Are Things 'Indifferent'? How Objects Change Our Understanding of Religious History.

The largest cache of medieval liturgical furnishings that survives is in Protestant Germany. This survival has sometimes been attributed to Martin Luther's doctrine of the 'indifference' of objects. Using several examples, one from south Germany (the altar at Rothenburg ob der Tauber) and two from women's convents in the north (especially some devotional statues and their dresses from Kloster Wienhausen), this article argues not only that religious objects are far from indifferent but also that they alter our standard opinions about the Observant Reform of fifteenth-century Germany and the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and suggest new understandings of continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]