1/4 Thaler Madonna - Paris von Lodron

Paris von Lodron governed Salzburg from 1619 to 1653, and his tenure was defined almost entirely by keeping the archbishopric out of the Thirty Years' War — a feat of careful neutrality that left Salzburg's economy and mint unusually stable while the rest of the Holy Roman Empire was being stripped bare. That stability is precisely why this type was struck across a seventeen-year span without significant interruption.

The Madonna reverse was a deliberate political and devotional statement during the Counter-Reformation, when Salzburg's archbishops used coinage to reinforce Catholic identity against Protestant encroachment in the surrounding territories.