Corvey, once among the most powerful Benedictine houses in Saxony, had long held minting rights granted by the Ottonian emperors, but by the late thirteenth century the abbey's authority was in serious decline — squeezed between the ambitions of the Prince-Bishops of Paderborn and the expanding territorial reach of secular lords. Henry III of Homburg served as Prince-Abbot during a period when such bracteate-style pfennigs were the dominant small denomination across Westphalian ecclesiastical mints, their thin fabric a direct consequence of the regional shift away from the thicker penny tradition of earlier centuries.
Corvey, once among the most powerful Benedictine houses in Saxony, had long held minting rights granted by the Ottonian emperors, but by the late thirteenth century the abbey's authority was in serious decline — squeezed between the ambitions of the Prince-Bishops of Paderborn and the expanding territorial reach of secular lords. Henry III of Homburg served as Prince-Abbot during a period when such bracteate-style pfennigs were the dominant small denomination across Westphalian ecclesiastical mints, their thin fabric a direct consequence of the regional shift away from the thicker penny tradition of earlier centuries.