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Konstantin Makovsky. The Bulgarian martyresses. 1877 Atrocities of bashibazouks in Bulgarian Orthodox Church

Sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object. In a less proper sense, any transgression against the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege. It can come in the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things. When the sacrilegious offense is verbal, it is called blasphemy.

The term originates from the Latin sacer, sacred, and legere, to steal, as in Roman times it referred to the plundering of temples and graves. By the time of Cicero, sacrilege had adopted a more expansive meaning, including verbal offenses against religion and undignified treatment of sacred objects.

Most ancient religions have a concept analogous to sacrilege, often considered as a type of taboo. The basic idea is that sacred objects are not to be treated in the same way as other objects.

With the advent of Christianity as the official Roman religion, the Emperor Theodosius criminalized sacrilege in an even more expansive sense, including heresy and schism, and offenses against the emperor, including tax evasion.

By the Middle Ages, the concept of sacrilege was again restricted to physical acts against sacred objects, and this forms the basis of all later Catholic teaching on the subject.

In post-Reformation England, sacrilege was a criminal offense for centuries, though its statutory definition varied considerably. Most English dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appealed to the primary sense of stealing objects from a church.

Most modern nations have abandoned laws against sacrilege out of respect for freedom of expression, save in cases where there is an injury to persons or property. In the United States, the Supreme Court case Burstyn v. Wilson (1952) struck down a statute against sacrilege, ruling that the term could not be narrowly defined in a way that would safeguard against the establishment of one church over another, and that such statutes infringed upon the free exercise of religion and freedom of expression.

Despite their decriminalization, sacrilegious acts are still often regarded with public opprobrium, even by non-adherents of the offended religion, especially when these acts are perceived as manifestations of hatred toward a particular sect or creed.

The Thomist definition of sacrilege is the violation of sacred persons, places, or things. The violation of a nun consecrated to God is considered sacrilege by St. Thomas, as is the reception of Holy Communion by notorious sinners. Objects consecrated to God are not to be handled unworthily or by those who are unworthy.

Many manuals on moral and sacramental theology likewise confirm that "Unworthy treatment of the Eucharist is the worst of sacrileges." (8) "They who make a sacrilegious Communion," writes St. Cyril, "receive Satan and Jesus Christ into their hearts — Satan, that they may let him rule, and Jesus Christ, that they may offer Him in sacrifice as a Victim to Satan."

• Anti-Sacrilege Act
• Blasphemy
• Desecration

• Sacrilege Catholic Encyclopedia