Sacrilege
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence · Benjamin Vaughan Abbott · 1879
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence
The' offence of desecrating any thing that is consecrated to religious uses; despoiling churches, and the like. The alienation of lands which were given to religious purposes to laymen, or to profane and common purposes, was also, in old English law, termed sacrilege.
Cowel.