The secular originally named church property transfer, not religion’s opposite

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. … In the discourse of modernity “the secular” presents itself as the ground from which theological discourse was generated (as a form of false consciousness) and from which it gradually emancipated itself in its march to freedom. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 937

Categorization

• DEFINE: Roots the secular in the Latin saeculum and shows secularization’s original meaning as the legal transfer of church property into private market hands.
• XREF: This etymology of ‘secularization’ as property transfer strongly parallels how the vaulted Cooper argument exposes modern categories as quietly built on latent Christian/market assumptions.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does modern secularism structurally inherit the property/market logic of its Reformation legal ancestor?