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This article explores the function of religious artefacts handed down from the late Middle Ages and attacked by the Protestants for the social and cultural distinction of German Catholics at the beginning of the Reformation. Anti-Lutheran pamphlets accused Evangelicals of breaking the relations of the faithful with God when they destroyed or removed the objects of medieval religion. Catholic authors, however, maintained the importance of materiality for the piety of “real Christians.” The study of the distinctions developed around religious objects in Westphalia, Bavaria, and Swabia reveals the extreme heterogeneity of Catholic affiliations between 1520 and 1540. They appropriated, adapted, and actualized the ritual and the meaning of different artefacts, according to the local contexts and challenges. The conflict was also translated into spatial terms as confessional groups tried to impose their material cultures. Catholics used distinctive objects in order to occupy the space and to show their personal convictions. In Protestant areas, for instance, they hid forbidden objects in protected places, worshipped crosses or statues which had been broken by Protestant authorities or went to Catholic areas for “old”—but actually different—religious practices. Early Reformation Catholics in Germany made an innovative and explicit use of material culture in order to distinguish themselves from Protestants and to demonstrate their actualized identities.