1 Groschen - Theodore of Fürstenberg

Theodore of Fürstenberg's tenure as Prince-Bishop of Paderborn was defined by the grinding pressures of Counter-Reformation politics in Westphalia, where the diocese was perpetually contested between Catholic and Protestant factions. Small silver groschen of this type were the workhorses of local commerce in a region where coinage authority was fragmented among dozens of ecclesiastical and secular lords, each jealously guarding mint rights as a marker of jurisdictional independence.

The Weing Corvey reference ties this piece to the numismatic documentation of the broader Westphalian ecclesiastical coinage tradition — Corvey being the neighboring abbey whose issues overlapped in circulation with Paderborn's output throughout this decade.