Secularization originally meant a legal transfer of church property to lay owners.

Evidence

In fact the historical process of secularization effects a remarkable ideological inversion, though not quite in the way that Hegel claimed in the sentence just cited. For at one time “the secular” was part of a theological discourse (saeculum). “Secularization” (saecularisatio) at first denoted a legal transition from monastic life (regularis) to the life of canons (saecularis)—and then, after the Reformation, it signified the transfer of ecclesiastical real property to laypersons, that is, to the “freeing” of property from church hands into the hands of private owners, and thence into market circulation. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 937

Categorization

• DEFINE: Etymology and semantic shift of ‘secular’ and ‘secularization’ from theological/legal discourse to modern usage.
• XREF: Connects to Weber’s disenchantment and the materialist reading of secularism a private-property transfer rather than pure intellectual emancipation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 937