Charles III Joseph of Lorraine became Bishop of Olomouc in 1695 largely through dynastic maneuvering — he was a younger son of Duke Charles V of Lorraine, the Habsburg general who had driven the Ottomans from Vienna in 1683. Episcopal coinage rights in Olomouc were among the most jealously defended ecclesiastical privileges in Moravia, and the bishopric continued striking full thalers well into the eighteenth century when many comparable sees had abandoned the practice. Charles died in 1711, the same year this piece was struck, making it almost certainly a posthumous or terminal-year issue.
Charles III Joseph of Lorraine became Bishop of Olomouc in 1695 largely through dynastic maneuvering — he was a younger son of Duke Charles V of Lorraine, the Habsburg general who had driven the Ottomans from Vienna in 1683. Episcopal coinage rights in Olomouc were among the most jealously defended ecclesiastical privileges in Moravia, and the bishopric continued striking full thalers well into the eighteenth century when many comparable sees had abandoned the practice. Charles died in 1711, the same year this piece was struck, making it almost certainly a posthumous or terminal-year issue.