1/2 Batzen - Hildebrand Jost

Hildebrand Jost's episcopate was defined almost entirely by conflict with the Seven Dizains, the semi-autonomous districts of Valais whose governing council repeatedly clashed with episcopal authority over temporal jurisdiction. His coinage years — 1623 to 1627 — fall squarely within this struggle, which eventually forced Jost to seek intervention from Rome and spend years in exile. That a bishop producing such modest billon fractions was simultaneously fighting for the very survival of his secular power lends these small coins an outsized biographical weight.