1 Pfennig - Albert of Wertheim

Albert of Wertheim held the see of Bamberg from 1398 until his death in 1421, a tenure marked by persistent friction with the Hohenzollern burgraves of Nuremberg over territorial jurisdiction in Franconia. These small silver pfennigs circulated within a diocese that functioned as a fully sovereign ecclesiastical prince — the Bishop of Bamberg answered to the Emperor, not to any intervening secular lord. At 0.2 g, the flan was punched from sheet silver, a production method common to Franconian bracteate-tradition mints that persisted well into the fifteenth century.