Johannes I von Viffhusen served as Bishop of Dorpat from 1346 to 1373, presiding over a diocese caught between the competing pressures of the Teutonic Order to the west and the Republic of Novgorod to the east. The artig — a denomination specific to the Baltic region — emerged as the dominant small silver coin of Livonian ecclesiastical minting during this period, distinct from the pfennig traditions of the Reich. Dorpat's mint operated with considerable autonomy relative to the Order's own coinage, a friction point that would intensify through the following century.
Johannes I von Viffhusen served as Bishop of Dorpat from 1346 to 1373, presiding over a diocese caught between the competing pressures of the Teutonic Order to the west and the Republic of Novgorod to the east. The artig — a denomination specific to the Baltic region — emerged as the dominant small silver coin of Livonian ecclesiastical minting during this period, distinct from the pfennig traditions of the Reich. Dorpat's mint operated with considerable autonomy relative to the Order's own coinage, a friction point that would intensify through the following century.