Hildesheim's civic coinage of the mid-sixteenth century emerged from a city still navigating the aftermath of the Hildesheim Diocesan Feud of 1519–1523, in which the Prince-Bishop lost enormous territorial holdings to the Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Calenberg. The city itself, as a distinct imperial entity, leveraged that power vacuum carefully. By 1546, Charles V's Reichsmünzordnung of 1559 was still more than a decade away, and municipal minting rights remained relatively unconstrained.
Davenport's attribution under GT I reflects the transitional weight standard of the period, before the later imperial reforms forced standardization across the German states.
Hildesheim's civic coinage of the mid-sixteenth century emerged from a city still navigating the aftermath of the Hildesheim Diocesan Feud of 1519–1523, in which the Prince-Bishop lost enormous territorial holdings to the Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Calenberg. The city itself, as a distinct imperial entity, leveraged that power vacuum carefully. By 1546, Charles V's Reichsmünzordnung of 1559 was still more than a decade away, and municipal minting rights remained relatively unconstrained.
Davenport's attribution under GT I reflects the transitional weight standard of the period, before the later imperial reforms forced standardization across the German states.