Almighty God. The Larceny Act of 1861 punishes the breaking into or out of a place of divine worship in the same way as burglary, and the theft of things sacred in the same way as larceny. The breaking or defacing of an altar, crucifix, or cross in any church, chapel, or churchyard is an offence punishable with three months’ imprisonment on conviction before two justices, the imprisonment to be continued unless the offender enter into surety for good behaviour at quarter sessions (1 Mary, sess. 2, c. 3).
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 21, p. 140
[180 words — estimated reading time: 2 minutes]
[180 words — estimated reading time: 2 minutes]
Impiety Roget’s Thesaurus §988
N. impiety, sin, irreverence, profaneness, profanity, profanation, blasphemy, desecration, sacrilege, scoffing, hypocrisy, pietism, cant, pious fraud, lip devotion, lip service, lip reverence, misdevotion, formalism, austerity, sanctimony, sanctimoniousness, pharisaism, precisianism, sabbatism, sabbatarianism, odium theologicum, sacerdotalism, bigotry, (prejudice) 481, blue laws, hardening, backsliding, declension, perversion, reprobation, sinner, scoffer, blasphemer, sacrilegist, sabbath breaker, worldling, hypocrite, tartufe, mawworm, bigot, saint, pharisee, sabbatarian, formalist, methodist, puritan, pietist, precisian, religionist, devotee, ranter, fanatic, juramentado, the wicked, the evil, the unjust, the reprobate, sons of men, sons of belial, the wicked one, children of darkness
V. be impious, profane, desecrate, blaspheme, revile, scoff, swear, commit sacrilege, snuffle, turn up the whites of the eyes, idolize
Adj. impious, irreligious, desecrating, profane, irreverent, sacrilegious, blasphemous, un-hallowed, un-sanctified, un-regenerate, hardened, perverted, reprobate, hypocritical, canting, pietistical, sanctimonious, unctuous, pharisaical, overrighteous, righteous over much, bigoted, fanatical, priest-ridden
Adv. under the mask of religion, under the cloak of religion, under the pretense of religion, under the form of religion, under the guise of religion
Phr. giovane santo diavolo vecchio
King James Bible KJV Bible
Berean Standard Bible BSB Bible
3 KJV and 0 BSB verses contain “Sacrilege”
Now when many sacrileges had been committed in the city by Lysimachus with the consent of Menelaus, and the fruit thereof was spread abroad, the multitude gathered themselves together against Lysimachus, many vessels of gold being already carried away.