1/2 Kreuzer - Francis Conrad of Rodt

The Bishopric of Constance was among the oldest and geographically sprawling ecclesiastical territories in the Holy Roman Empire — at its peak, the diocese stretched from Lake Constance well into Switzerland and Alsace. Francis Conrad of Rodt, who held the bishopric from 1750 until its suppression, struck copper fractions like this largely out of practical necessity: the chronic shortage of small-denomination coinage in the southwestern German states during the mid-18th century was a persistent administrative irritant. The bishopric itself was dissolved in 1803 under the reorganization that followed the Treaty of Lunéville, making all issues under Rodt terminal pieces of a thousand-year ecclesiastical minting tradition.