Along these lines, Montgelas secularized—that is seized for the use and benefit of the State—many Catholic land-holdings, most especially the Bavarian monasteries. Montgelas was attempting to sever the "Mortmain" that had driven the state to the treasury to the brink of financial ruin under Karl Theodor. According to principles of the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic reorganization of Europe, the expropriation of Church property and the suppression of Church institutions were essential steps to the modernization of the State. Since the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages, the monasteries had owned large stretches of land and governed the farmers working that land. Montgelas, again in keeping with principles of the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic reorganization of Europe that favored the establishment of absolute secular authority over against religion, eliminating such exercises of authority by and resources from church institutions was necessary. Monastic life as such was viewed by Montgelas, in keeping with the most religiously hostile forms of Enlightenment thinking, as useless, at best, and as a breeding ground of "superstition."