1 Albus - Philip Christopher of Sötern

Philip Christopher von Sötern held the Bishopric of Speyer from 1610 before accumulating the Electorate of Trier in 1623, making him one of the more politically consequential ecclesiastical princes of the Thirty Years' War period. His sympathies leaned toward France, a position that eventually led to his arrest by Habsburg forces in 1635 and nearly a decade of imperial captivity. These albus pieces were struck during the war's early phase, when the Rhineland was already being picked apart by marching armies and the local monetary economy was fragmenting under the strain of military requisition and debased coinage flooding the region from multiple minting authorities.