Corvey's right to strike its own coinage was a recurring flashpoint with neighboring territorial powers throughout the seventeenth century, and Arnold of Waldois — serving as Prince-Abbot during one of the more contested periods of post-Westphalian monetary realignment — issued this Mariengroschen under imperial minting privileges the abbey had defended since the Ottonian period. The billon standard here reflects the debasement pressures common to smaller ecclesiastical mints operating in the aftermath of the Kipper- und Wipperzeit, when specie quality across the German states had still not fully recovered.
Corvey's right to strike its own coinage was a recurring flashpoint with neighboring territorial powers throughout the seventeenth century, and Arnold of Waldois — serving as Prince-Abbot during one of the more contested periods of post-Westphalian monetary realignment — issued this Mariengroschen under imperial minting privileges the abbey had defended since the Ottonian period. The billon standard here reflects the debasement pressures common to smaller ecclesiastical mints operating in the aftermath of the Kipper- und Wipperzeit, when specie quality across the German states had still not fully recovered.