Gerlach of Nassau served as Archbishop of Mainz from 1346 until his death in 1371, presiding during a period when the Rhenish electoral princes were actively coordinating gold coinage policy. The Rhenish Gulden union of 1354 — an agreement among Mainz, Trier, Cologne, and the Palatinate to standardize weight and fineness — directly shaped the parameters to which this piece was struck.
Felke 140 places this emission in the final years of Gerlach's tenure, after a 1365 revision to the union's standards reduced the weight slightly from earlier gulden issues.
Gerlach of Nassau served as Archbishop of Mainz from 1346 until his death in 1371, presiding during a period when the Rhenish electoral princes were actively coordinating gold coinage policy. The Rhenish Gulden union of 1354 — an agreement among Mainz, Trier, Cologne, and the Palatinate to standardize weight and fineness — directly shaped the parameters to which this piece was struck.
Felke 140 places this emission in the final years of Gerlach's tenure, after a 1365 revision to the union's standards reduced the weight slightly from earlier gulden issues.