Secularization (church property)

Secularization is the confiscation of church land or property by the state. The term is often used to specifically refer to such confiscations during the French Revolution and the First French Empire, either in the sense of seizing churches and converting their property to state ownership or in the sense of incorporating ecclesiastical principalities and territories of the former Holy Roman Empire into larger secular territorial states.

As part of his enlightened absolutism, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor seized several monasteries before the French Revolution, leaving only 388 of the 915 monasteries (of which 762 were male institutions and 153 female ones) existing in Austria in 1780.

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