James Thomson Shotwell and Thomas Allan Ingram

“ SACRILEGE, the violation or profanation of sacred things, a crime of varying scope in different religions. It is naturally much more general and accounted more dreadful in those primitive religions in which cultual objects play so great a part, than in more highly spiritualized religions where they tend to disappear. But wherever the idea of sacred exists, sacrilege is possible. The word itself comes from the Lat. sacrilegium, which originally meant merely the theft of sacred things, although already in Cicero's time it had grown to include in popular speech any insult or injury to them. ”

“ The history of sacrilege reflects a large phase of the evolution of religion. In primitive religions inclusive of almost every serious offence even in fields now regarded as merely social or political, its scope is gradually lessened to a single part of one section of ecclesiastical criminology, following inversely the development of the idea of holiness from the concrete to the abstract, from fetishism to mysticism. The primitive defence against sacrilege lay directly in the nature of sacred things, those that held a curse for any violation or profanation. ”

“ The whole wide field of Jewish taboo naturally involves sacrilege as its reverse side. Such violations of holy things as making mock of the Scriptures, or even reciting them as one would ordinary literature, was sacrilege in the eyes of the rabbi. Even imitation of the style of the Talmud has also been accounted sacrilege.
While the Roman cults were amply protected by taboos, there was no comprehensive term in Roman law for religious violations and profanations in general. Sacrilegium was narrowly construed as the theft of sacred things from a sacred place. ”