1/4 Thaler - Christoph Francis of Hutten

Christoph Francis of Hutten served as Prince-Bishop of Würzburg from 1724 until his death in 1729, leaving a reign too brief to produce an extensive coinage. The Hutten family had deep roots in Franconian nobility — a dynasty that included Ulrich von Hutten, the humanist knight and ally of Luther — though by the eighteenth century the connection was purely genealogical rather than ideological. This quarter thaler dates to the penultimate year of his episcopate, struck at a moment when Würzburg's finances were still recovering from the construction costs of the Residenz, Balthasar Neumann's vast palace project initiated under his predecessor Johann Philipp Franz.