One of the biggest tourist attractions in Germany is a toilet seat.It's no bog-standard seat, though. Many historians believe it was on this unglamorous throne that Martin Luther wrote the famous 95 Theses that launched the Reformation.
Luther, sixteenth-century Augustinian monk, Catholic priest and university professor, is the historical godfather of Protestant Christianity.
Father Luther frequently alluded to the fact that he suffered from chronic constipation and that he spent much of his time in the lavatory.
The rest of the day he spent in the confessional, wrestling with his conscience.
His torturing problem was this: how can a sinful human being ever justify himself before a holy God?
How could he be certain he had eternal life?
He was angry that his beloved Catholic Church, which claimed to control such access in the name of God, was shamelessly selling indulgences, assuring the punters that the minute they handed over cash they could ill afford, their dead relatives would move up a few grades in purgatory.
The troubled priest's existential problem was resolved for him by an experience of grace, which convinced him that the only thing necessary for salvation was unmediated faith in God.
Jesus took away the born-again Luther's sins but left him with his haemorrhoids. The articulate monk publicly nailed his arguments for reform to the Wittenberg church door, but his superiors failed to read the disturbing European runes.
The combination of Luther's reforming zeal and the proud complacency of Rome set in motion a theological, political and cultural revolution that changed Europe for ever.
Father Luther's radical democratising of religion had a huge popular impact; here in Scotland, another priest by the name of John Knox picked up the banner with his vision of a church and a school in every parish.
Luther unwittingly launched more than an ecclesiastical and political revolution, though. The famous words attributed to the Reformer - "Here I stand, I can do no other" - became the template for other challenges to authority.
Philosophers explored new ideas without clerical approval. Scientists - many of them, like Isaac Newton, religious believers - came up with findings which shook the traditional world view to its foundations and helped create a new world.
As Protestantism went on to give Europe a masterclass in splintering divisiveness, Enlightenment ideas began to challenge the notion of religion itself, leading over time to the secularism characteristic of much of modern Europe.
Martin Luther was Godfather to a lot more than he had originally bargained for.
So what of Protestantism now?
This was one of the questions at the heart of The Protestant Revolution, Tristram Hunt's intelligent BBC4 series which ended last week.
Hunt established that the reach of Protestantism is so profound it is impossible to imagine the modern world without it.
Western modern art, the contemporary novel, the rise of capitalism, Martin Luther King, American foreign policy, Gordon Brown and today's anti-globalisation movement cannot be understood without reference to the shifting of the tectonic plates triggered by the Reformation.
Traditional Protestantism may be on the wane in terms of observance and belonging, but despite attempts to airbrush it out of history, its fingerprints are everywhere.
In Scotland, the once-great passionate energy systems of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism resemble two bruised and battered boxers who can only stand up by holding on to each other, oblivious of the fact that the arena has, in the main, emptied.
The world has moved on.
Yet to leave matters there is to be guilty of parochialism.
The centre of Christian gravity is moving from north to south; the fastest-growing religious group anywhere is Protestant Pentecostalism, which now has some 500 million adherents.
Protestantism is reinventing itself.
The Reformation was a necessary tragedy.
Luther would have been horrified to see the divisiveness of the Reformation movement and the excessive individualism which is its legacy. There is much to celebrate in the Protestant revolution, and much to question as well.
When Luther sat in his loo scribbling his world-shattering theses, his intention was not to break away from holy mother church, but to reform it.
Can one envisage a reunion of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions in their more life-giving aspects?
With great difficulty; but a Reformed Catholic Church, penitent for its past sins, could be in a position to open up its authentic treasures of wisdom for a searching generation struggling to live well in a world full of opportunity and immensely destructive power.
It may be too late for that, though; religion, however vital in many parts of the world, is seen to be - in the searing words of Dennis Potter - "the wound, not the bandage".
The balm of Gilead has turned bad, and the palms of the healers have too much blood on them.
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