1 Schilling - Thomas Schöning Koknese, fancy cross, smooth top, with border and with long staffs

Thomas Schöning served as Archbishop of Riga from 1528 until his death in 1539, navigating the Archbishopric through the early turbulence of the Reformation as Lutheran influence spread rapidly through the Baltic towns. Riga's merchant class had largely embraced Lutheranism by the 1520s, creating persistent friction between the city and its Catholic ecclesiastical overlord. That this coinage was still being struck in his name as late as 1537 reflects the Archbishop's tenuous but continuing temporal authority over minting rights in a city already ideologically lost to Rome.