Secularization is the confiscation of church property by a government, such as in the suppression of monasteries. The term is often used to specifically refer to such confiscations during the French Revolution and the First French Empire in the sense of seizing churches and converting their property to state ownership.
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The German mediatisation (English: /miːdiətaɪˈzeɪʃən/; German: deutsche Mediatisierung) was the major redistribution and reshaping of territorial holdings that took place between 1802 and 1814 in Germany by means of the subsumption and secularisation of a large number of Imperial Estates. Nearly all the ecclesiastical principalities and free imperial cities, as well as most minor secular principalities and other self-ruling entities of the Holy Roman Empire lost their independent status and were absorbed by the remaining states. By the end of the mediatisation process, the number of German states had been reduced from almost 300 to 39.
In the strict sense of the word, mediatisation consists in the subsumption of an immediate (unmittelbar) state into another state, thus becoming mediate (mittelbar), while generally leaving the dispossessed ruler with his private estates and a number of privileges and feudal rights, such as low justice. For convenience, historians use the term mediatisation for the entire restructuring process that took place at the time, whether the mediatised states persisted in some form or lost all individuality. The secularisation of ecclesiastical states took place concurrently with the mediatisation of free imperial cities and other secular states.
Deconsecration, also referred to as decommissioning or secularization (a term also used for the external confiscation of church property), is the removal of a religious sanction and blessing from something that had been previously consecrated for spiritual use. This can be of any particular thing, including people or places, that may have been considered holy or blessed in some way in the past.
In particular, church buildings no longer required for religious use are deconsecrated for secular use or demolition.