The Cathedral Chapter of Osnabrück occupied an unusual constitutional position under the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which mandated that the bishopric alternate between Catholic and Lutheran rulers — one of the odder ecclesiastical compromises to emerge from the Thirty Years' War. By 1715, the chapter was exercising its independent minting rights during an interregnum, a period when the chapter itself held temporal authority between bishops. These capitular issues are distinct from episcopal coinages and were struck infrequently, making them considerably harder to locate than the standard run of Osnabrück bishopric thalers. Davenport's GT II coverage places this among a small cluster of chapter issues from the early eighteenth century.
The Cathedral Chapter of Osnabrück occupied an unusual constitutional position under the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which mandated that the bishopric alternate between Catholic and Lutheran rulers — one of the odder ecclesiastical compromises to emerge from the Thirty Years' War. By 1715, the chapter was exercising its independent minting rights during an interregnum, a period when the chapter itself held temporal authority between bishops. These capitular issues are distinct from episcopal coinages and were struck infrequently, making them considerably harder to locate than the standard run of Osnabrück bishopric thalers. Davenport's GT II coverage places this among a small cluster of chapter issues from the early eighteenth century.